As a person on the very opposite end of the reproductive spectrum (a never-baby-wanter who accidentally made the start of a baby (with an IUD, mind you) and then had an abortion and then had surgery to make sure I never accidentally started brewing a baby again because by god is it hard to ever feel safe again after a body-betrayal like that)… I am struck by the fact that though our stories are at face value polar opposite, I think there are some similar mosaic pieces: desperation, hopelessness, feeling crazy to have our body/reproductive status match our internal desire and state.
After my abortion, my husband got a vasectomy. Logically that should have been enough to make me feel safe having sex, but the thought that my body could still get pregnant again (by other means, mostly involving insane scenarios since we are monogamous), was absolutely intolerable. It was beyond reason, I had to make sure conception was absolutely impossible under any and all circumstances. So I got a bilateral salpingectomy— NOT tubal ligation, since those can fail, as I learned in similar fear and desperation-fueled Internet rabbit holes. And I have felt so much anger towards men as well for all the situations that make it hard to be someone on my side of the spectrum, I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.
Of course that’s a much simpler cut and dried solution than the journey of trying to conceive and I appreciate that difference. And I’ve wondered how a story of an unwanted pregnancy might feel to people who are TTC. Painful maybe. Probably. I hesitate to bring it up. But I also don’t want us to feel like we, on our different sides of the spectrum, are opposed to each other. What we’re both dealing with, in our own ways, is a physical and psychological wrestling with our bodies, living inside this patriarchal system. Hearing and understanding each other can maybe bring us together?
Anyway, I hope that doesn’t come off as insensitive. I really appreciate reading about your experience and you’re very courageous to share it, thank you for letting us Internet strangers in.
I haven't wanted biological children myself. I was a foster mom at one time and I think I want to foster-adopt an older sibling group again someday. But if I had wanted biological children, I'm not even sure what that would have looked like, with the partners that I had who were definitely not ready. I've experienced the pain of being on a different timeline than my partner in other ways. It's hard being two people trying to make one life.
As for when I've felt most crazy ... probably when trying to fit my mental health and creative drive and personal ambition into a money-earning box that didn't work for me.
Oh, girl, this is so important. My friend grew up in Bangladesh and was attacked by wild animals three times, as well as almost dying of illness, and her diplomat parents dismissed it "because other kids who live here have it worse." It sounds fake. Her parents are lovely. About Bangladeshi kids they were right, but as parents they fucked up badly.
It is a failure of humanity, directed at those of us already in the deepest shit: your pain is intolerable to contemplate, it is unfair, it is unnecessary; how can we make it smaller? We have to make it smaller!
My happy & healthy IVF-crafted baby is turning one tomorrow and I love him more than anything. I also want another one more than anything, but still don't have a period because I am still nursing him & cosleeping so I can sleep at night. I have bipolar II and weaning him is going to fuck with my mind for weeks. I'm 42. My current health insurance "covers" IVF but I have already been told I will want to self-pay for the prescriptions because there is a lifetime cap on the "benefit" and it won't be enough for more than one round.
It is intolerable to contemplate! It is unfair! it is unnecessary! But I can't make it smaller.
Thank you for sharing. I haven't joined an IVF support group (I'll explain why below), so while I can get fully versed in all the mechanics of IVF, I've felt a bit outside the emotional experience of it.
I haven't joined an IVF support group because I felt a bit like an imposter. Yes, I'm going through IVF, but not because of infertility issues on my or my husband's part. The problem is, I had Essure put in while I was with my ex. While I was with my ex, I thought I definitely didn't want more kids. I was terrified of the possibility of getting pregnant again. He wouldn't get a vasectomy, so I decided to do something to my tubes. And as long as I was doing something, I wanted to do the most absolutely least likely to self-reverse thing. So I settled on Essure.
It was only after I left my ex that I realized, it wasn't having more kids that scared me. It was having more kids with him. Feeling more trapped with him. I actually, genuinely, desperately wanted to have more kids, so long as I had a partner I trusted to be kind to both me and the kids we had together.
That's when I felt the anguish of what I'd done to myself. Essure is irreversible. There's one clinic in all of the States that advertises reversing it, but it's a 50% chance per tube that the tube is restored to functionality, and the risk of ectopic pregnancy skyrockets. So I looked at IVF, because IVF doesn't require functional tubes to work.
