My body
I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the woman looking back at me. My body feels large, and I am in a constant state of bloating and discomfort. Not only do I feel heavier, but the shape of my body has also changed. I no longer know how to dress, what looks good? My face looks different, the bags under my eyes look darker, the lines on my face look deeper. Poor sleep is a side effect and is written all over my face. The colour has drained from my lips, sometimes my face is swollen, other times it looks gaunt. I never know what to expect other than a stranger looking back at me.
My Emotions
I can’t trust myself. I am constantly on new medications. My body is akin to a lab rat. We use live monitoring to see what happens, good or bad. Not only do these medications make me feel physically ill, but they also make me feel mentally ill. These medications cause anxiety, depression, they make my reactions to situations drastically different. I am constantly challenging and questioning my thoughts. Do I really think/feel this? or is this the medication? Imagine not being able to trust yourself, your thoughts, your body. You feel completely disconnected and betrayed. Not only are you isolated from others, but you are also isolated from yourself.
My personality
There is a new me, and I’m not sure I like her. She is more serious and holds herself to higher standards. It is no longer ok for me to enjoy myself in the way that I used to. Casual exercise for fun is not enough, exercise must be consistent and regimented; hard enough, but not too hard that it causes stress on my body. I can no longer indulge in a glass of wine. Alcohol is a poison, a possible vice. Every action is scrutinized, every food is over thought. Eating ice cream makes me feel like a failure. When it comes to IVF and my body, I can never do enough, I will never be enough. My body is unable to do the thing it was created to do. This inability takes me out of my body, fills me with anger, and resentment towards my body. This takes away from not only my womanhood, but my value as a human.
I’m alone.
No one understands what I’m going through. I cannot be present everyday; my mind won’t let me. Infertility consumes my thoughts. I want to be a part of the shared experiences of my friends, but I cannot. I am an outsider. I am not in the same place as they are. I do not understand what they are going through, and they do not understand what I am going through. People come to me and say, “I get it, we tried to have a child for a year”, or “yes, I had to get natural cycle monitoring, I get what you’re going through.” I’m sorry, but you don’t 5 years has felt like a lifetime. Numerous procedures, medications, injections, surgeries. Infertility is my life, everything else is peripheral and I hate it.
I don’t know what I want anymore.
After years of disappointment and consistent torture to my body. I’m not sure what I want anymore. Do I really want children or am I just going through the motions to put in the effort and not be a quitter. The amount of people who will tell you not to give up is incredible. Imagine going to a wedding, you’re looking forward to having an evening like you used to have before infertility, to talk to your friends and have fun and the first thing someone says to you is “don’t give up”. What a wonderful way to enter an event where you already feel uncomfortable because you are disconnected from yourself and your body and nothing fits you properly.
I think that I want children, but after years on this journey, I am tired. My body is tired, my mind is tired, I am tired. Can I trust my thoughts? I don’t know what I want.
I live in a constant state of fear.
Deep down, I worry that this will not work, that we will not be able to have children. Which, if you were to admit, people would invalidate before you finished uttering it, people love to say, “you have to stay positive”, as if a negative thought will carry down to your uterus forming a sort of slip and slide, making it impossible for an embryo to stick. In any other situation people would call you crazy, they would plead with you to stop, they would tell you that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. But, when it comes to a woman’s ability to carry a child, nothing is too far, no lengths are too great, no matter the toll.
The question that no one wants to ask, what if it doesn’t work out? What happens to my life, to my marriage? The inability of my body is robbing my husband of his dream of having a family. Is this something that we can overcome? Will he still love me, or will he resent me? How will we reshape our life? Will this dark cloud of failure follow us forever?
What is my purpose?
For a long time, I felt strongly that my purpose was to have children. I desperately wanted to create a family where my children felt loved and supported. I wanted to give them the stability and unconditional love that my mother failed to give me. I wanted to see my husband and myself in my children. To watch them grow, encourage them to learn and live and shine. Without this, I am not sure what my purpose is? What is my value, what can I bring to the world? These are all questions and thoughts that riddle me everyday. Between meetings, appointments, family get togethers, evenings with friends, before bed, in the middle of the night, these thoughts plague me.
If you are interacting with people who are going through infertility, please grant them grace. There are times when they are hopeful, there are times when they are in despair. At times, they may lash out and seem overly sensitive. You may feel that you cannot say anything right. It’s a hard for everyone involved, but always bear in mind that you cannot fix this situation, so don’t try to. If you are not a fertility Doctor, do not provide advice on how people can get pregnant. Do not tell them to relax, do not tell them to have a glass of wine, do not tell them to be positive. Wait for people to come to you, if they want to talk to you about it, they will. Fertility makes you feel like you are not human, like you do not fit in, the thing that you want more than anything is to feel normal. A woman’s value does not lie in their fertility alone, do not treat them like it does. I am more than my infertility, and I will say that again and again until I believe it.
