It meant a lot to me when I was contacted by My Bridge Radio to do an interview for Mother’s Day and they told me the topic was infertility. Yes. Thank you.
Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography
This can be such a hard topic to address and I love that they wanted to tackle it head-on, especially in anticipation of what can be a hard day for women wrestling with an infertility diagnosis. It can be incredibly isolating and as I prepped for this interview, I thought through what it would have meant to me to have heard someone share openly about the struggles of infertility back when I was newly diagnosed. To know I wasn’t alone would have been huge. So I hope this was helpful for the men and women who needed to hear it when it aired, and I hope it’s a help to you as you listen to it either as someone wrestling with infertility or as someone walking with a friend who is.
I have the link directly below to the audio of the interview and beneath that I have some additional thoughts that always come to me as soon as I hang up the phone (of course).
-Yes, literally two minutes before they called me for the interview, Teddy dumped a bunch of shredded mini wheats on the floor, sat in the pile and started eating them. This is my actual life. Brain walked in the door shortly after that so I could do this interview, but my mind was so focused on the infertility stuff as I watched Teddy sitting there, I couldn’t even be upset at him. When you spent a lot of time waiting for motherhood, sometimes it’s easier to let stuff roll off your back. . . sometimes. . .
-I wish I had had a moment to talk about secondary infertility. That was on my heart in the definition of infertility that I expressed. Infertility isn’t just about not being able to carry life at all, but about not being able to do that when you’re trying to make it happen. There are definitely people that don’t understand that you can have one biological child and still struggle with infertility. That pain is just as real and may even be more difficult because you know EXACTLY what you’re missing out on and may have more hope that it will happen again, even if that hope is never fulfilled. Before my infertility diagnosis I watched someone close to me walk through secondary infertility and it was my introduction to the heartbreaking world of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams. It’s rough stuff.
-I appreciate the distinction Stan (the interviewer) is making about women who fear infertility even if that isn’t the end of their story. I’m also not sure who gets to draw the lines about who is infertile and who isn’t. Am I infertile? At this point, I like to say “intermittently fertile” (with a little sarcasm). I have had multiple doctors tell me I can’t get pregnant without medical intervention, but that wasn’t true (I’ve been pregnant 4 times in 13 years, 3 of them were without medical help and 2 ended in live births). In my mind, if you have received an infertility diagnosis, you’re in the club whether or not you eventually get pregnant. Maybe it’s like having cancer where you don’t always “have” cancer, but you’re not exactly cured either in those years right after treatment? I’m still thinking through this. I feel healed in lots of ways, but also very much identify infertility as part of my story, part of who I am.
-Infertility Shame. This is a thing. I’ve written about it here and about feeling forgotten through infertility here and here.
-I want to acknowledge that some people don’t like the idea that God has a plan for your infertility. It feels too much like a band-aid on this gaping wound. I want to assure you that that is not how I mean it. I’m not telling you not to grieve because God is going to make something better out of this. Grieve! You need to. I needed to. But I also needed to remember (when I started to poke my head out of that grief) that God was big enough to use this for his glory. Now, if a fertile person had patted me on the head and given me some platitude about it all working together for good, I would have been mad. This idea of God not forgetting you in your infertility is not meant to be used as a silence grenade that well-meaning people toss at you to make you shut up about the pain. Nope. Not at all. I’m just reminding you that you are not alone or abandoned in your hurt. God grieves with you and for you, even when he knows the end of the story. Jesus wept when he knew he was going to heal Lazarus and I believe he weeps with infertile women today who are heartbroken by their current story.
-If you are a friend to someone who is struggling with infertility, please don’t say “relax” or any other platitude along those lines. Please don’t tell us your chiropractor or essential oil or yoga class can fix this. If we ask questions about options you know of, you’re free to answer, but otherwise just know that we are seeking answers from people we trust and we may not need one more voice telling us if we just did it their way we’d be cured. You have no idea how many anonymous people on the internet, mothers-in-law, “helpful” books, and random people at church will offer you advice about the most intimate areas of your life, complete with guarantees that it worked for a friend so obviously you should try it. It’s exhausting. Know that the pain of infertility can come in waves– sometimes barely registering and sometimes overwhelming. Maybe today we can hold your baby and hear your birth story, but tomorrow we spend an hour sobbing in bed because of a diaper commercial we watched. Be willing to just ride the waves with us, letting us laugh and feel joyful when we need to and letting us cry and talk through our loss when we need to. And please don’t jump to solutions for us as far as how we can achieve motherhood in other ways. Adoption comes with its own grief, loss and struggle and will not be a cure for the pain of infertility even if it fixes your childlessness.
Further reading on Infertility:
A Letter to the Editor about Infertility
To Maralee, who was just diagnosed with infertility
Pregnancy Doesn’t Cure Infertility