On infertility

A personal essay about my own journey

April 21st-27th is National Fertility Awareness Week. Today’s post is an honest, vulnerable, raw look at my infertility journey. This is a very emotional piece, but it was healing I needed. However, if you, too, have struggled with infertility, please take care of yourself with my words. You have my permission to pass on reading it. Believe me, I understand and I have been there. But I’m finding I’m at a place now that the more I talk about my experiences, the more healing it is to my soul. May you, too, one day arrive there. Read gently friend.

Photo by Abby Anaday on Unsplash

It’s National Infertility Awareness week, and Tuesday morning I stared down at a digital pregnancy test flashing not pregnant over and over, the last of my hope for this cycle pouring down my face.

I knew before I peed on the stick it would be negative.
I knew days before, but I still held hope.

And before you ask why I even took the test (because someone inevitably will and has) it’s what you do when you’re in a cycle of fertility treatments. Everything is timed and tested. There is no second guessing.

This was round 2 of IUIs or intrauterine insemination cycles. We’ve completed 6 rounds thus far, because the more you try, the more your body adapts to the hormones and potentially, actually, does what it’s supposed to.

We’re familiar with failure, and there has been nearly a two year break between our first set of rounds and this one. The hormones. The rollercoaster of hope and despair.
There’s only so much my little heart can take.

And I’m beginning to wonder if it’s at the end.

Is this where our journey is over?

But it only takes one.

There’s always adoption.

When my friend decided they were done, that’s when they got pregnant.

I’ve heard it all over the years.

Try this supplement; it will cure your infertility. Don’t stress. This vitamin will balance your hormones. Don’t work out so much, it increases cortisol. Stick with yoga. Don’t stress. If you stop thinking about it, it will happen. Eat as healthy as possible. Fresh fruits and veggies. No red meat. No sugar. Don’t stress. Stop riding motorcycles. Don’t put laptops on your lap. Don’t stress. Elevate your hips after sex. Stand on your head and dance around the moon.

There is no cure for infertility.

There’s IUI, but as I can attest, those don’t always work. There’s IVF, but even at an advanced age and with those levels and low egg quality it probably won’t work. There’s surrogacy if you have tens of thousands of dollars. We’re $30k in already and we’re only getting started. There’s donor eggs if yours don’t work. But then are they really mine? There’s medicine that’s not covered by insurance so let me drop my paycheck on shots that I have to give myself at specific times of the day while I’m trying to work so I can make money to pay for the shots that I have to give myself while I work. There’s the pregancy hormones that will give me all the fun feels of being pregnant but leave me with an empty womb.

There’s so many things up my vagina that I’ve lost count. Days 4-7 and 7-15 and two long weeks of waiting filled with hope followed by one long day of despair before we start all over again. There’s have sex now, now, now, even though everything feels numb and nothing works and am I broken?

There’s you should have started sooner even though we’ve been trying for 12 years. There’s if only I weren’t a teacher full of stress for 10 years maybe we would’ve gotten pregnant by now. There’s it wasn’t supposed to be this way and why not us and if one more pregnant teen walks through my classroom door I will never stop crying. There’s have you thought about adoption? Sure, let me just take out a loan for a kid. There’s everything looks perfect, let’s make a baby, but also this would be a geriatric pregnancy so are the potential complications worth it?

There’s daily charting of your cervical mucus. There’s a lot of sex, but only at the right time and even then is it for love or just procreation? Sometimes there’s no sex, just a catheter up your cervix to give the sperm the best fighting chance.

There’s blowing out your tubes. Multiple times. Which feels like being stabbed with a Morgul-knife. Only in my ovaries. While I’m awake. There’s laparoscopic surgery cleaning out the silent disease of endometriosis that might be the problem, only we didn’t know about it until too late. And even still, my reproductive parts still don’t reproduce.

There’s weeks of sonograms. Talk of beautiful uterine lining. Hope when you have two perfect follicles. Handfuls of pills to swallow. Tears after tears in the shower. Shot after shot after shot of pregnancy hormones. Nights of vaginal suppositories to boost progesterone and the chances of implantation.

Constant prayers that this one would be the miracle. That maybe it would be twins.

That maybe, just maybe, all of the science was wrong and that God will come down and answer our desperate, pleading, please-oh-please-oh-please-Lord just hear us prayers.

There’s no cure for infertility.

Even though we’ve tried.

I’m Caitlin, a writer, hobbyist, and creative who believes in the power of story, and that things like nature, wonder, faith, grief, hope, and art are worth our time and attention. I write stories for young readers centered around the themes of grief, belonging, loss, hope, and found families, while also exploring them in my own life, here on The Time Given. My writing here will always be free to read, but it does take time and heart space to write. Please consider supporting the work I do by giving a one-time or monthly donation, or by subscribing to my weekly writing.

---