I know that my husband and I did not have any true difficulty getting pregnant with our first child. Everything we went through, including the agonizing half a year of trying to conceive (TTC) was well within the normal range for a healthy couple in their mid-twenties. The average healthy couple that age takes close to a year to get pregnant and 60% are pregnant by the sixth month. By those stats, we were quite average. Normal. We did not need the help of any fertility drugs or specialist, and my doctor did not even see a reason to start checking things, you know, just in case. We never even reached a point of using Ovulation Projection Kits to make sure things were happening as they should.
By all counts, we should have considered ourselves lucky that it ONLY took six months!
But, all too often, those of us who are considered normal are led to believe that we don’t have the right to feel as if we are struggling. We are always reminded to think about the people who have more difficulty than us – those who are taking expensive drugs just to make their bodies do what they were created to do, or those who are undergoing medical procedures just to feel the joy of starting a family. Our hearts ache for them. How dare we complain about having to go through a mere six months of unprotected sex? How dare we let even a month go by where we feel hopeless? How dare the thought of infertility even cross our minds in the fourth month!
I felt as if I didn’t qualify to have those negative thoughts and feelings. But someone else’s struggle does not negate yours. Someone else’s hurt does not take yours away. We can all be on different paths and still find that path to be difficult.
I’m here to valid those whose hearts are aching despite their “normal” diagnosis.
Once we decided we wanted a baby in our life, I wanted that baby in my belly right now. We were ready. We had the stable jobs, the health insurance, and the house with the extra room! I was working out and eating health just so my body could be in tip-top shape when it did happen. I knew what kind of birth I wanted. I knew what kind of parenting styles I wanted to use. All we needed was a baby, or at least, a fertilized egg. I prayed about it every day. I wrote “Make a baby” into my 2016 New Year’s Resolutions. I was freakin’ ready!
Based on the fearmongering my sex-education had been shrouded in, and the years of being warned about unplanned pregnancies, I honestly believed that it would happen the first time. However, it didn’t. It also did not happen the second time, or the third time. Every single month it didn’t happen was a rollercoaster of emotions.
It always started with levelheadedness. I would pep talk myself from last month. “It’s ok, Beka, you didn’t get that one but let’s be honest, it’s too damn hot in Florida in August to be pregnant anyway. There is clearly a better time.” I would resolve myself to taking my basal body temperature every morning at 6am to track ovulation. It wasn’t that early, after all. Even on a Saturday, I can manage to wake up at 6am for the sake of my unconceived child.
Then it would become hopefulness when I would see that basal body temperature dip and spike and realize, based on our extracurricular activities, this might be the month. I just might get those two little lines! I also promised myself I was not going to obsessively pee on pregnancy tests (POAS) like a dog marking his territory. I would just wait for my period to be late and then I would know!
Hopefulness would then turn to excited anticipation of entering the luteal phase or the “two week wait” (TWW). I would give up sushi and avoid hot tubs. I would dodge questions from curious friend when they asked why I didn’t want a glass of wine. I would become giddy with every single pregnancy symptom that I could conjure; just hoping this was finally the sign! I still refused to pee on anything… ok maybe just one… or maybe two because I was sure the first one was faulty. Next thing I knew, I had five or six negative tests in my trash can and I was still holding on to hope. Maybe it was just too early? But I knew…
When the cramping would start and I’d watch my temperature plummet on my basal body chart, the disappointment would set in. Once I stopped taking my oral contraceptives, my cycles were ferocious. As soon as it started, I could spend days on the bathroom floor, bleeding, vomiting, and crying because my body clearly was broken even if my doctor promised this was normal. This felt anything but normal to me and yet, I had to accept that this roller coaster was my normal. I couldn’t get off of the ride no matter how hard I tried. All I wanted was that one thing I was told could happen so easily if I wasn’t careful. The one thing I was raised to believe God wanted for all women. The one thing I thought my body was specifically designed for and yet, here I was, month after month, failing miserably.
The worst part of it all, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.
Allowed might be a strong word but could you just imagine the questions from would-be-grandparents and nosey great aunts if they knew we were trying to have a baby? It would have been months of unsolicited advice – what to eat, what not to eat, what positions to try, and how tight are Jon’s pants? Thanks, Tina, but I don’t need you metaphorically coming into my bedroom each day with your old wives tales about putting my legs above my head.
There would be those who try to console us by reminding us that it could be worse or reassuring us that we are lucky enough to just have each other. They’d even bring God and His timing into it. I’m not sure of one occasion where hearing those things actually worked to make a difference.
On top of all of that, if we did share, there would be the guilt of disappointing everyone in the know every single month. All that guilt piled on top of the already exhausting physical and emotional pain. Then there is the guilt from realizing we think we deserve a baby, or the guilt from feeling sorry for our situation when there are, in fact, people who are struggling with this more than we are.
Just considering all of that is emotionally draining.
While I had the support and love of my husband each and every month, I did not want him to see me as emotionally or mentally unstable, so each month I tried to hide my excitement, my hope, my despair, my anger, my doubt, and my pain from him. He reassured me so often that each month this didn’t happen was a heartache for him. He was feeling the disappointment with me. He wanted me to remember that I was not alone in this but that did nothing to ease my hurt. I wanted him to think I was calm and patient. After all, it always happens when you stop trying, right? Except, no matter how hard I pretended not to try, it still didn’t happen.
So there I was with secret Pinterest boards and a tear stained journal trying to pretend like I wasn’t trying to get pregnant all the while agonizing over doing all the things that might possibly give us the slightest assistance in actually getting pregnant. I had no one to confide in because this was normal. I wasn’t allowed to give up because this was normal.
But it felt anything but normal to us. It felt excruciating. It felt like our life was on hold. It felt like we had made these plans to include someone else who might never show up. And that broke my heart, cycle after cycle and month after month, every time I saw that big fat negative (BFN) on the test.
Sometimes “normal” can break your heart too.
XO Beka