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I have a confession to make: Even now that I’m pregnant, sometimes I still feel a stab of residual, leftover bitterness and frustration – I thought I was done with this – when I hear of someone who got pregnant “without even trying.” Other times I’m still overwhelmed with feelings of heartbreak and despair when I hear of another friend who lost a baby, someone else going through infertility.
Sometimes I debate strollers and carseats and registry items with friends as if I’m having the most normal and nonchalant conversation in the world, as if I haven’t waited two and a half years for this. Other times I wander through the baby section in Target, feeling out of place and having the sudden urge to sneak out before someone calls me out for being in a place where I don’t really belong.
Sometimes I offhandedly make my pregnancy “announcement” to acquaintances and coworkers just because it comes up in conversation, as if me being pregnant is no big deal, really. Other times I come up with excuses not to mention it quite yet to my students or my boss, inexplicably and illogically afraid that if I start telling people too publicly it will somehow jinx this whole thing…not to mention ashamedly remembering how I used to react to big pregnancy announcements when I was going through infertility.
The Paradox of Pregnancy after Infertility
Being pregnant after infertility is a paradox of sorts. The fact that I’ve waited so long for this makes it all the more exciting. It makes me all the more grateful; I refuse to take this for granted. I eagerly await each Saturday morning when I will wake up to a new milestone, checking my apps for the new fruit size (kumquat or pomegranate this week?) and developments with the baby.
And yet at the same time I’m cautious. Not because I think something is going to go wrong – although having miscarried, I know that that is possible too – but because I’m desperate to somehow keep my expectations realistic. I’ve seen my friends have colicky, difficult babies that cry constantly. I remind myself that the rosy picture of me and my baby going for long, leisurely walks on beautiful fall days in my stylish luxury stroller may more often than not be replaced with long nights of little sleep and diaper rashes. I sometimes worry that maybe I’ll be like one of those stories I’ve read of formerly “infertile” new moms going through postpartum depression, made all the more worse by the fact that they were so desperate to have a baby for so many years. They expect to love motherhood after they’ve tried for so many years…but instead find themselves unhappy and their lives more difficult than they thought. Not to mention the guilt they feel upon being unhappy after they’ve wanted this for so long! What if that’s me, too?
After so many years of trying to get pregnant, I feel a pressure to love being a mom more than anything else in the world. I feel I won’t have the right to complain about anything I hear friends complain about: sleepless nights and sick babies and not being able to do things spontaneously anymore.
In some ways, I worry that going through infertility has already made motherhood more difficult.
What I’ve Learned from Infertility
And yet at the same time:
I think infertility is precisely what will make motherhood…not necessarily easier, but different.
I’m glad that infertility is a part of my story; that I’m more conscious than I would’ve been of other people’s stories when I make a big pregnancy announcement or am tempted to complain about being pregnant or having children.
I’m grateful that I’ve had to wrestle with questions about IVF and adoption and God’s plan for my life, that I will no longer judge others who have chosen a different path to motherhood.
I’m thankful that my husband and I have struggled through infertility together and have had difficult conversations, that our relationship is stronger.
But most of all: I’m relieved that before pregnancy, infertility already made me realize that kids would never be the “end all be all” of my life, the “thing” to complete me. Somehow that’s the other paradox of “surviving infertility” (and “surviving” doesn’t mean ending up with children): the fact that even as you yearn for children more and more through infertility, the more and more God teaches you that having children are not the key to happiness and fulfillment.
And because of that, no matter if motherhood is different from what I’m expecting, no matter if I have a colicky, difficult baby, no matter if I have postpartum depression, I know that I will not depend on my children to complete me. Motherhood — as much as I’ve longed for this for so long — is not the thing that will fulfill me. Jesus alone is.
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