I Have A Child and Am Pregnant Again, But I Still Struggle With Infertility
Seeing pregnant women was — and still is — a reminder of how painful my life was for six solid years of my marriage.
I spent a decade of my life battling infertility. My husband and I went through the whole spectrum of fertility treatments before we finally got pregnant in 2015. And while my daughter is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I still struggle.
This comes as a surprise to people who assume I’ve beaten infertility and tell us we’re living out a happy ending. That my feelings of anger, shame, jealousy, and grief all went out the window the moment my daughter was born.
The truth is, parenting after infertility is uncomfortable. It’s having one foot in the world of sticky faces, tantrums, and scraped knees and one foot in fertility medications, hormone tests, and empty nurseries. It’s feeling awkward in gatherings with other parents, desperately want to belong, but not sure you do.
It’s hard for me to admit, but I’m jealous over pregnant bellies. Over the moms in Target who caress their bump with one hand, as they browse pink and blue onesies and tiny newborn hats. Over the fact that for many of them, pregnancy came easy.
I’m not proud of it. I’m parenting a preschooler, and I’m about to have another baby in a few months. I should be looking forward, not backward. I should be cherishing my kids instead of fighting waves of discomfort as I try not to judge the expectant parent in the store.
I bet she had sex once and got pregnant.
She probably has six kids already.
These are the thoughts that creep up, even years after I had my daughter. They come unbidden and unwelcome and leave me feeling like garbage. I realize my feelings toward pregnant women are misdirected — I know it’s not their fault I struggled to conceive — but those feelings are my reality.
Infertility was the hardest, most exhausting thing I’ve ever gone through in my life, and probably ever will. I watched positive pregnancy tests slowly turn negative again. I still have scars from the countless injections I had to give myself, sometimes multiple times a day. I abused my body with self-hatred and empty calories — the only way I knew how to cope through years of being on a schedule dictated by medical professionals.
Seeing pregnant women was — and still is — a reminder of how painful my life was for six solid years of my marriage.
Things got a little easier once my baby came. I was distracted by sleepless nights and nursing, by the smile that would come over my daughter’s face when I came to greet her in the morning. Through her infancy and toddlerhood, I tried to focus on her and not the fact that my husband and I were still very much not preventing pregnancy, and yet my period came like clockwork, month after month.
When we saved enough money to go back for our three remaining embryos, I tried to ignore the now-familiar thoughts that popped into my head. While members of my local mom groups were getting pregnant again with their second, third, or even fourth child, my husband and I were sick with the fear that none of our embryos would survive.
Now here I am, in my third trimester with my second and final miracle, the last embryo that I had. And I do cherish it. But I still grapple with the unfairness of infertility, of how much I had to go through for both my children.
I don’t know when that will go away. I do know that it helps to keep in mind that I don’t know the stories of the women I see. I don’t know if they’ve struggled to get pregnant or if they’ve lost babies. They could be feeling just like me: pregnant and a fraud, as though we cheated the system by bypassing the whole sex thing in favor of science.
But that’s what parenting after infertility is. It’s telling yourself daily that you’re doing the best you can. That you can feel both blessed and traumatized. It’s appreciating the swell of your own growing belly as you feel envy for another person’s.
Parenting after infertility is holding all of these feelings at once. The joys of motherhood, as well as the strain of the journey it took to get here.
And I’m beginning to learn that that’s okay.
