After infertility

I can't remember what it felt like. I can remember in a factual way that it was awful. Painful, miserable, soul-suckingly awful. But I can't feel it any more. The extraordinary pain that I felt, the hole that I experienced deep inside isn't there any more.

I don't know when it happened. I don't remember when I stopped remembering how it felt. I do remember that I still felt angry after Pob was born, when I realised that the time to just wait for a second didn't exist for us, we had to get on with it if we had any hope of it happening. I remember being so incredibly sad when our first IVF cycle after Pob didn't work. I also remember having to snap out of it soon after I got home so that I didn't affect her. While that didn't reduce the sadness, it did reduce the focus on the sadness.

Sometime after Junior arrived, the visceral reality of the anger and the sadness went away. Not completely, no. When I yearn for another baby, it's there, that feeling that if only we'd had children sooner we might have been able to have another. But it's a yearning, a nostalgia almost, not a deep, penetrating, dreadful sadness like the absence of any children - or of any sense of possibility of those children, at some points - felt. It's there when I look at one of my colleagues, struggling to hold it all together at a women's event where EVERYONE is talking AGAIN about the challenges of working motherhood. And I know she's feeling jealous and angry and ashamed of herself. But I just know it, I don't feel it.

I don't know what made it go away. I don't know if somehow the intensity of the love I feel for my children filled the gap. I don't know if it seeped away because it's just not what I think about all day any more. It comes up, and it goes away while I think about everything else on the list. I don't know if I'm healed, or just papered over.

I know that this is not true for everyone. I had lunch with a friend last week who adopted her daughter two years ago, after nearly 10 years of dealing with infertility. I shared some of the above feelings with her, and she visibly tensed, shivered, looked a bit sick, and then said: "No. I feel it. I feel those critical moments every day. I remember each period of those first three years, getting more and more angry every time I realised I wasn't pregnant again. The day they told me after the operation I'd never have children without IVF, the first time we had to have a social worker in our house. The moment I realised our daughter would not come from China. I am right back there, every time I remember those moments."

Why? Why has it gone for me and not for her? Is it because she is thinking about a second adoption, while, we, much as I yearn for another, are done? Is it because I've filled the hole not just with love but with working too hard and planning a move? Am I distracting myself from reality with a bunch of displacement activities?

As always, it's probably some combination of the above. I know that the love of my children has changed the way I feel about life in a profound way. I know that I am mostly happy. I know, even so, that there are things that are not right in my life and that currently I am doing a medium good job of covering them up. But the sadness, it has lifted. The pain, is a memory of an ache, no longer agony. I got the future I wanted, not when I wanted, but I got it nonetheless.

The experience of being a parent, of loving my children, hasn't cured me, it's just changed the angle with which I experience the world.

 

Comments

[DinoD]

You know... I have nothing to add -- on this you do a fairly good job of speaking for me.
Although, sometimes I wonder if it's just that I've blocked all the pain and anger -- after all, who would willingly want to visit that place again.
DinoD

[dee]

Brava, sing it sister! I'm right there with you :)

And your words? Beautifully said.

[Summer]

Whatever the reason, I'm glad you now feel like you got to the place you wanted to get to. And I hope your friend reaches the same place eventually.

[Caro]

Beautifully put.

[Sara]

My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the difference between you and your friend is that you fought infertility and won (two beautiful children), whereas she fought infertility and found a workaround that may have brought her a child, but didn't give her the children or the experience that she had originally hoped for. I'm in the middle. I'm no longer wallowing in the hell that was childlessness, and am OK most of the time, but I definitely still feel angry. Not every day, and not with the intensity that I felt before, but definite anger (which, sadly, is most intense whenever I see my older sister's third child--the one she conceived "by accident" at the same time I was failing an IVF cycle). I think that my lingering anger relates to me trying and failing to have a second child. My last memory of infertility is defeat, not victory. I also remain bitter about the fact that I didn't get to manage my infertility the way that I would have chosen had things been different. I didn't have the money or the situation that allowed me to do IVF until it worked. Or maybe it's because I'm still in limbo as I wait for Godot Mystery to decide whether he's up for adoption or DE or none of the above. Or maybe it's your knowledge that you're done with it all that gives you your (relative) peace. I felt a huge relief after my last IVF was over, even though it failed, because I didn't have to dread it anymore. But since we're still considering adoption or DE, there are still things to dread.

I'm happy to hear that it ended for you. That gives me hope.

[serenity]

I love this. I hope I get there someday, too.

xoxo

[thalia]

this is a test.

