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If you have ever been infertile, Mother’s Day Can Freakin’ Suck.

May 12, 2019 | By:

 

If you have ever been infertile, Mother’s Day Can Freakin’ Suck.   This is a picture of my mom.  She had Stage IV endometriosis (like me), and as a result, only had me.  She wanted more babies but she couldn’t have them and she and my father were TTC before IVF or infertility treatment was an option.  She died a little over a year ago and for some reason this Mother’s Day has ripped-off what my grief counselor calls the “grief-band-aid” on so many different issues.  I miss my mom today in a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking way that maybe I haven’t since she died.  Maybe that is because she suffered from infertility too and we had a special bond on Mother’s Day, understanding each other’s pain even though we both became mothers.  But today, there is a pain and anger in me that I haven’t felt in years.  If I see one more picture of a pregnant belly in my news feed I will scream.  Or read one more comment about the diaper’s women wear after giving birth.  Please stop reminding me of what I couldn’t do!  My grief counselor tells me that losing both my parents (as an only child) within 5 months is called “complicated grief” but she also said that loss of anyone brings up every other loss I have ever experienced, namely all my many, many miscarriages.  That would make it very complicated grief, I guess.  I might have reached a point where I was okay not trying to carry a baby in my belly — losing a baby at 5 months when I was in such fear and denial that I couldn’t even acknowledge I was pregnant — helped me move past the ever-present yearning to feel a baby kick inside me.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still hurt as a woman that I couldn’t carry a baby.  I have two beautiful children and should be able to celebrate today.  But I can’t.  I don’t have the one person who understood better than any other how conflicting Mother’s Day can be, in which to share the day, happiness and sadness tied together in a giant ball of conflicting emotions.  My family seems to have forgotten that I needed support today — that I will always need support on Mother’s Day.  I don’t blame my kids for not getting me a card or doing something special for me.  They are too young to understand how complicated this day is for a formerly infertile mom (who just lost her mom), and God-willing they will never understand the infertility piece.  My DH asked what was bothering me and I explained my headspace and then I told him I shouldn’t have to ask for cards or flowers or CHOCOLATE.  Just because our kids are teens doesn’t mean the pain of infertility is any less.  Apparently today, it is quite more, and this is one of the hardest Mother’s Days I have experienced.  I cannot control the internet, all the pictures of newborn babies (Archie’s feet, Amy and Gene), and pregnant bellies.  I can only control my response.  Which will be to stay off my phone, tablet and away from my computer.   My infertility grief-band-aid was ripped off today and it freakin’ sucks.  It doesn’t matter how your infertility resolves.  There always is a little piece of it in your heart.  My mom not being here today makes it harder to push the feelings aside, but no matter how much counseling we get, no matter how many babies we do or don’t ever have, Mother’s Day can be brutal.  Now where the Eff is the Chocolate in this house?

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Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes – How do you measure your life in infertility treatment?

March 26, 2015 | By:

 

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

How do you measure your life in infertility treatment?

How do you measure a day, or a year?

 

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred tests
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments, oh dear
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred dollars
How do you measure, measure an IVF year?

In daylights, in sunsets
In phone calls, in cups of coffee
In inches, in pounds, in needles, in surgery
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a year of infertility?

How about love for the baby you’re creating?
How about love for the people helping you conceive?
How about love for your partner or a friend?
Measure in love

Cycles of love
Cycles of love

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred blood draws
Five hundred twenty five thousand follicles to count
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred heartbeats
How do you measure the life of an infertile woman or a man?

In diagnoses that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In money they lost or the day the baby died?

It’s time now, to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let’s celebrate
Remember a year in the life of our infertile friends

Remember to love
Oh, you got to, you got to remember to love
Remember to love
You know that love is a gift from up above
Remember to love
Share love, give love, spread love
Measure in love
Measure, measure your infertility in love

Cycles of love
Cycles of love
Measure your infertility, measure your life in love

Inspired By Rent — Seasons Of Love, Lyrics

 

 

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Never, Ever Give Up

October 29, 2014 | By:

Today is one of those days where I wish I could make all the hurt and pain go away for one of my clients.  For today, everything seems to be falling apart on their path to parenthood.  The thing is, I cannot count the number of clients I have had who have been in similar situations — afraid that they had run out of options or run out of money — and we found a way, they perservered for another day and then another day after that until I got the glorious news that they finally had a baby on the way (whether through egg donation, surrogacy or adoption).

With everyone of those clients I refused to give up, I refused to let them give up.  Because I have seen so, so many of those “never gonna happen to me/us” situations have a happy ending.

More to the point, I have spoken with so many of those parents who, in the end, were grateful for all the mishaps, all the donors who changed their mind or were screened-out, the changing of surrogates after two failed embryo transfers with only one embryo left . . . whatever the situation was (and there are so many I am not even going to begin to try and describe them all–you know how hard this can be), every single time when I got the call to tell me the joyous news, my client express grattitude for all the mishaps.  GRATTITUDE.  Because but for those mishaps, they wouldn’t be holding THIS baby, at this moment, and they couldn’t imagine not having THIS baby.

This happened to me too.  Had one of our adoptions not been disrupted (as in the baby went back to its birth mother after placement), I wouldn’t have the family I have today.  I loved that baby but I love THIS family more.

Whatever happens on your path, whenever you have a crappy-puts-you-over-the-edge-you-can’t-take-it-anymore-this-is-never-going-to-happen-for-me kind of day, remember that tomorrow is a new day with a new opportunity.  That there are more options and more choices, you just have to keep looking and putting one foot in front of the other.  It may suck today but one day, it might all actually make sense.  At the very least, one day you will know that but for all that came before, you wouldn’t be holding THIS baby.

So this my advice for today:

Never, Ever Give Up.  At least that’s what the sign above my desk says, and I believe it says it all.

(I like this necklace too)

never ever give up hope

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