One of our patients wrote a blog about their own infertility journey. She poignantly shared her experience and hope to be of help and service to others and to educate those who may not have had experience with infertility.
It is March 13, 2023, about 10 days from when our due date was scheduled. I am sitting in my call room at the hospital, taking care of the children that are not my blood, but instead the ones I’ve dedicated my professional life to. As I sit here, I am reflecting on what the last nine months would have been.
My husband and I started trying to have a baby in January of 2022. Because I’ve known so many others that required some fertility help, I was not oblivious to the idea that this may not be a smooth road. My IUD was removed, and we blissfully went on our way to try for our own perfect baby. We decided to “not try” and leave all the LH tests in the cupboard, because ‘I wanted this process to be fun and stress free’.
After graduating residency, my husband took a sabbatical from work, and we spent the summer in Spain and Portugal and it was there that we got our positive pregnancy test. It was June 17, 2022. We were happy, on an island in the middle of the ocean, planning what the next 9 months and beyond would look like. I felt so lucky. We came home and I was around 6 weeks pregnant but couldn’t wait to tell our families. We thought up cute ways to let everyone know that their first grandchild/niece/nephew would be joining us in March. Everyone was so excited. At nine weeks, we went for our first ultrasound and when the US probe went in, all I saw was an empty sac of what should have been filled with life. My husband and I walked to an exam room with tears streaming down my face waiting for my OBGYN to tell me what I already knew. A miscarriage.
I went home, got in the shower and felt my body, only then did I realize that I didn’t feel pregnant anymore. I felt tricked by my own body and mind. Now, I must remind myself that the sadness that I felt, and still feel is because we lost a pregnancy. There was no heartbeat that we got to hear, but this was still a pregnancy– a being that we were excited to meet, to take care of, to be ours. So, if this ever gets shared publicly and anyone is struggling with a similar type of miscarriage, don’t let anyone tell you that ‘but it wasn’t even a baby’, because it was, and you deserve to mourn what could have been.
The guilt and jealousy I felt was tremendous. Just last month, my best friend and cousin went into labor with the baby who would have been born a month before ours and I found myself sobbing in my car out of sadness of the time that had passed, when all I wanted to feel was excitement, but I didn’t feel capable of this. Again, the guilt is real. Every single pregnancy announcement on social media was like a knife to the heart, having to remind myself that our baby just isn’t ready to come to us yet, for whatever reason the universe has for that.
If all this has taught me anything– it’s that crying is therapeutic in its nature. It fosters a chance to let go of that emotion instead of carrying it deep in my heart. It has allowed me to be sad for what we lost but be present for the successes of people that I love. Whilst this has been the hardest part of all of this, I am grateful for the journey.
So where am I now? I am about 10 days before what would have been my due date and still not pregnant despite months of testing, perfect mid-cycle ultrasounds and strongly positive ovulation strips. However, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I feel thankful for this body, even in moments where I feel like I might hate it. This body is one that didn’t let a life grow that wasn’t going to thrive. Most miscarriages in the first trimester are due to genetic abnormalities and I am grateful to my body for recognizing that it wasn’t a healthy pregnancy and doing what it needed to do because of that.
1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, and I am thankful for all those that have shared with me their own story, all or most with healthy children/pregnancies after a tumultuous road. Knowing how much this has helped me, I will always be a listening ear for anyone that needs it. I am thankful to have my uterus, my ovaries, patent fallopian tubes, a normal fertility workup (for us both), a supportive family and a wonderful husband to go through this with because I know that many people are not so lucky. While I sometimes wish I could be blissfully oblivious, I am fortunate for my medical background that taught me to advocate for myself and get established with a fertility specialist when I felt I needed to, not when someone else determined it was or wasn’t time to.
While I am in the “two week wait” for the last cycle we will try without intervention by a reproductive endocrinologist, I am grateful that these last 6 months have brought me back to yoga and introduced me to acupuncture and therapy– I tell all my patients that being mindful of your mental health is what the “cool kids” are doing these days so it was about time I practiced what I preached.
I have stopped saying the phrase ‘conceiving naturally’ because what’s natural for one person may not work for another. Science is incredible and we are so fortunate to have alternative measures to become parents. Whether you ever step foot into a fertility clinic or not, a pregnancy should never be considered unnatural no matter the means in which it came to be.
I am choosing to look at this as a closing chapter– one that will shape me forever and that I will never forget. As I pass this due date, I am manifesting and daydreaming of the next time I see two lines on a stick. I am visualizing getting to tell my husband and begin to plan for a new baby again. I am looking forward to the excitement of our families when we get to share this news with them (and this time around I think I’ll be waiting a a lot longer to tell anyone– that’s what weekly ultrasounds and therapy is for).
I am even looking forward to all the nausea and vomiting (I only experienced it for two weeks last time). Most of all, I am dreaming that those two lines turn into the sounds of a beating heart and ultimately the long awaited healthy newborn cry on delivery day– tears of life for the baby and tears of happiness for me and for my husband.
**Update: This lovely couple recently gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
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