A Real Look Inside of Fertility Struggles

***A note about this blog: this was written by an anonymous writer about her personal fertility struggles and details the real struggles both mentally and physically of someone who has been trying to conceive for a year with no luck yet. It’s very real, and many will relate. To the author: thank you for your brave submission and vulnerability.

Every baby picture, pregnancy announcement, cute little sonogram strung out between tiny shoes and Pinterest-crafted signs stings of a hope unfulfilled, a joy unknown. And yet there is also happiness. I am both deeply envious, and deeply happy. Angry, and excited. Elated, and sad.

I know the feeling of wanting to be a mom. I’m sure she felt it too. I’m sure, like me, she lived her life in 2 week intervals, counting down the days between tests, dreaming of ways to tell her “baby daddy” the news.

I know those feelings well. And so I am so deeply, genuinely happy for her that she finally gets the thing we both know what it’s like to want. But I cannot stave off the ache of my own desires.

You hear about it before it’s you. It’s something out there before it’s something right here. And thankfully, it doesn’t sound anything worse than “hard” “sad” “tough” when you hear about it from afar. To be fair, maybe that’s exactly the way some women experience it. Maybe some are gifted with patience and insight beyond what I can seem to muster after a year of no dice.

But it’s deeper, wider, more confusing than that for me.

It’s holding your breath in 2 week cycles— inhale until ovulation, hold until you exhale for your period. Your stupid f*cking period.

It’s wanting something, but also knowing that getting the thing you want is a portal into another life from which you can never come back. Once a mom, always a mom. Even if it doesn’t stick. Once your brain sees that positive, there’s no coming back from that. Even if it doesn’t last, you had that moment, played that mind movie, imagined those things.

That sh*t changes you.

And you want it so badly, but then again, you’re also navigating airport security like a breeze for a last minute weekend trip, grabbing a mimosa pre-flight. You’re sleeping like a rock, eating sushi, drinking 2 lattes a day, running without peeing your pants. You’re carefree and unattached. You had to convince yourself you were ready for this in the first place.

You want it so badly that seeing any positives in not having a positive feels so guilty you’d never say it out loud. Maybe that’s why you can’t get it. You don’t want it bad enough. If you did, you wouldn’t have these thoughts. Maybe you’re not as ready as you thought.

It’s a total mind f*ck.

And then there’s the physical. The intimate tracking of your most intimate things. And the reporting of said tracking, sometimes to brand new doctors who you’ve never met until they are probing between your legs, checking for open tubes and other possible anatomical anomalies that could explain why you haven’t gotten pregnant yet after all this trying.

There’s the silent hoping and wishing away your period, only to start feeling a backache, seeing a new pimple, and realizing what’s coming. There’s the checking of the toilet paper after every wipe: is there blood?? and holding onto hope so fiercely you tell yourself many pregnant women spot early on! Don’t give up yet!

But you’re breaking out and cramping and tired and sad and achy. At 30, this is far from your first rodeo. And yet, still, a tiny flame in your brain burns on an ounce of hope. You turn to the side in the mirror and swear there’s a pop. You google (again) how early you can show.

There’s the unsolicited (well-intended) advice from strangers and loved ones alike. I used these supplements for my 3rd! Have you had your hormones checked? Isn’t soy bad for fertility? To be fair, you’re willing to try anything, but you’ve already guilted yourself enough about your personal choices past and present. Is this because I was on birth control in college? Do I burn too many candles? Should I be more careful with the chemicals in my shampoo? Should I give up alcohol altogether?

I’d do anything for my not-yet-conceived baby, and yet all tests come back normal, all signs point to fine. Is it worth giving up my little joys like TJ Maxx candles and Thursday night happy hours before there is even life inside me, when I will most certainly have to abstain from those happy hours and worry more about everything I inhale and ingest?

There is bitterness for being the one to bear the burden of body-monitoring all by myself. There is annoyance at telling my stupid little app every time we have sex, which is only during “the window” now because it’s become such a transactional chore. There is happiness beyond words at the arrival of my 3rd niece this year. There is gut-wrenching, jaw-clenching ouch that they got number 3 before I even get number 1.

It’s so hard not to make it a race. So hard to love my timeline. It’s so hard not to wish I had known then what I know now. So hard to want it and savor life without it at the same time. So hard to be happy for others while breaking a little inside each time.

It’s hard. So hard. And sometime’s that’s just the season you’re in.