Mother’s Day and Infertility: How to Better Support Those Struggling

Today was my first Mother’s Day. It was a day surrounded by family sharing love and joy and admiring my gorgeous baby girl. It was also an interesting mix of emotions for me. Today I reflected on the last 3 Mother’s Days and how painful those were for me. It made me think about all those still experiencing that pain today. It made me joyful that my period of childlessness is over but made me hurt deeply for those still suffering. There honestly is not a day that goes by in that I am somehow reminded of my own struggle through infertility and the incredible pain that it brought. And now when I think about that time, I think about those still going through it. I think about all the ways our social media, television, and culture make it difficult to not be reminded every day of childlessness. Pregnancy announcements, baby product ads, baby shower invites, and even a constant stream of kid pictures on Facebook can cause extreme pain and frustration and ruin an entire day for women going through infertility. I think about this every time I share a photo of my daughter on social media. I remember how difficult it was for me to see the joy of motherhood all around me. I hope to be an advocate for these women and be encouraging to them to see the success of my own journey. But deep down I know that seeing success only reminds you of your failure. I remember so many conversations with close friends and family members who were trying their best to care for me through that time and encourage me, but the pain of infertility is felt so deeply and the sense of failure as a women so near to the heart, that there is very little that helped console me. But I do believe there are ways to help these women and I want to implore all reading to consider these small things.

First, be conscious of what and how you post things on social media. We all want to share our joys with family and friends and social media is a great way to do that. I am in that group myself and am guilty of posting way too many photos of my child. However, there are a few ways you can be more conscious of how you share things in order to better appreciate those struggling with infertility.

1. NEVER and I mean NEVER use pregnancy as an April Fools Joke. I don’t think I have to elaborate on this one, it should be pretty clear.

2. If you are aware of someone’s struggle, reach out to them independently about your pregnancy announcement before making it social media official. A friend did this for me and it really softened the blow of scrolling through Facebook and seeing “another pregnancy announcement.” I considered it very thoughtful that she allowed me a “private” moment to process her announcement so that I could be more joyful with her in the public one.

3. Try to limit your complaints about pregnancy or motherhood on social media. I understand we all need an outlet sometimes for the stress and frustrations that come with parenting but try to utilize your personal relationships for this instead of a public platform. When all you desire in the whole world is to become a parent and all you see is others complaining about the precious gift they were given, it’s very easy to become bitter and angry with that person and can damage relationships. I remember having to work very hard to “let go” of some of my own frustrations on this matter.

4. Be an advocate and spread the word about infertility. It’s much more prevalent than you might realize and it’s more than likely affecting someone close to you. Encourage others to be more conscientious of their social media use and always remind people of my first point around April 1st!

Second, simply listen, love, and encourage. There really is not anything you can say or do for someone going through infertility accept be there. All I ever needed was a listening ear on my bad days and nights. What I needed most through my journey was just someone to vent to about all the painful things I saw on Facebook or the ridiculous amount of emotions I went through in one day. I just wanted to feel heard in a safe, non-judgmental space. I needed to be able to talk to someone about the horrible fights I had with my husband because of stress infertility was putting on our relationship. I just needed to say it all out loud so it wasn’t consuming my whole being. One of the best things you can do for someone going through this, is simply listen. Please do not try to try to “fix it,” explain it away, or offer solutions, just listen. If there was an explanation or fix, trust me we would have done it.

Lastly, while laughter is good medicine, please do not try to joke away infertility. Do not say kitschy things, like “well I’m sure once you stop trying it will happen!” Or “Now that you’ve decided to adopt, I bet you’ll get pregnant.” Or “At least you get to have as much unprotected sex as you want.” While we understand that you are trying to help us see the bright side or lighten up the conversation, you only hurt us more deeply. If you aren’t sure what to say, maybe just choose not to say anything at all.

So today, on the day when we honor our mothers, I want everyone to remember those feeling deep sorrow over the inability to become a mother and make a choice to love and support them in a more conscious way.

Every Single Day

Assumptions. My worst enemy. They have been for most of my life actually. I remember being in high school and thinking about the upcoming youth group camping trip or my next basketball game and imagining all the grand, magical things that were going to happen. I still struggle with this in my own household. My husband jokingly calls them, “expectation talks” when we are making plans or getting to leave for a trip. He knows that in my head I have the entire thing planned out and I intend for it to be executed in that exact way. So in order to save our marriage another ridiculous fight he always asks me what my expectations are and then we work out a realistic plan together. See, the problem with assumptions is that when those assumptions do not become reality, we usually get mad or disappointed and then we find ourselves in our planned outing with a sour attitude. This tends to just make life miserable a majority of the time. I’ve had to learn to fight these in myself so that I’m not letting amazing moments pass me by because they aren’t happening just the way I expected them too.