I felt like an imposter, because my ovaries are fully functional, my uterus is fully functional, and my husband's brother has six children, so there's no worry on his part, either. We expected to sail through the IVF process without any of the emotional damage that so many take along the way. Thought we had sailed through it, as our retrieval resulted in ten viable blastocytes, and the fresh embryo transfer resulted in a positive pregnancy test.
Then it proved to be a blighted ovum. The embryo never developed a heartbeat. I stopped taking the progesterone, and even two weeks later my body hadn't let go of it. I had to take abortion medicine, while trying to get pregnant, to force my body to make way for another attempt. That was pretty messed up.
And I've learned that frozen embryo transfers require shots of estrogen, which I hadn't had leading up to the retrieval. My body hates taking estrogen. I get migraines from birth control pills, because of the estrogen in them. The shots of estrogen have given me mood swings and migraines that I never experienced in the days leading up to the retrieval.
My odds of success this next attempt are high, so our hope now is that we still get through IVF relatively unscathed, if not entirely unscathed. The mood swings and the migraines will be worth it, if this attempt is successful. And if it's not...I think all traces of my imposter syndrome will be gone.
Holy cats, Rachel, that was some powerful stuff right there. I don't really know him where to begin, so pardon this maybe being scattered.
First, yes to all the rage. The sadness. The shame and self blame that our bodies must be perfect and our desires are obscene and we are crazy but not crazy. I screamed out loud my rage at "needing a man" after a life of never needing a man (only to realize not much later in life that I actually am one... I mean... Irony, am I right?). I cried every month for a year of trying to conceive at home with my wife, and let me be honest. There wasn't much room for her feelings with mine being so big and loud. That's a shitty husband right there.
Second, I might have been in that room with you, in that yoga class or meditation retreat or in the clinic waiting room (I mean obviously not REALLY the same room), but I was trying to be invisible as the guy who looked like a girl who wanted to be a mama but called a father, and you're right. It was crushing and isolating for every single one of us, even this man who couldn't be one at the time. I don't know if seeing other fathers there would have helped. Maybe not.
Third, I flinch for two reasons (okay, three) when friends conceive without trying. One, because I could not and it still stings. Two, because I struggle to talk about being a seahorse dad without being objectified, misgendered, or invalidated (and that's after being literally labeled a geriatric pregnant woman in the hospital for kid #2 when I was 38). Secretly three, because the talk always devolves into sex reveal parties which drive me deeper into despair that I and all trans people are so invisible, so unwanted, that no one considers their future child could be like me.
I have never really known how to talk about enduring IVF, but I think it feels easier to consider when I see your words. Thanks for that.
I used to work in public health. In the field it’s common to assign quantitative numbers to diseases to measure the impact that they have on people’s quality of life. In public health, infertility is up there with major diseases like cancer in terms of how it negatively affects people’s mental health.
And on top of getting a diagnosis of (sub) infertility, which wreaks havoc on mental health, instead of grieving, women are then asked to then drag their bodies through hormone hell to pursue a chance of conceiving via IVF, oftentimes through multiple rounds, with no guarantee of success.
I myself couldn’t do it. My mental health became so bad after I was told I probably had diminished ovarian reserve, and I was scared to push it further by injecting myself with hormones until my emotions were stabilized.
It turns out I can conceive naturally, but by the time I did, I had at least come to terms with how this whole thing was affecting me. And it had affected me on a deep existential level. I think the “crazy” is normal, and women should be given more space and patience to feel everything that comes up around the possibility of not being able to have children.
Rachel, your writing is so addictive. We're in the trenches of IVF (I've had my own screaming on a hilltop moment) and reading your words felt like a mirror to my own thoughts and "craziness." Please keep writing about this topic. xo
Thank you so much for this beautiful, vulnerable piece. I only just started trying to get pregnant (I wrote about it here, if anyone's interested: bodytype.substack.com/p/the-trying-to-get-pregnant-post) but I already feel the cogs of my brain shifting into irrational positions every month -- like you said, every sensation in my body makes me wonder if I'm pregnant, every event on my calendar months into the future has a "Will I be pregnant by then? How pregnant would I be?" cloud hanging over it, and though it's very early days in my process and maybe it won't end up being especially difficult for me, I've already taken on the mental stress of predicting that it will be, because I'm over 35. I do not for a second in my logical mind and the depths of my heart regret waiting "this long" to try to have a baby; I intentionally set my life up this way and I've been able to focus entirely on all the things I've valued over the past decade or so, but the craziness for me comes in the form of imagining a day when I *will* regret it. What if I'm 37, or 39, or 41, and it's still not happened? Won't I hate myself for waiting? Won't I imagine that everyone who's been hinting that my husband and I should get pregnant is thinking, "Told ya so?" Basically, that fear is my mind-killer right now. It's shocking the places your brain takes you when you're a woman thinking about your body every second of every day. But that's kind of how it's always been, isn't it?
