Hellobee

Last week marked National Infertility Awareness Week. This was always an important week for me when I was struggling through infertility and it remains a very important week to me and I think it always will.

I struggled with infertility for three years. When I reflect on that, I often think that three years doesn’t seem all that long and it definitely doesn’t do justice to how long the time felt to me at the time. I think one of the hardest parts of infertility is that you don’t know how long it will last (you also don’t know if you ever will “win” the battle or what that “win” will look like, but that’s another story). If I had known at the start that it would be three years until that positive pregnancy test, I think the time may have been more tolerable. But not knowing made the time feel so much longer.

I also found infertility so challenging because it couldn’t be fixed by hard work or discipline. Up until that point, all of the other challenges that I had previously faced in my life could be solved or improved by working harder or smarter. But despite my best attempts to fix the infertility issue through improved diet, reduced stress, and seeking out the very best doctors and protocols, nothing worked. I could show you logs of my diet and relaxation schedule (ha, even writing that makes me laugh!) during this time but all of that planning and hard work ultimately did nothing to solve my problem.

There was also an element of illogical-ness about the situation that was absolutely infuriating to me. I distinctly remember my friends and family giving me advice to reduce my stress and gain weight, blindly insisting that those measures would fix my problem. As I toiled on diligently with these fixes, I remember being devastated by the news that Princess Kate had become pregnant because she was most certainly under more stress to conceive than me (and definitely thinner than me!), and I just couldn’t make sense of why she could become pregnant and I couldn’t. But definitely, the hardest hits were when I had to face family members who became accidentally pregnant or when I saw news stories of accidentally pregnant women who were heroin addicts or otherwise unhealthy and unprepared for a baby. This was so frustrating to me and I’ll be honest that it often made me feel incredibly bitter toward the world.

This pic was snapped around the 2.5 year mark of my infertility journey. Despite all my best attempts and strategies (in that bag are syringes and medications as I was in treatment on this vacation), I couldn’t get pregnant.

Apart from these challenges of infertility, it is all compounded by intense loneliness. The topic is frustratingly taboo. And this is exactly why I always found so much comfort in National Infertility Awareness Week. It lifted the veils of silence and shame and brought the topic out into the public for one glorious week each year.

There is no question that during my infertility journey I really appreciated the unity and awareness of National Infertility Week. I felt less alone, less pity, and less shame in that week each and every year. But I will tell you that for all of the support and connection that I felt, all of those positive and comforting feelings were inevitably gone weeks later. And the holiday that brought back the sadness and loneliness full force? Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day was so hard to face when I was struggling to conceive. While I tried mightily to focus my energy on my own mother and grandmothers on those holidays, it was impossible not to be reminded of how deeply I wanted to be a mother myself and to be a focus for celebration on that holiday. Probably the lowest point of my entire infertility journey occurred on a Mother’s Day. My husband and I had just suffered a miscarriage with our first surrogate, and we had reached a new level of hopelessness. Still, I decided I had to be brave and strong and attend a Mother’s Day brunch for my mother-in-law at a restaurant.

As we walked into the restaurant, servers were lined up to hand flowers to all of the mothers as they entered. Flower after flower was extended in my direction as the servers asked me over and again if I was a mother. As I pushed the flowers away time and again, I quietly muttered, “No, I’m not a mother. That flower is not meant for me.” I can’t think of a moment when I more intensely felt the pain and loneliness of infertility.

As I reflect on another National Infertility Awareness week gone by, I am so touched by the community and support and I am so grateful for the help that it provided to me in years past. But as we think of ways to help our friends and family members through that special week who are suffering through infertility, I am thinking forward to that day that is likely looming in those same friends and family members minds: Mother’s Day.

The pain of that day was always greatly lessened by my support network, especially my friends with their own children who went out of their way to let me know that they were thinking of me on Mother’s Day. Some sent me funny cards, others simple texts. But my best friends and my most loving family members were the ones who just let me cry. These were the ones who cursed all of those flowers that were extended to me on that most terrible of Mother’s Day and let me cry on their shoulder. And while they let me cry, they also never lost hope for me and in fact, they kept hope alive for me when I had lost all of it. These were the friends who always thought forward to the day when they would gather up all of those cursed flowers and hand me a huge bouquet in celebration of my becoming a mother…. and I can’t possibly thank them enough.