This post has been tumbling around my brain & heart for a while. As this is National Infertility Awareness Week, I thought I’d try to type out my hearts musings into {hopefully} complete thoughts.
We are now on the other side of infertility, yet that doesn’t mean the stings of it aren’t still there. I still feel stings when pregnancies are announced. My first thoughts thankfully are now celebratory. But I’m willing to admit there’s a brief sting underneath if the pregnancy was ‘accidental’ or happened easily or ‘without trying’. I’m oh so happy for my friend yet mourn a little that wasn’t our experience.
I feel stings when I think of us as being considered older parents. We’ll be in our 50s & 60s when Z & L are in college. Still youngish & we’re hoping that those two keep us spry.
I feel the sting when I grieve over Lucy not being able to meet her namesake, my Ma who passed a year before we became pregnant. I was able to share with Ma my plan to carry her name onto my future daughter. And we celebrated our Lucy meeting the nurses who helped my Ma Lucy die gracefully in the nursing home a couple weeks ago in Charlotte.
The scars of infertility cut deep. Deeper than the bruises from past needles. Deeper than my stretch marks from Lucy & Zach. The scars are sunk way down deep in my heart. Thankfully, sometimes so deep that sometimes I now go weeks without thinking of myself as being formerly infertile.
But the old ache remains. Reminding me how far we’ve come from those sad, desperate days where we wept & drank & ate to make up the the fact that I was seeing red cycle after cycle when I dreamed of seeing pink lines. Reminding me that our journey to parenthood took time & hard work & more money than we’d imagined, yet the results were worth it all in the end.
The scars & ache of infertility remind me that if our journey to a baby had been short, if it had been easy, we wouldn’t have had the chance to grow as a couple & Lucy & Zach might not be our Lucy & Zach. And we’d never trade that out for those 22 cycles of heartache.
My friends still fighting the infertility battle, there’s wonderful life on the other side. There’s also hope in my heart that the gift of motherhood will be blessed down on you somehow. That you not berate yourself for things beyond your control {that one’s so hard}. My scars might be healing, my stings are light comparatively, but I’ve been there. I can still relate.
I reach out on this NIAW wishing that the scars my fellow infertiles are enduring not cut so deep & with the hope they’ll be taken away or lessoned by good things in life.
