How to make time lived with infertility still feel “worth it”? Other projects to pour yourself into
The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. You don’t have time to think about yourself and get bogged down in your emotional difficulties — The Power of Positive Thinking: 10 Traits for Maximum Results by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
Infertility can feel like a time to hibernate. I remember listening to Green Day’s song “Wake me up when September ends” and saying to myself “Wake me up, when infertility ends”. At these times, planning towards big life goals is extremely painful. The default mode for us all humans, in the midst of never-ending hormonal treatments and bad results, is to be either angry or depressed.
Yet, your infertility journey will be made easier if you find other ways to focus your energy and time besides baby-making. If you are going to have a few months or years of your twenties or thirties on this journey, you shouldn’t feel that you are “wasting” these years of youth. [And by the way, this article is about finding ways to live this time to the best; for broader thoughts about the meaning of life, go to the Managing Emotions section of this blog]
So what can be done to make it feel worth it ? Sure, shopping for a new tee-shirt couldn’t fill in the baby-shaped gap in my life. Instead I tried to follow the advice of psychologist Stephen R. Covey “Develop one new proficiency a year.” In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, he explains:
“Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing — too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life”
I might disagree on the holidays, but I agree with the rest. I took the advice seriously, and decided to develop many new skills during my infertility years — sometimes driven by need:
· Cooking
Before Infertility, I was always terrible at cooking. Richard (who loves it) often joked that it was really a funny turn of events that him, the British man, would always be the one cooking rather than me, his French wife. But I was advised that nutrition could play a part in helping to cure infertility, and that certain home-cooked meals not on Richard’s typical list (e.g. beef broths, soups etc.) would be worth a try. My biggest weakness to overcome in order to succeed in cooking was the same one which made infertility so painful: my inability to wait. I found a good description of my issues in the voice of one of the characters of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara:
“My main problem, it emerged, was a lack of patience, my inability to accept tedium. I’d wander away to look for something to read and forget that I was leaving the risotto to glue itself into a sticky glop, or I’d forget to turn the carrots in their puddle of olive oil and come back to find them seared to the bottom of the pan.”
And really, learning to cook changed me. There was first the joy of creating something I had never done before — I was always one to want to try a new recipe every day, which is so easy with the internet. But mostly, I became more patient. Richard felt I had calmed down, brought life to a more manageable pace.
- Volunteering
This was a big one for me. Research shows how beneficial involvement in community life is to health. Rich and I volunteered every Saturday at a high school in an informal settlement, and regularly visited a centre for disabled boys. Volunteering allowed me to temporarily forget about my problems and focus on others.
“Hospitality opens the door to uncommon community. It’s no accident that hospitality and hospital come from the same Latin word, for they both lead to the same result: healing”. Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make A Difference by Max Lucado
- Yoga and meditation
Also because of my love of a quick-paced life, I’d always preferred fast-moving sports. Zumba, tennis, ski etc. But my acupuncturist recommended I try yoga and meditation, at the opposite end of the spectrum. I was gifted in neither — my balance is terrible, I have no body strength. But still it felt great to start something new, learn the names of lots of funny positions, see Richard (who tried to take these up with me) try to do a bridge. Practicing at our home, I noticed for the first time the gentle singing of the birds just outside our window and was overcome with a sense of appreciation for nature.
· Creativity
New experiences — good and bad — change how we think, and our sense of ourselves. These emotions need an outlet, and creativity is the perfect one. It has the magical power to make something beautiful out of our pain. Beyonce said she wrote her saddest song immediately after she lived through her miscarriage. She needed the music to act as catharsis for her sadness. I’m a terrible drawer (best not to be on my team at Pictionary) and I can only play fairly simple tunes on my guitar. But I love to write. This blog is in part a catharsis for my emotions.
Beyond new skills, there were two “projects” that kept me sane:
· Climbing Mount Kenya
Living in Kenya, this 5000 meter high giant of a mountain comes up often in conversations. I was told climbing it was one of the best things to do in Kenya, and have wanted to try it since we moved early 2014. But for years we didn’t book a trip there, mostly because it takes some planning a few months in advance, and I was always hoping to be pregnant by the time the planned date would come along. So each time Mount Kenya was mentioned by one of my friends I felt a small pinch to my heart. When we decided to move back to France to pursue treatments, Rich and I agreed we had waited long enough, and booked the trip with 5 friends. It was really tough — 4 days of hiking, up to 16 hours a day. But it was one of the best things I did in my life, and the achievement regularly comes to my mind, along with a little smile.
· Buying a Flat with Richard
Getting on the property ladder had never been a priority for Richard and me. In fact, it always felt quite boring to us. But, when we visited our friends in Europe, it always felt they had a lot of life updates (marriages, babies, new flats), and we had nothing of that order to report. Life in Kenya was not easy to put into words for someone who had never been there, and after three years, there was a certain amount of routine in our daily existences.
As we contemplated needing to move back to France for more fertility treatments, we decided to purchase a flat there in the same neighborhood as my best friend living in Paris. This was also driven by need — given moving back would mean none of us would have a job, we’d struggle to find a place to rent — so best to buy when we were both still working as expats. The search and the seemingly never-ending admin papers occupied quite a lot of our brain space for a few months, which provided a sense of relief. Here at least we had control.
What new skills and projects can you develop, if you are going through infertility? Be driven by a sense of opportunity. The road will be made that much easier.