Oh my God, Rachel, every single word of this incredible post chimed with me and my experience. I started my IVF journey at the age of 39 when my husband and I were living in Israel. We had five out of the six IUIs that were required before we step up to IVF, then the physician let us skip the last and go for IVF because we were due to leave the country soon after. Our IVF in Jerusalem didn't work, so we continued the journey in our new home of Switzerland. We had many failed treatments there, then we were told that our only remaining chance was by using someone else's eggs. Egg donation is not legal in Switzerland (at least it wasn't then - I don't know if things have changed), so we went to Spain for the treatment, on the promise that it would definitely work. It didn't. Twice. I gave up after that point. Then my husband suggested we have one last roll of the dice, and we flew to a different clinic in Spain and, under the guidance of an all-female team, it worked. My twins are turning nine next week. But, as they say, having children is not a cure for infertility. I still have all the pain and anger and frustration of those years stored in my body, and those feelings come straight to the surface again every time I hear of the hardships someone else is experiencing on the sometimes terrible journey to parenthood. I feel for you so deeply. If you're ever inclined to read about a journey not dissimilar to your own, I wrote three posts on the topic called Just the Two of Us. Thank you so much for writing about this difficult topic with such vulnerability and clarity.
Thank you for sharing this story Rae. We need more stories of honest feeling, as the many comments show, the visible tip of an iceberg of experiences. I haven’t been in your situation and yet I recognise truth when I hear it. I’ve known intolerable pain that felt physical, mental, emotional and even moral, and which most other people didn’t see, or dismissed or minimized. Many of us have. You say ‘this is how it was for me, as best I can put it in words” and we say: “we see your pain, we honour your truth, we thank you for sharing, for offering us the gift of your story.”
I so admire you saying all this. Sharing this with so many that can relate in so many different ways (I can already see in the comments how true that is).
It’s hard to say when I feel the “most” crazy as I’ve had my moments throughout my life and know that more wait for me. It’s funny as I’m about to write about it, it feels less and less crazy and more totally valid and understandable. It feels crazy because it was intense and everyone was looking at me as such but my outsides were finally matching my insides in these moments of crazy. I’d say the craziest for me happened when my son was young. Intermittently throughout the first year. I was so overwhelmed and under-supported. The rage, the anxiety, the fear, the scarcity, the disconnection. It was so intense. I’d say the only thing that even came close was teenager angst in my relationship with my mother—the irony of this hits on a lot of levels. Matrescence and Adolescence. And then how mothering played a role in both periods of turmoil—in receiving mothering and being the mother.
The rage toward my partner came up during this time. “How could he not see I was drowning while meanwhile he was dry on the shore looking at bleacher report on his phone?” It was also very intense. I’m thankful for access to couples therapy and individual therapy (shoutout to IFS—that was a game changer for me) which helped us do less damage and understanding what was happening in us both. It’s been an ongoing multi-year repair.
Days later, I’m still thinking about this and so grateful you wrote this. After a year and a half of loss and health/fertility struggles, I am now 13 weeks pregnant. While I am filled with joy, the complexities of the loss and past challenges are not completely erased. Your writing reconnected me with that past in the best way - a healing way. Indeed, the isolation of holding all these feelings in our unique contexts can make one feel crazy when there is pressure for motherhood to simply be “joy & love” with no nuance. Appreciate your words!
Oh, Rachel, my heart hurt reading this. My infertility journey is different from yours (as are they all), but the emotions you describe are so similar to what I experienced. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for writing and sharing this; the baby craving part reminded me of how I felt at the same age and I had forgotten or not examined the parts about how we are socialized to want kids but what are you doing? You shouldn’t want them yet.
My experiences w infertility were 14 years ago and the hurt has faded but isn’t gone. I was a chat room visitor, luckily found a now gone feminist chat room. The shame underlying and coloring all of it is still with me. The shame of the wanting, then the shame of the heartbreak each month.
Thank you for articulating something I hadn’t really realized was a part of the pain of that time in my life.
