Silence makes it worse
Every now and then when I’m out in public, usually when my kids are in full meltdown mode, I catch the eye of someone and my heart falls in to my stomach. My face is usually purple with mothering frustration and I see a similar shade in this other person’s face.
But this person, usually a woman, is not giving me a sympathetic look, or even a supportive one. No, this look is one of pure wonderment, of awe, of envy and of confusion.
In a second I feel like I can read her thoughts. She’s wondering if I know how lucky I am and she’s wondering if I can see that her ovaries are trying to leap from her body at the sight of (biased) cute children.
She might, if she has anything left in her that day, manage to get the corner of her lips to turn upwards in an almost-smile. But more often than not, she will quickly look away, search for a distraction, leave and try to get on with her day. I understand her because I was her. Infertility affects one in four couples in New Zealand.
Sure, by looking at my children and knowing they were born 14 months apart you might think I was one of those lucky folk who thought: ‘‘Hey, let’s have a baby,’’ and voila, the next month they’re hapu¯ .
Great. Wicked. Happy for them. But they’re not my people.
When I first spoke out about our infertility journey, it was a scary and uncertain time for me.
I wrote a blog for Stuff’s Essential Mums website about our journey in 2014 and moments before it went live I felt sick.
Some people in my life urged me against talking so publicly about it. It’s private, they said. No-one else’s business. And sure, it is an intensely personal and often heart-wrenching journey.
But I’ve come to realise the silence, the whispers, the avoidance, the shame around taboos, like infertility, only makes the grieving worse.
And you don’t need to have lost a child to be grieving. So much of the infertility journey is grieving the life you thought you were going to have, grieving foiled plans, fear of things out of your control, grieving the interventions, oh the interventions, and the loss of spontaneous intimacy with your partner.
Infertility isn’t just about not being able to have a baby. It makes you second guess everything in your life – your relationship, your values, your spirituality, your goals, your future plans, your past.
Every month it rips your heart from your body and kicks it until it turns inside out.
It’s the reason that after we finally did fall pregnant, following months of interventions – only to be one of those frustrating couples graced with a natural conception – we announced it at about eight weeks. My theory? If this baby wasn’t meant to be, and about 20 per cent of pregnancies do end in miscarriage, I would want the support around me to help me get through.
Shame has no place in that situation. It is one thing to go through that harrowing experience, but to do it alone, without support? No thanks.
I already had enough baggage. I had no room left for shame.
In the age of ‘‘I want everything now, in fact I wanted it yesterday’’, infertility stings that bit harder.
In the age of the internet and little squares of perfect happiness on Instagram and flawless family posts on Facebook, infertility feels like a journey you’re walking alone.
This week is Fertility Week and every year I am reminded of my goal to use whatever platform I have access to so to ensure that others know they are not alone.
I also use it to reflect on where I’m at now, to remember that no matter how hard I find motherhood at times, there were other times where I would have given almost anything to hold a baby of my own.
I want to give hope to those who have been told the worst. A specialist once told me I had the egg reserves of a menopausal 55-year-old, said a natural conception would be unlikely, and we needed IVF.
And it’s bloody hard when you’re paying someone thousands, subjecting your body to goodness-knows-what and clinging on to the threads of sanity, to hold on to hope that parenthood is something you’re going to experience.
If only all of the tears shed by those going through assisted fertility could be used to pay their medical bills, then maybe some sense could come from the situation that so often feels helpless and pointless.
To those walking this path, hold on – to each other and to hope. Just hold on. And don’t, for a second, think you are alone. You never really know what’s going on behind closed doors so open up to those who love you and let others hold some space for your journey.
Stay in your lane, don’t worry about others’ journeys, find your tribe, and know you’re never alone.