My biggest battle with this has of course been my infertility. I assumed, as most women do, that as soon as I decided to have kids it would be in my control to do so and would happily play out the way I wanted. When Kurtis and I decided to start trying it was the beginning of August, so I did all the calculations and if it took a month or two to get pregnant we could still make a charming announcement at Christmas to all our family; little baby shoes wrapped up with an ultrasound, everyone’s surprised and delighted faces. I seriously imagined the whole scene on multiple occasions. So, after 5 months of trying and some emerging medical conditions, guess who cried and hated Christmas that year? Yep, this gal. It was early February when I finally got into the doctor, had all the talks, made a plan of action, and then boom, expectations right back up there! What a whirlwind cycle!

Even after 3 years, failed fertility treatments, and beginning an adoption journey I find myself still struggling in different ways. I have now started to assume that I can handle pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and walking through the children’s aisles at Target and while I have made great strides in this area, I still catch myself getting really angry or sad, when an announcement crosses my screen on Facebook and I have to step back and remind myself that this should not steal my joy.

What it comes down to I think is that I’m ready to find out how this story ends. I’ve imagined the ending for so long. I’ve made up multiple endings in fact. Through this whole journey it’s felt like I’ve been reading a multi-part thriller and although I’ve found out the ending of each individual book, the final book in the series hasn’t been released and it’s getting harder to wait to find out how the entire journey ends. But, this is real life, there is no “release date.” Only time, patience, and an everyday battle with imaginary scenarios and assumptions. This takes effort on my part every single day and constant, gentle reminders from those around me. So, once again, here I am writing this post to help remind myself in an effort to grow through this unpredictable journey.

A Year's Time

Last Mother's Day was one of the most difficult days I've ever been through. I was in the middle of fertility treatments, my hormones were all over the place, and I had to watch everyone else celebrating their motherhood while I stood in my uncertainty. I hated every mother, I resented the young and fertile, and more than anything I hated myself. It was a dark day. 

My own mother, the most loving and empathetic woman I've ever known, knew all of this though without me even saying it. After I sat quietly all through our family lunch, stewing in my own mixed up emotions, she pulled me aside. She handed me a small gift bag and a card. Inside was a beautiful little hanging glass cardinal and note that told me what a wonderful mother I will be and how cherished my children will be whoever they may be and whenever they may enter my life. She smiled at me as I finally let all the tears stream down my face. We didn't need to talk about it, we knew this was all that was needed in that moment. 

Today a year later, I'm one step closer to being a mom. It's still a difficult day for me, I've been waiting patiently (and not so patiently) for close to 3 years now to be a mom and I'm not quite there. However, I know that my child is waiting for me and at the exact right time we will finally meet. For now I have my little cardinal to remind me each day of that truth. Somedays I pass right by it, ignoring it, because I don't want to be joyful in my wait. Somedays I stand right in front of it and remember all the pain I've already been through. Somedays I smile as I look up and see it in the window and know that no matter the journey, the end will be the most amazing experience of my life. 

So today, I choose to focus on how thankful I am for a mother who has shown me what it means to have unconditional love for your children, to make immense sacrifice on their behalf, and dedicate yourself to their wellbeing. I choose to smile at my little cardinal in hope for my future as a mother. I choose to celebrate with my wonderful family, who continues to show me tremendous love and support. It's not always easy, but it's always worth it in the end. 

Happy Mother's Day! 

