Sponsored by Dot the App
Infertility is a tricky thing isn’t it? It’s something that most women don’t want to talk about but so many women suffer with. It is dripping with shame, with fear and most of all heart ache.
I truly believe being strong is not hiding behind feelings but being vulnerable. Stepping up and saying that you struggle, you’re in the trenches, something is HARD. I love that national awareness weeks bring about a space for this.
This week is National Infertility Week.
SO, I’ll share our story, in hopes that it will meet one woman where she is, that it will find one person who needs a little company in the wait.
We barely missed fitting into the medical definition of infertility. I think that is partly why I didn’t want to share. I didn’t want to take away from the women who are in treatment or can’t have children. It’s not that I wanted that label slapped on me or that I wanted something to be wrong but sometimes I felt it would have been easier to have a word that I could use, or blame. Or a community to find support from. Or even just to know that I wasn’t the only one.
I’ve always wanted kids and we both knew we wanted kids when we were young. In the back of my head I had fears around trying to conceive. I had chemotherapy as a child and my body runs (quite flawlessly) on only one kidney. We really didn’t know how my body would react to pregnancy or if the medications I took would when I was young would have any residual effects on trying to start a family.
My periods were irregular and have been my whole life. I was an athlete since I was 12 so my body fat was always SUPER low. (I know, what a problem to have right?) Definitely not my problem anymore HA! This can be challenging when trying to start a family because it messes with your hormones and your cycle (I hate that word, cycle. Eck)
My doctor cleared us to start trying and to be honest I became pretty hyper focused. I was tracking my cycle as best as I could and trying to figure out when my fertile days were but with cycles being 40-90 days apart it was really hard to do.
When I brought this up to my doctor she wanted to check for a few things. I had a bunch of testing done to rule out things like endometriosis and PCOS. Nothing really showed up concerning, which was great.
So we would try, I would take a test, negative. Then start this impatient waiting game to be able to try again. Sometimes waiting over a month. This went on for months. And months.
After about 9 months they tested Kevin to rule anything else out. Nothing alarming showed up, which again was great.
I started on a medication that was supposed to help regulate me and assist in getting pregnant and also staying pregnant. It hurt my stomach, I hated putting chemicals in me every day but I was so desperate for the pink plus sign.
11 months into this process it happened. I WAS PREGNANT. It took us 11 months to get there. Almost a year of negative pregnancy tests, watching friends and family get pregnant and have babies and almost a year of fear that this might not happen for us. In comparison, that might not seem like a long time, but for us, it was hard.
One month away from seeing a specialist and throwing lots of money at it.
The definition of infertility is not getting pregnant after a year of intercourse without birth control. We were one month short of being considered to be struggling with infertility. Im so thankful we never got there and my heart truly aches for those wading through those waters.
So many battle infertility and even though we were a month short of an actual diagnosis, I felt like I battled it in my own way. I felt the feelings, did the tests and lived in the fear. If you are out there 6 months, 8 months, or even just a few months into the process of trying with no success please know that it’s ok to say its hard.
When you’re trying to get pregnant, any negative test can be hard.
Something I struggle with is the statement “well, I shouldn’t be complaining because think about all the people that have it way worse”. Brene Brown was talking about this idea of comparative suffering and said, “We rank order suffering. It’s comparative suffering. The thing is compassion is not a pizza, its not finite. Its not like there are 8 slices of compassion and in order for you to get some I need less. Compassion and empathy are INFINITE! It grows exponentially. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the worst darkest story in the world”. Just because there were women out there that had been trying much longer than me or receiving infertility treatments doesn’t mean that my situation wasn’t hard. It also doesn’t mean that others wont have compassion or empathy. While I wholeheartedly believe in the power of positive thinking I also believe in grieving and feeling pain, sadness and loss and working through it instead of suppressing it. It also led me to connection with other sweet mamas and their journeys.
I believe in finding community, I believe in sharing in struggle. I believe true strength comes from saying that this is hard and I’m struggling. Receiving counsel from someone is such a beautiful raw thing because it is coming from their personal experience. It is coming from the core of who they are and how they have been shaped by their circumstance and more importantly how they made their way out.
Another thing that I want to add with an exclamation mark is that my joy for you could be separate from my sadness I had for myself. I, thankfully from the help of a lot of personal development work, learned how to separate my joy and my sadness.
This is so key for those of you in the thick of infertility or for those of you loving someone through it. It is 100% possible for them to be completely selflessly thrilled for your pregnancy news and still go home and cry themselves to sleep from sadness and loss for themselves. Yes, for some it may not be but for me it was.
I had quite a few friends get pregnant when I was trying for my first and it was hard. I was not in a place emotionally to handle it with grace or maturity. I look back at myself and almost laugh! When I saw a pregnancy announcement or newborn baby I would literally be so dramatic and honestly, super jealous. My heart was not in the right place and I was stuck in this weird space of unknown.
When we decided to try for our second I still had some residual fears but EVERYONE told me that if you struggled the first time you would most likely just get knocked up the first try with your second. So, naively, I went in to it with that mentality and waited until our son was a little over 2 to try for our second. I thought that if I was going to get pregnant right away I didn’t want to risk having two kids in diapers. That closeness in age is a chaos I’m not built for! I also didn’t want to put chemicals in my body if I didn’t have to.
Nope.
8 months.
8 months long. After a few months we had what we thought was a very early miscarriage. I was a bit more distracted this time around with a toddler but it was still hard. I had set up expectations that were unrealistic. One of my very best friend got pregnant right away and started trying months after us. I remember her being so scared to tell me and I was so proud that I could honestly say that I was so very thrilled for her and my sadness for me was so separate.
One month after that I got to tell her I was pregnant too. Followed by my sister-in-law and one of my other friends. The timing was not my own, but better than I could have planned. It gave me opportunity to practice who I wanted to be. If we aren’t actively pursing the person we want to be, then we are continually becoming who we don’t want to be. I was given opportunities to practice gratitude, humbleness and selflessness.
So here is to all the amazing women out there getting negative tests, getting bad news about their fertility, getting told nothing is wrong but its just not happening, watching their family and friends get pregnant, just starting to try and filled with fear, trying for years and nothing to show for it.
HERES TO YOU. You are strong, you are amazing, you are made perfectly despite the ability of your body to conceive or carry a child, despite the timeline it takes for you to start a family. You are walking a hard road and doing it gracefully, you are validated in your pain and loved in your sorrow. You are SEEN. You are HEARD. You are VALUABLE.
Most of all, you are not defined by your reproductive organs.
I pray each one of you experience the joy of motherhood, however that may come to you and that you can be vulnerable with your journey in hopes that we can all hold each other up.
Infertility sucks. But you don’t.
This post was sponsored by Dot the App. We used the help of an app when trying for our second and I truly believe it helped us. It gave me an amazing outlet of being able to track, take notes and learn my body. I took detailed notes of symptoms throughout the months and was able to figure out when I ovulated, which almost always aligned with the app. The longer you use it, the more it learns your patterns too. I know that apps aren’t usually advertised for irregular periods but there were many aspects of it that helped me!
Another amazing thing about Dot is that it takes global data of women all over the world to better predict cycles and patterns. There is even community, and you all know this girl loves community.
You can use it to assist in getting pregnant or as a tool for prevention. Dot’s goal is to give women control over their reproduce health and equip them with knowledge about their body. It is a natural family planning method free of harmful hormones and chemicals. We use this as a tool with other natural methods so we can make the best decision for our family and for my body.
Go check out their website to learn about their mission and download the app and give it a try yourself!
