I recently finished a course of hormone medication for infertility. It was worth a shot, but it just made me feel a bit depressed and insane for months. I didn’t even realise quite how much it had impacted me, until I was off it for a while and realised that a certain level of tension and sadness was no longer there.
When infertility is a constant, being present is hard
I’ve spent so much of the past four years feeling not like myself. It hasn’t always been medication. Sometimes it’s just the pressure as we tried different things or realised once again we hadn’t succeeded. It’s actually sad that so much of my time has been spent feeling bad, or in a medication fog. Time is so precious and so limited. I hate thinking about how much joy infertility has stolen from my time.
Because there are so many good things in my life, right now, babies or not. My amazing husband, who has been so unbelievably patient and generous with me, since the first day we met. I am frustrated that so often I struggle to respond with kindness, joy or full attention to him because I’m letting myself get caught up in stress, or I’m struggling to keep my mood stable while on certain medications.
We have a wonderful place to live, and the fun (and stress) of renovating it. But so often I have felt bitter than we bought a four bedroom home and still have no children to put in it. I think about turning the studio into a proper office for my husband so he can have a permanent work from home space ‘when we have children’ or ‘when we need all the bedrooms for kids’ or ‘when our family gets too big and noisy for him to work in the house’. But that’s not happening yet, and I waste so much time feeling sad or bitter about that.
We have the ability to enjoy time together and with friends. To sleep in on weekends and go on holidays together. Just being the two of us gives us more time to support others and to be present to each other. There are many things we don’t have to worry about, as a couple with two incomes. None of these things replace a child. But they are still blessings. And I spend far too much of my time feeling sorry for myself or disconnected as I go through hormonal medication again and again.
A waste, or was it?
I want to stress that I’m not against taking medication to help your fertility. There are many people who see results from these medications, when taken in line with good medical advice. What works for one person may not necessarily work for another. My experience is not going to be yours. I am grateful that we have had access to such a range of options to try.
But I often struggle with the feeling that I have wasted time chasing a fertility. I look at the huge amount of time spent trying different things, and the struggle that often leads to. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t bothered with any of it, but had just drifted along.
Infertility is a hard road, for those of us on it. It takes a lot out of you and I feel like it gets harder with time, not easier. Because you see time running out and feel more pressure. You get older and think about what middle and old age are like without a family around you to support. It’s a cumulative load, as each treatment fails or you see other families grow while yours stays the same.
But amidst all this, I know that the struggle has meaning. I know that, for whatever reason, this challenge is given to us for a reason and that we are both strong enough to face it. God doesn’t send you struggles you can’t overcome with His help. I also know that it is good to have tried. To have taken on the struggle so that I won’t be kicking myself down the track we discovered that some simple change or a particular medication could have helped.
Learning to be present again
In 2024, I can get beyond this struggle to conceive and the worries about whether we will or won’t have children. That I can be present in the moment, rather than worrying about the future or if/when things are going to change. Perhaps we’ll have children naturally. Maybe it will be adoption. Maybe neither of those are for us. I don’t know and I would love to stop thinking about it. Or at least thinking about it quite so much.
I sat in a beautiful garden earlier this month and felt some little knot inside me unwind a bit. It would be amazing to have that knot unwind all the way. Perhaps it can’t, because that’s just what you carry when you deal with infertility. But learning to hold it lightly, to loosen the extra tangles I have tied myself would be wonderful. If you’re struggling with the same thing, I hope you can find that too.