No real end, no real beginning

I’ve sat down a couple of times in the past week to write this post. It’s been difficult though. I’ve felt in a slump again. It all started last week on a high note. We had our first of three interview sessions for our adoption home study. It was exciting to feel like we were finally there, finally taking the next concrete steps to reach the ultimate goal. Our adoption specialist is fantastic and made us both so comfortable during the interview. We both left feeling pretty hopeful that we are going to be awesome parents, in the not so distant future. There is always that part of me though that holds me back and says, “be realistic, ” “you still know the average wait time,” “don’t get your hopes too high.” But every once in awhile I let the hopeful side win a little bit more than the logical side. I think that is where I was at after Monday’s meeting. Enjoying the hope, letting myself have a small moment of bliss. Then came Thursday. Thursday was an emotional roller coaster and in only a 2 hour block at that. We had our first group meeting for the adoption process that night. It was a panel discussion. The first hour hosted by adoptive parents sharing their story and answering questions and the second hour hosted by birth moms sharing their story and answering questions. Intense. To be honest, Kurtis and I went into this meeting with a bit of arrogance. We had already done our months of research, spoken with people who had adopted, who had been adopted, read up on the process, the agencies, read opinion pieces, and talked about it endlessly together. We felt we would not have much to gain from this meeting as it was structured for those who had not done this amount of due diligence already. While we were not completely wrong on this point, I never expected the emotional reaction I would have to this meeting and the processing that took place afterward. It was a unique one for me. There were moments of choking back tears, moments of anger, moments of deep sadness, moments of hope, moments of disconnectedness, and moments of pure reflection on my own human nature. When leaving this event, I was still all over the place. As Kurtis attempted to discuss the meeting with me I simply could not understand my current condition and struggled to have any meaningful conversation about it. It’s taken me almost an entire week to figure it out. That moment of hope I allowed myself on Monday, that small moment of vulnerability I indulged in came crashing down on me on Thursday night. It certainly was not a bad or weak thing to give myself that moment on Monday, but I simply was not prepared for what an influx of information and emotion might do to that moment of vulnerability. Up to this point in the adoption process, I have been strong, I have been efficient in focusing on what needs to get done and keeping myself on a realistic timeline. I have felt confident in checking off the boxes of the to-do list for this process and knowing that every box gets us closer. But vulnerability does not care about those things, it cares about the heart and what the heart deeply desires. Thursday was difficult because my heart had to truly accept that the grief is not over yet, the heartbreak is not over yet, the highs and lows are not over yet, but more than anything this journey is not over yet. For all the joy and pain it will bring this journey still has an unknowable amount of time left. That was hard to take in when I have been so focused on getting us there, getting us through each gate, getting all the more closer. In reality, this journey that we are on does not have a start point and an end point. I am beginning to fully embrace that this is a lifelong journey we are on. Not only lifelong because of the parenting piece, but lifelong because there are so many unknowns and things to navigate for years to come. I’m not sure either of us fully understand what that wholly means right now, but we have a lifetime to figure it out.

It's Not Easy

Music has always spoken to my deepest emotions and connected me to myself in ways I cannot explain. While driving home tonight, one of my new favorite songs came on, "Not Easy" by Alex Da Kid. It hit me hard. I've been listening to this song for a couple of days now and actually felt that it spoke to me about a completely different situation in my life, an emotional experience that took place more than 5 years ago. But tonight, the words, "It's not easy, it's not easy breaking your heart" caught me in a completely different way.

After our recent decision to pursue adoption whole heartedly and set aside any further fertility treatments I just assumed that a lot of my grief would subside. In fact, after our announcement and the outpouring of support we received I felt a tremendous renewal of hope and joy. I felt hope that my dream of being a mother was close again, I felt the joy of a new direction in our journey, and I felt that having closure to the fertility treatment would help put it aside. What I discovered tonight is it's not that simple.

There is still grief and loss on this journey. My heart is still broken over the children that I won't get to carry. There is still loss around the baby that won't have my eyes or Kurtis' nose. There is still the grief of never knowing what traits our baby, our biological child, would get from us. I hadn't thought of those things, I just pushed forward focusing on my end goal, like I always do.

I had to let all of this sink in tonight. I had to let myself feel it. I had to play the words of my husband's regrets and sadness play in my head. He's been feeling it too. We spent the holiday's with my family and on our trip to the zoo, I spent a lot of time with my 3-year-old niece, Leiliana. After we left, Kurtis told me that while she was sitting on my lap, he had a moment of sadness. He noticed that her hair looked like mine and he couldn't help but feel sad that he may never get to see me with a daughter that looks just like me.

We are both thrilled to be on the journey to adoption, but we can't forget that there are still feelings of grief to process. Loss that we should allow ourselves to feel. Adoption doesn't negate fertility issues, it's simply a wonderful option for those who experience the deeply emotional life circumstance of infertility.  

Patience is a virtue. Especially when it comes to being patient with yourself.

