When Life Hands You Infertility
Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as depression and suicidal thoughts.
It all started with my fertility.
I have known that I have endometriosis for years (between the symptoms and the family history), although it wasn’t formally diagnosed until 2011 when I had surgery. A potential side effect of endometriosis is infertility. I knew that from the beginning, but who really believes they are going to have fertility problems? I, like many other girls, always planned to be a mom. And like most other twenty-something women, I was in no hurry.
I had the privilege of working with a reproductive endocrinologist for five years after I graduated college, and he had been telling me for as long as I can remember that I needed to hurry up and get pregnant while I still could. I thought he was a little too gung-ho about the whole thing, to be honest. I was young and had my whole life before me. I was in no rush to settle down like that! But a few months after I had my surgery, after trying almost every treatment there is for endometriosis and still suffering, my husband and I decided maybe my colleague was right. We would try to get pregnant.
I remember thinking “it” would happen almost immediately. I stopped watching what I ate, believing I’d be pregnant in no time. I bought books about pregnancy. We told our family we were trying. But after many months of failure, I contacted my OB/GYN. She said that most women don’t get pregnant right away, but given my endometriosis and the potential for infertility, she prescribed fertility medication, cautioning that it could result in a multiple pregnancy. Now I not only believed I’d be pregnant soon, but it would be twins! I had faith in the medicine, and faith in God’s goodness. How could they let me down?
Fast forward a few more months, and we still weren’t pregnant. We were referred to a fertility specialist. My husband panicked, thinking we would have to spend thousands of dollars to get pregnant. I reassured him, confident that we still had options. There was Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), after all. We wouldn’t go straight to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). We couldn’t afford it even if we wanted to. I remember us sitting in the waiting room at the specialist’s office, giggling and joking with each other. Even then, I thought to myself, it must be pretty obvious to everyone that it was our first visit. I looked around the waiting room, noticing that everyone else was somber. I felt a twinge of guilt.
The fertility visit was straightforward. The doctor reviewed our records and tests, and informed us that IVF was our best shot. Our only shot. We were not good candidates for IUI, it seems. It would be barely more likely to succeed than us trying on our own. Later I looked online (mistake) and read that, with our combination of issues, we had somewhere around a 0.10% chance of getting pregnant on our own. Whether that is true or not, it brought me back down to earth. I was faced with the reality that I may never get pregnant. Imagine being an infertile woman in a world that focuses so much on having children. Some people believe our sole purpose on this earth is reproduction. Where did that leave me?
That was the beginning. I struggled so much to be positive after that. The depression started slowly, with tears, but grew into an unending sadness. I felt so much regret for not trying sooner. I was mourning for the pregnancy I’d likely never carry. I struggled to work during the day, but at least with my job, I had my friends nearby. The nights were the worst. My husband worked the night shift back then, so I was alone when I got home. I have a good friend who would call me at night and keep me company for a while. I did what I could to stay busy, between TV and Netflix and work around the house, but I’d always eventually find myself alone with my thoughts.
Those thoughts… how do I adequately describe them? At first, they were focused on the infertility, but they ended up circling around how useless I was. How stupid. How terrible. That I was a disappointment. That everyone would be better off without me. That I might as well be dead. By the time the thoughts reached that point, I was no longer in pain. By then, I couldn’t feel anything. I was in this terrible neutral place that can only be described as “numb.” Numb may sound like a nice thing when you are overcome with emotions like sadness and despair, but I promise you it is so much worse to feel nothing at all.
Eventually I became self-destructive. Despite seeing a psychiatrist from the beginning, and being on medication, I continued to decline. My friends and my husband rallied around me as best as they could, but I was in very bad shape. I really needed more extensive professional help, far more than they or my psychiatrist could offer. That’s when they encouraged hospitalization. I tried outpatient treatment first, and felt better for a short time, but it didn’t last. Inpatient treatment was the key for me, as scary as it was to admit.
The thought of hospitalization was intimidating. No cell phone. No internet. Locked doors. I came to realize during my stay that hospitalization is really just buying time for the new medicine to kick in while ensuring you are safe.
Eventually it did kick in, and I started to feel again. I remember leaving the hospital with a smile on my face. Even so, it was a long road to recovery, taking a while to fully stabilize. It took even longer to rebuild relationships. Some, sadly, could not be rebuilt.
Today, I’m okay. I am on a medicine regimen that is working, and I see my psychiatrist regularly. I am in a good place. As far as our efforts to get pregnant, we have put that on hold for a while. I think we both have accepted that we may never have a biological child, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be parents.
Despite my progress, one thing I have learned is that depression never fully goes away. The potential for another major depressive episode will always exist. I may always be on medication. My husband will always fear my sadness. I fear it too. You never know when a bad day will be another “beginning.” That is a scary thought, to be honest, but one thing comforts me: I survived this before. It can be done!
If you ever find yourself feeling hopeless, please don’t give up. You are stronger than you know, and I am proof that it gets better. Reach out to someone. If you think you don’t have anyone to talk to, the folks at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline are only a phone call away (1–800–273–8255).
Trust me: you matter.
