Accepting Infertility

I’ve been pretty hard on myself lately for where I am in this grief journey. Still harboring feelings of resentment, anger, bitterness, and jealousy – all things I feel like I should be past by now. More recently, I’m trying to cut myself some slack on these feelings because I’m realizing they aren’t just about my grief journey. They are about my grief and infertility journey.

What I’m recognizing is that I haven’t really accepted this “dealing with infertility” part of my life. While I’ve been seeing a Reproductive Endocrinologist (aka Fertility Specialist) for nearly 2 years now, I never really thought of myself as having infertility. I think it’s mostly because it had been easier for me to get pregnant than most women I know with infertility. We needed a little nudge, and that seemed to be enough. Each of our pregnancies, all 4, have been achieved with clomid and IUI (intrauterine insemination). Each time, we got pregnant on the 1^st try. Our infertility issues were minor by comparison to others, so I never really accepted the full diagnosis. Now, as we find new issue after new issue, I have to accept that I have more significant infertility issues than we thought.

It started last October, when we received a diagnosis of Asherman’s Syndrome. Asherman’s is scarring and adhesions in the uterus which can happen after a trauma to the uterus, like a D&C (I had 2 after Vivienne’s birth due to retained placenta). When we got our diagnosis, we dove into the research and found that it can be tricky to treat and there are about 6 doctors in the country who specialize in it. We flew to Boston to see one of them, a renowned doctor for Asherman’s who people fly from all over the world to see. He told us that we were mis-diagnosed and happily sent us on our way. We thought we had received a miracle, and so this idea of “infertility” was pushed further back into my head.

And then came our subsequent 3 pregnancies. Baby 2 in January, a chemical pregnancy which I miscarried 2 days after finding out I was pregnant. Baby 3 in February, an ectopic pregnancy which I received chemotherapy drugs to force a miscarriage so that it wouldn’t endanger my life. And Baby 4 in July, another ectopic pregnancy which required surgery to resolve. This led us to our new diagnosis of “tubal issues” and IVF (in vitro fertilization) as our option for having a successful pregnancy. It takes skill to hear “IVF” and still believe you don’t have significant infertility issues. I am that skilled. In my mind, I could rationalize that we just needed an extra push to put the baby right where it needed to be, and we’d be fine.

Then came our cancelled IVF cycle. The cycle was cancelled for several reasons, but our RE was concerned with my lining and thought he saw scar tissue on my ultrasound. So, off we went for yet another test to find out what we’re dealing with.

And then came our re-diagnosis of Asherman’s Syndrome. It turns out you can do all of the research, find the right doctor who specializes in what you need, and it still doesn’t matter. So here we are a year later, facing the same issue we faced a year ago because of a supposed specialist not doing his job. We are both incredibly angry with this doctor for what he’s put us through over the last year. At the same time, though, we have to deal with the medical issue we are faced with. It will mean another surgery for me, and some heavy duty monitoring to make sure the scar tissue doesn’t come back. And we’ll still have our tubal issues to deal with and IVF as our next step.

And so after all of that, I have to acknowledge that I have infertility. And after all of that, I have to accept that resentment, anger, bitterness, and jealousy are perfectly normal emotions to feel. Having to deal with losing my daughter feels like enough for 1 lifetime. Losing 4 children feels like enough for 4 lifetimes. But I get the dubious honor of dealing with that PLUS the difficult path of infertility. And so I’m going to stop kicking myself for having these feelings. After what we’ve been through, I’d call them pretty acceptable and even normal.