I wrote the following paragraph over a month ago now:

Another 4 weeks, another failed procedure. I’m spent. Physically, emotionally, mentally, just utter exhaustion. I’ve actually being having a pretty big pity party for myself this week. It’s crazy how easy we can justify anything when we really want to. It’s not that I think I shouldn’t allow myself to be sad and upset and work through the healthy emotions that surround a difficult life situation, but rather the things I let myself get away with while going through it. I justify bad eating habits, laziness, irritability toward others, even poor hygiene sometimes. Even as a therapist I let myself slip into the mindset of “it’s just my depression” or “I just need to check out today, I’ll do better tomorrow.”  I come up with all sorts of reasons why it’s okay for me to indulge or slack off. Then I face my guilt for doing so, which takes a whole new toll on my mind, body, and spirit. It’s a dangerous cycle, dangerous because it’s so easy to slip into and then forget how to get out again.

However, I never posted it. I never posted it because I wanted to add more, I wanted to follow up with some amazing revelation about how to get out of that cycle. That revelation never came and weeks passed and I ignored that I ever wrote those words. Today I knew I had to sit down and read those words again. I had to be reminded of the cycle, of how easy it is to get stuck and that’s what I am right now, stuck.

I’m learning though. I’m learning the balance of allowing myself the pain, the frustration, the need for a moment away, without allowing myself to use it to justify every bad habit, behavior, and thought. It’s an everyday battle. I’m terrible at those. I’m more of a “identify the problem, fix it, and move on” personality type (also known as Type A…). It’s just not that simple when it comes to this problem. I wish it was, I wish I could discover that big revelation I was waiting for a month ago and move on from this, but instead I have to embrace it. I have to be okay with “good enough.” That’s where I’m at. I’m doing what I can and settling for “good enough.” That’s really all we can ever do no matter the situation. But I’m sitting here behind the screen telling all of you, it’s the most difficult lesson I’ve had to learn to date. So I’m going to exercise my best patience with myself and charge forward. I’m going to trust that someday I will learn to embrace this lesson fully and enjoy a fuller, more relaxed, satisfied life.

I wish the same for all of you. Thanks for tracking with me on this journey. I’m humbled by you all.

It's Not All About Me

I’m sitting here struggling to begin this post. I have so many jumbled thoughts in my head about it, but no good way to put them all in order. I think this is because there are so many directions to go all at the same time. I want to make sure I write everything down because I do not want to lose these insights, but I cannot seem to make it coherent! So I ask that you bear with me as I work through this one today.

There are days where I cannot get out of my own head. I can get triggered by one small thing and it turns into an all day shift in my thinking, acting, emoting. I can very easily get caught up in how “alone” I am on this journey. I’ve even been angry about this feeling of being alone before. But the truth is, I am not alone. I have a partner who is on this journey with me.  

My husband and I have had many discussions about our situation. They started out with him being the cheerleader on my bad days. They took a turn to logistics, expectations, scheduling. They’ve progressed to grieving our situation together. There has never been a day that has been easy during this journey, but in every difficult moment when I realize he is by my side, I know I can get through it. Of course we have been far from perfect. In fact, I think we’ve had some of our worst fights around this issue. But they were only that bad because they were so emotionally charged. We’ve experienced this journey in very different ways, which has to be expected to cause some discord. As a woman, I feel as though I’m failing part of my purpose in life. As the man, he wants to fix it. These emotions can clash effortlessly. During this whole thing, I keep thinking about how easy of a breaking point this journey could be for a marriage. I know it happens, I’ve read the statistics, I’ve known acquaintances it’s happened to in fact. But the most amazing thing has happened for us, we’ve never been closer, more in love, and more determined to achieve a goal together. He has been there every step of the way, even at the doctor’s office holding my hand after only an hour of sleep, because he knew how important it was for me to have him there. He’s worked hard to take other stressors off of me because he knows how taxing this daily journey is for me. He’s also simply listened when I needed to get all my crazy out, and I have a lot of crazy! I do not know why we are going through this, but I can at least see the great things coming out of it in the meantime. I cannot imagine going through this journey or this life without my amazing, loving, and supportive husband.

I do not think I tell him enough how much I appreciate him. It’s difficult to keep up with all the wonderful things he does for me. I’ve never felt more loved in my life. I’m so thankful for him even at my most distraught. I hope this helps him understand that a little more. I hope that I have been as supportive and caring toward him during this time as well, but if we are keeping score, I’d have to be honest and say that he’s winning J