A Mosaic of Emotions: Riding the Waves of Infertility

Blog Series, Part 4

My happy place has been the same for as long as I can remember. The beach. Or more specifically, at the edge of the water. 

Everywhere I’ve ever lived, I’ve sought out the closest option - a river, a pond, the lake, the ocean. The sand is a bonus, but not required. It’s about the movement of water. From suburbs to city, Chicago to Iowa to Minnesota, apartment to townhouse to home - I’ve always made it a priority. Why? Because the water is where I find myself. Where I give myself permission to get lost, to break open, and to tug on the unraveling seams. It’s the place where I feel one with nature, at peace with my heart, and safe in my vulnerability. 

Water and I have this symbiotic relationship, if you will. It’s therapy to me, watching the magic of the waves crashing against the shore. 

The waves wash over, and everything is exactly as it was. Except it’s brand new again. 

Throw in a sunrise or a sunset over the water, and I’m the calmest, most me I’ve ever been. 

On the day this photo was taken, I hadn’t started trying to get pregnant yet. In fact, I was still on birth control, still using condoms, still worried about a non-perfectly timed pregnancy. 

The joke was on me.

Little did I know that my babies wouldn’t even be made in the bedroom. 

That becoming pregnant wouldn’t be fun or romantic, and in fact would be extremely stressful, overwhelmingly expensive, and on a timeline that was completely out of my control. 

Little did I know that it was not just going to be hard to become parents, but that it would take nearly everything I had both physically and emotionally. 

That the ache of our failures would penetrate deeper than anything I’d felt before. 

—

Fast forward 3 years from the day this photo was taken

& you’d find my husband and I, trying to wrap our heads around starting IVF for the very first time. 

We’d already walked through a year of unsuccessfully trying to conceive, an infertility diagnosis, and four failed IUI procedures. We were naive in the fact that we were sure if we kept charging ahead somehow, someway, there would be a baby for us at the end of the journey. We paused with each setback, but always bounced back, feeling like we could push harder and further the next time around. 

Mentally, the preparation was different for each of us.

We both had therapists, and we’d see them individually and together at times, but our worries, fears, hopes and expectations differed. As an emotionally charged human pincushion hoping to sustain another growing life inside of my own, my feelings focused on the intersection between physical and mental, between the possibility of success and the crushing weight of failure. My husband tended to focus more on the logistics - of appointments and injections, how I felt and what I needed, and how this was going to impact our daily lives. 

Physically, we did all of the recommended things.

We ate as well as we could, we participated in moderate levels of physical activity, we took vitamins and I took a prenatal along with folic acid. Looking back, do I believe any of those things impacted our ultimate success? Honestly, no. But that’s another story for another day. 

Financially, we fell into a category somewhere in the middle.

We were so lucky and grateful to live in a state that offered some insurance coverage for IVF and fertility treatments, but the remaining costs definitely posed a hardship for us. We scrimped and saved at every corner, constantly thinking about the overwhelming costs infertility brings to anyone who isn’t lucky enough to become pregnant naturally. 

We spent nearly every day leading up to our baseline appointment in conversation - what if, how come, are you sure, are you ready, what do we need to do next. It was a whirlwind, but in some ways, it allowed us to connect and in truth, offered us some insight into what our communication patterns might look like as parents. 

It’s amazing, looking back, how much I wish I could’ve kept that brave naivety I had in that season.

I was emotionally grounded in the courage I had to charge ahead, no matter what the costs, until we reached the finish line. The journey to our daughter Brooklyn was so much different than our road has been in trying to give her a sibling. Infertility, again, this time around, has been much more unkind to us. 

I can no longer say that I have that same strength to push forward regardless of the costs anymore, and to be honest that makes my heart hurt. I wonder if it’s because I’m no longer as brave as I was? Or as strong as I was?

Or maybe it’s because I’ve now carried the grief of our losses every single day and in truth it’s become very heavy.