As a person on the very opposite end of the reproductive spectrum (a never-baby-wanter who accidentally made the start of a baby (with an IUD, mind you) and then had an abortion and then had surgery to make sure I never accidentally started brewing a baby again because by god is it hard to ever feel safe again after a body-betrayal like that)… I am struck by the fact that though our stories are at face value polar opposite, I think there are some similar mosaic pieces: desperation, hopelessness, feeling crazy to have our body/reproductive status match our internal desire and state.
After my abortion, my husband got a vasectomy. Logically that should have been enough to make me feel safe having sex, but the thought that my body could still get pregnant again (by other means, mostly involving insane scenarios since we are monogamous), was absolutely intolerable. It was beyond reason, I had to make sure conception was absolutely impossible under any and all circumstances. So I got a bilateral salpingectomy— NOT tubal ligation, since those can fail, as I learned in similar fear and desperation-fueled Internet rabbit holes. And I have felt so much anger towards men as well for all the situations that make it hard to be someone on my side of the spectrum, I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.
Of course that’s a much simpler cut and dried solution than the journey of trying to conceive and I appreciate that difference. And I’ve wondered how a story of an unwanted pregnancy might feel to people who are TTC. Painful maybe. Probably. I hesitate to bring it up. But I also don’t want us to feel like we, on our different sides of the spectrum, are opposed to each other. What we’re both dealing with, in our own ways, is a physical and psychological wrestling with our bodies, living inside this patriarchal system. Hearing and understanding each other can maybe bring us together?
Anyway, I hope that doesn’t come off as insensitive. I really appreciate reading about your experience and you’re very courageous to share it, thank you for letting us Internet strangers in.
Thank you so much for sharing all of this truth.
I haven't wanted biological children myself. I was a foster mom at one time and I think I want to foster-adopt an older sibling group again someday. But if I had wanted biological children, I'm not even sure what that would have looked like, with the partners that I had who were definitely not ready. I've experienced the pain of being on a different timeline than my partner in other ways. It's hard being two people trying to make one life.
As for when I've felt most crazy ... probably when trying to fit my mental health and creative drive and personal ambition into a money-earning box that didn't work for me.
Oh, girl, this is so important. My friend grew up in Bangladesh and was attacked by wild animals three times, as well as almost dying of illness, and her diplomat parents dismissed it "because other kids who live here have it worse." It sounds fake. Her parents are lovely. About Bangladeshi kids they were right, but as parents they fucked up badly.
It is a failure of humanity, directed at those of us already in the deepest shit: your pain is intolerable to contemplate, it is unfair, it is unnecessary; how can we make it smaller? We have to make it smaller!
My happy & healthy IVF-crafted baby is turning one tomorrow and I love him more than anything. I also want another one more than anything, but still don't have a period because I am still nursing him & cosleeping so I can sleep at night. I have bipolar II and weaning him is going to fuck with my mind for weeks. I'm 42. My current health insurance "covers" IVF but I have already been told I will want to self-pay for the prescriptions because there is a lifetime cap on the "benefit" and it won't be enough for more than one round.
It is intolerable to contemplate! It is unfair! it is unnecessary! But I can't make it smaller.
Thank you for sharing. I haven't joined an IVF support group (I'll explain why below), so while I can get fully versed in all the mechanics of IVF, I've felt a bit outside the emotional experience of it.
I haven't joined an IVF support group because I felt a bit like an imposter. Yes, I'm going through IVF, but not because of infertility issues on my or my husband's part. The problem is, I had Essure put in while I was with my ex. While I was with my ex, I thought I definitely didn't want more kids. I was terrified of the possibility of getting pregnant again. He wouldn't get a vasectomy, so I decided to do something to my tubes. And as long as I was doing something, I wanted to do the most absolutely least likely to self-reverse thing. So I settled on Essure.
It was only after I left my ex that I realized, it wasn't having more kids that scared me. It was having more kids with him. Feeling more trapped with him. I actually, genuinely, desperately wanted to have more kids, so long as I had a partner I trusted to be kind to both me and the kids we had together.
That's when I felt the anguish of what I'd done to myself. Essure is irreversible. There's one clinic in all of the States that advertises reversing it, but it's a 50% chance per tube that the tube is restored to functionality, and the risk of ectopic pregnancy skyrockets. So I looked at IVF, because IVF doesn't require functional tubes to work.
I felt like an imposter, because my ovaries are fully functional, my uterus is fully functional, and my husband's brother has six children, so there's no worry on his part, either. We expected to sail through the IVF process without any of the emotional damage that so many take along the way. Thought we had sailed through it, as our retrieval resulted in ten viable blastocytes, and the fresh embryo transfer resulted in a positive pregnancy test.
