It would be easier for them...

Sometimes you feel like a burden to your family and your friends. I know this doesn't sound nice, but hear me out. People don’t know what to do with your pain, they don’t know what to do when your journey never ends. It becomes exhausting for them to keep up. They don't know what to say, and honestly, why should they?

Struggling with infertility is so damn hard. You want to tell people because then they might stop asking if you want kids, or when you are planning to have some. But telling also means opening up other questions and conversations that you aren’t always emotionally prepared to have. In the beginning, I felt like the more people I opened up to, the more people I would have to share the results with. When your results are always negative, when your treatment consistently fails, it becomes another hard part of the process: giving everyone the bad news.

Infertility has a way of either keeping you in total isolation, or stripping you bare in front of your closest family and friends. It’s exhausting either way. One minute you’re suffering in silence, and then the next, your mother in law knows when you’re ovulating. (No offence to mine- she’s been incredibly supportive during this journey.) but you get what I’m saying.

There was a point in our journey when I felt like if I couldn’t become a mom, what was the point of being alive? In my lowest moments, I wondered how I was going to survive. This might sound dramatic to some, but imagine one of your biggest dreams, your entire life plan, and your future completely pivoting. Imagine trying everything, paying everything, giving it absolutely everything you have, and still coming up with nothing. Society values mothers. As a woman, I struggled to find my worth and my purpose if I couldn’t have children.

“It will happen! I just know it will,” they’d say. They hope that it will. It would be easier for them. But they don’t know. It’s easier said than done. How do you explain to someone that you don’t want to get pregnant because you fear you will have another miscarriage? How do you explain that to have a healthy baby, I will have to go through what I now fear the most: pregnancy.

I know people mean well, but I also wish they knew that fertility treatment doesn’t always end in a baby. That their hope and belief sure doesn’t cure infertility. And while it is appreciated sometimes, it puts a bit of extra pressure, so that it makes you feel that if it doesn’t work, that you have let them down. It would be easier for them if your journey weren't messy. It would be easier for them if you weren't struggling to grow your family. It would be easier for them if you'd move on. It would be easier for them if you weren't sad. It would be easier for them if your journey had a happy ending. Believe me, it would be easier for us, too.

Infertility and loss does not always end in a “rainbow baby”.

Sometimes you can try everything and still end up with nothing.

And that’s ok. It has to be ok. For you and for them.