[4katnap]

So glad you are there. I was trying for a second after getting lucky and managing the first. m/c followed by aborted IVF ( and nearly aborted marraige) followed by m/c followed by nothing...
I can truely report that I would be way more upset to see a +'ve now. Of course that might be because I turned 50 this year and could not imagine parenting a teen at 70. OK the real problem is that I could imagine parenting a teen at 70 and I really don't want to go there.
I do hope your friend reaches that place of faded pain someday. And I"m really glad you are there.

[statia]

You hit the nail on the head exactly. Those aches, I think they're always going to be there. But the hurt, it's just not as, raw as it once was. Perhaps time, while it hasn't healed the wounds, it's definitely scarred them over enough that I don't feel it on a regular basis, like I once did.

I try to go back and remember that pain, from time to time. Trying to put myself back into that place. That feeling. It's difficult, and I have a hard time pegging if it's two healthy children, or if it's just...time.

And like you, I feel that nostalgia, and yearning. My two, are about all I can handle. Mentally, physically. My worry of another being sick, or worse, far weighs out my desire for a million babies. That and I'm not particularly enjoying three (years). Three going into four has been really tough on me. But I've been feeling it more, as we wind down the babyhood with LG. She's longer now. Lankier. She doesn't snuggle up in the chair as well these days. She's a little girl now. She's fun, and has redeemed me as a "typical" parent, but still, the loss of them being babies really stings. More than I ever thought.

Thanks for writing this, both truly and a little sarcastically. :o)

[LutC]

I'm glad you don't feel it anymore. It would be rather awful if you did, no?

We're still fighting, and I guess as long as we do, I'll feel the pain. I dread doing that final attempt, because failing will be so hard - despite already having one lovely girl.

[conceptionally challenged]

Thanks for sharing. I hope that one day, I'll also be able to say (and feel) this.

[Betty m]

There is a certain roundabout off the Westway that I can't go round without a pit appearing in my stomach and a road in central London where a panicky feeling builds up in my chest as I think of the cycles and the scans which went wrong. It doesn't go but it is not often that I feel it hit hard. I'm not sure that I'll ever feel really done even though for all intents and purposes I am.

[Krista]

I feel the same way. I know others that don't. I know that I never imagined it would be possible to forget... but I do forget. I forget the specifics of the pain, of the overwhelming sadness. I just know that it sucked and now it is over. And I know that I am lucky... oh so lucky!

[My Reality]

I hope that one day, I feel the same way, too. I am thankful to read this post, there is hope that the pain may one day be changed. Thank you for giving me that hope.

[Amel]

New here...just want to say that we've "given up" by deciding not to try to do any treatment nor adopt. Never been pregnant. Now I also feel the same way more or less...the longing is still there, but no more anger or raw pain, even when my period comes. Our sex life has improved SO MUCH ever since we decided to "stop actively TTC".

I also think mostly it's 'coz of our prayers - my friends have also helped me in praying The Serenity Prayer. :-) I wouldn't have been able to achieve this state without their prayers.

[Amel]

Oops...I forgot to say that I don't forget about the pain and the anger, but it's just like you said: I know it, but I don't feel it anymore. It's like stepping over the circle of those emotions: pain/anger/jealousy/bitterness/etc. etc. I can see it from outside the circle, but it's not all around me anymore.

Sometimes I get closer to the circle when the longing strikes, but I'm not inside it anymore - not like what I felt when we were still actively TTC - it felt like the storm of emotions just hauled me here and there, leaving me bruised, battered, and breathless that I couldn't even see anything else outside that circle.

[helen]

I understand. Me too. I forgot, I healed, I got over it. I never even read infertility blogs anymore. But all of a sudden you popped into my head.

[WaterBishop]

It sounds like a nice place to be. To know, but not really feel it.
I know I will be the same some day.

(from the creme)

[TasIVFer]

I'm glad it's just a memory for you. I think that's wonderful - it's not something that's fun to be in the middle of!

[Mr. Thompson and Me]

Peace.

What a great post! Visiting from Creme de la Creme and I'll be back.

[Esperanza]

This was a very uplifting post. I'm so glad you've come so far in your journey that IF no longer haunts your thoughts and your feelings. I have been lucky enough to not come up (yet) against IF but I hope that pregnancy loss will stop haunting me some day. Maybe when I'm finished building my family and I know longer have to fear it. Maybe then. Until then, I will look to your story for hope. Thank you.

Creme de la Creme #125
Creme de la Creme 2010 Iron Commenter Attempt
http://esperanzasays.wordpress.com/iron-clad-creme-de-la-creme-commenter/

[Gail]

I'm here from the Creme (a little late, but still here).

Thanks for sharing. I hope that when/if I ever come out the other side of my IF journey, I can say the same thing because it truly sucks right now on this side of the fence.