Then it proved to be a blighted ovum. The embryo never developed a heartbeat. I stopped taking the progesterone, and even two weeks later my body hadn't let go of it. I had to take abortion medicine, while trying to get pregnant, to force my body to make way for another attempt. That was pretty messed up.
And I've learned that frozen embryo transfers require shots of estrogen, which I hadn't had leading up to the retrieval. My body hates taking estrogen. I get migraines from birth control pills, because of the estrogen in them. The shots of estrogen have given me mood swings and migraines that I never experienced in the days leading up to the retrieval.
My odds of success this next attempt are high, so our hope now is that we still get through IVF relatively unscathed, if not entirely unscathed. The mood swings and the migraines will be worth it, if this attempt is successful. And if it's not...I think all traces of my imposter syndrome will be gone.
Holy cats, Rachel, that was some powerful stuff right there. I don't really know him where to begin, so pardon this maybe being scattered.
First, yes to all the rage. The sadness. The shame and self blame that our bodies must be perfect and our desires are obscene and we are crazy but not crazy. I screamed out loud my rage at "needing a man" after a life of never needing a man (only to realize not much later in life that I actually am one... I mean... Irony, am I right?). I cried every month for a year of trying to conceive at home with my wife, and let me be honest. There wasn't much room for her feelings with mine being so big and loud. That's a shitty husband right there.
Second, I might have been in that room with you, in that yoga class or meditation retreat or in the clinic waiting room (I mean obviously not REALLY the same room), but I was trying to be invisible as the guy who looked like a girl who wanted to be a mama but called a father, and you're right. It was crushing and isolating for every single one of us, even this man who couldn't be one at the time. I don't know if seeing other fathers there would have helped. Maybe not.
Third, I flinch for two reasons (okay, three) when friends conceive without trying. One, because I could not and it still stings. Two, because I struggle to talk about being a seahorse dad without being objectified, misgendered, or invalidated (and that's after being literally labeled a geriatric pregnant woman in the hospital for kid #2 when I was 38). Secretly three, because the talk always devolves into sex reveal parties which drive me deeper into despair that I and all trans people are so invisible, so unwanted, that no one considers their future child could be like me.
I have never really known how to talk about enduring IVF, but I think it feels easier to consider when I see your words. Thanks for that.
I used to work in public health. In the field it’s common to assign quantitative numbers to diseases to measure the impact that they have on people’s quality of life. In public health, infertility is up there with major diseases like cancer in terms of how it negatively affects people’s mental health.
And on top of getting a diagnosis of (sub) infertility, which wreaks havoc on mental health, instead of grieving, women are then asked to then drag their bodies through hormone hell to pursue a chance of conceiving via IVF, oftentimes through multiple rounds, with no guarantee of success.
I myself couldn’t do it. My mental health became so bad after I was told I probably had diminished ovarian reserve, and I was scared to push it further by injecting myself with hormones until my emotions were stabilized.
It turns out I can conceive naturally, but by the time I did, I had at least come to terms with how this whole thing was affecting me. And it had affected me on a deep existential level. I think the “crazy” is normal, and women should be given more space and patience to feel everything that comes up around the possibility of not being able to have children.
Thanks for being honest and sharing your story.
Rachel, your writing is so addictive. We're in the trenches of IVF (I've had my own screaming on a hilltop moment) and reading your words felt like a mirror to my own thoughts and "craziness." Please keep writing about this topic. xo
Thank you so much for this beautiful, vulnerable piece. I only just started trying to get pregnant (I wrote about it here, if anyone's interested: bodytype.substack.com/p/the-trying-to-get-pregnant-post) but I already feel the cogs of my brain shifting into irrational positions every month -- like you said, every sensation in my body makes me wonder if I'm pregnant, every event on my calendar months into the future has a "Will I be pregnant by then? How pregnant would I be?" cloud hanging over it, and though it's very early days in my process and maybe it won't end up being especially difficult for me, I've already taken on the mental stress of predicting that it will be, because I'm over 35. I do not for a second in my logical mind and the depths of my heart regret waiting "this long" to try to have a baby; I intentionally set my life up this way and I've been able to focus entirely on all the things I've valued over the past decade or so, but the craziness for me comes in the form of imagining a day when I *will* regret it. What if I'm 37, or 39, or 41, and it's still not happened? Won't I hate myself for waiting? Won't I imagine that everyone who's been hinting that my husband and I should get pregnant is thinking, "Told ya so?" Basically, that fear is my mind-killer right now. It's shocking the places your brain takes you when you're a woman thinking about your body every second of every day. But that's kind of how it's always been, isn't it?
