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Of all the negative emotions you go through with infertility (sadness, anger, bitterness, despair, frustration), one of the worst, for me, is the guilt. It’s a never-ending cycle; one feeling of guilt leads to another until I’m back where I started. And it leaves me thinking, in the end, that the real reason I don’t have a baby is because I don’t deserve one after all. It usually starts innocently enough, with me looking up ways to improve my fertility online. And then it leads to:
1. Feeling guilty that this must be all my fault.
Infertility leaves you with the constant, nagging feeling that you’re doing something wrong, and you can’t figure out what it is. You’ve already done all of the crazy diets and pineapple and other old wives’ tales. And then, when you tell anyone about your infertility, the well-intentioned advice-givers confirm it:
–You must be too stressed (the “just relax…go on vacation” people)
–You must be thinking too much (the “adopt…then you’ll get pregnant yourself” people)
–You should’ve started trying earlier (the “told you so” people)
–You must be exercising too much/too little (the “just change your lifestyle” people)
…and the list goes on and on. I’ve probably tried things you haven’t even thought of (including doing all of the above and thinking too much, as well as doing none of the above and not thinking about it at all)…but ultimately, there seems to be something I’m doing wrong, and I feel guilty that I can’t figure out what it is. That leads me to…
2. Feeling guilty that I can’t give my husband what he desperately wants.
Not that I don’t want children, but my husband does even more than I do. When we go to our friends’ houses to see their babies, and the husband is bouncing their toddler up and down, making her giggle, I can’t bear to even look at my husband. And speaking of my friends and their babies,
3. Pregnancy announcements can sometimes be hard to hear.
How can that be? How can something as wonderful as a pregnancy announcement trigger anything negative? Yes, I know I can be happy for you and sad for myself at the same time, but depending on the day, it can still sometimes be hard to be genuinely THRILLED when I first hear a pregnancy announcement or SO EXCITED to go to a baby shower. Those things will always be reminders of my infertility. But then I feel guilty all over again—how is it that I feel like the wind just got knocked out of me when I hear another pregnancy announcement? Why am I so self-centered? And that is when I decide…
4. I don’t deserve a baby.
If hearing someone else’s pregnancy announcement is hard, then clearly I don’t deserve a baby. And that brings me back to what I’m doing wrong…
5. See #1.
Regardless of whether or not the reasons behind my guilty feelings are valid (my husband, after reading this, said, “You don’t need to feel guilty”), we love to blame. When something doesn’t go our way, we love to figure out whose fault it is—even if it’s our own.
–Why did I lose my job? I should’ve worked harder.
–Why did my spouse cheat on me? I should’ve been more loving.
–Why did my loved one get cancer and pass away? I should’ve noticed the warning signs earlier.
God doesn’t work that way. Instead:
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
John 9:1-3, NIV
Turns out God doesn’t give out blessings or hardships according to what we deserve. In other words, infertility is not your fault.
It’s easy to think everything we have is because of our own hard work—we’ve put in the work, we’ve earned it, we deserve it! The truth is, God didn’t give your friends babies because they “deserve” them more than you do or because they are “better” than you or because you’re doing something “wrong.” No matter how perfect we try to be, we’ll never be able to deserve or earn any blessings from God. That’s the beauty of grace.
“The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.”
Relient K, Be My Escape
Not only that, but have you ever imagined that maybe your infertility was so that “God’s work might be displayed in your life”? Maybe this has nothing to do with you. All along we’ve been focusing on what we’ve been doing wrong, when what we should’ve been focusing on is what God’s going to do.
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26