Oh my God, Rachel, every single word of this incredible post chimed with me and my experience. I started my IVF journey at the age of 39 when my husband and I were living in Israel. We had five out of the six IUIs that were required before we step up to IVF, then the physician let us skip the last and go for IVF because we were due to leave the country soon after. Our IVF in Jerusalem didn't work, so we continued the journey in our new home of Switzerland. We had many failed treatments there, then we were told that our only remaining chance was by using someone else's eggs. Egg donation is not legal in Switzerland (at least it wasn't then - I don't know if things have changed), so we went to Spain for the treatment, on the promise that it would definitely work. It didn't. Twice. I gave up after that point. Then my husband suggested we have one last roll of the dice, and we flew to a different clinic in Spain and, under the guidance of an all-female team, it worked. My twins are turning nine next week. But, as they say, having children is not a cure for infertility. I still have all the pain and anger and frustration of those years stored in my body, and those feelings come straight to the surface again every time I hear of the hardships someone else is experiencing on the sometimes terrible journey to parenthood. I feel for you so deeply. If you're ever inclined to read about a journey not dissimilar to your own, I wrote three posts on the topic called Just the Two of Us. Thank you so much for writing about this difficult topic with such vulnerability and clarity.
Thank you for sharing this story Rae. We need more stories of honest feeling, as the many comments show, the visible tip of an iceberg of experiences. I haven’t been in your situation and yet I recognise truth when I hear it. I’ve known intolerable pain that felt physical, mental, emotional and even moral, and which most other people didn’t see, or dismissed or minimized. Many of us have. You say ‘this is how it was for me, as best I can put it in words” and we say: “we see your pain, we honour your truth, we thank you for sharing, for offering us the gift of your story.”
Thank you for sharing your truth. Very powerful.
I so admire you saying all this. Sharing this with so many that can relate in so many different ways (I can already see in the comments how true that is).
It’s hard to say when I feel the “most” crazy as I’ve had my moments throughout my life and know that more wait for me. It’s funny as I’m about to write about it, it feels less and less crazy and more totally valid and understandable. It feels crazy because it was intense and everyone was looking at me as such but my outsides were finally matching my insides in these moments of crazy. I’d say the craziest for me happened when my son was young. Intermittently throughout the first year. I was so overwhelmed and under-supported. The rage, the anxiety, the fear, the scarcity, the disconnection. It was so intense. I’d say the only thing that even came close was teenager angst in my relationship with my mother—the irony of this hits on a lot of levels. Matrescence and Adolescence. And then how mothering played a role in both periods of turmoil—in receiving mothering and being the mother.
The rage toward my partner came up during this time. “How could he not see I was drowning while meanwhile he was dry on the shore looking at bleacher report on his phone?” It was also very intense. I’m thankful for access to couples therapy and individual therapy (shoutout to IFS—that was a game changer for me) which helped us do less damage and understanding what was happening in us both. It’s been an ongoing multi-year repair.
Days later, I’m still thinking about this and so grateful you wrote this. After a year and a half of loss and health/fertility struggles, I am now 13 weeks pregnant. While I am filled with joy, the complexities of the loss and past challenges are not completely erased. Your writing reconnected me with that past in the best way - a healing way. Indeed, the isolation of holding all these feelings in our unique contexts can make one feel crazy when there is pressure for motherhood to simply be “joy & love” with no nuance. Appreciate your words!
Thank you for sharing, Rachel. Your experience and words resonate so deeply. Infertility fosters such a specific type of grief, heartache, and rage
Oh, Rachel, my heart hurt reading this. My infertility journey is different from yours (as are they all), but the emotions you describe are so similar to what I experienced. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for writing and sharing this; the baby craving part reminded me of how I felt at the same age and I had forgotten or not examined the parts about how we are socialized to want kids but what are you doing? You shouldn’t want them yet.
My experiences w infertility were 14 years ago and the hurt has faded but isn’t gone. I was a chat room visitor, luckily found a now gone feminist chat room. The shame underlying and coloring all of it is still with me. The shame of the wanting, then the shame of the heartbreak each month.
Thank you for articulating something I hadn’t really realized was a part of the pain of that time in my life.