The Grief Cycle of Infertility
For the last few weeks we have been waiting to find out if we were pregnant.
I can’t even talk about how many tests we bought. So, many, no’s.
I kept getting negatives but allllllll the signs were there. And I do mean every single one, including a missed period. So all we could do is wait. Pray. Ask Jesus for a sign if we should be getting our hopes up or not. We had dreams of our baby girl. We thought for sure that meant it was her time now.
If you have never struggled with infertility, then you may not understand the “two weeks of waiting” that those of us that have know achingly well.
It is this space of living where you don’t really know what to do with yourself. Should you eat your eggs sunny side up? No ibuprofen? Progesterone supplement or not? (That’s typically something you think about only after you’ve had a miscarriage though, unfortunately 😢). Do you hold your belly and speak life when you might only be holding onto a swollen uterus?
Hopefully you’ll only have to experience two weeks of this before your cycle finally comes and brings relief (and tears, of course).
But I hope you have not been in the situation that we were in this time around. I hope you have never experienced the dreaded three weeks when your cycle decides for the first time in maybe forever to show up a week late. Three weeks of living in limbo; thanking God for what could be but also teetering on that border of self-protection and talking yourself out of buying a baby outfit because you don’t really know yet. You spend your free time Googling if anyone else has ever experienced this and gotten such a late positive test, and find consolation in finding that many other women have. Plus you have the OB telling you to wait a few more days because you tested way too soon. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions and hormones. Up and down and twists and turns and should we start getting our lives ready for a tiny human now or not?
And then you wake up on the 8th day of being late, excited to take a test because surely by NOW it should be positive. But you only discover your period instead. Then comes the unraveling.
The unraveling process involves going through the grief cycle. Yes, there is a grief cycle in infertility. It looks an awful lot like this:
Denial – “But I could still be pregnant! This could just be implantation bleeding! I felt pregnant!”
Anger -“My body lied to me. It betrayed me. How could I have been so stupid to think that I was actually pregnant?! Now I have to go back to the people I excitedly whispered the possible news to and undo that. They’re going to think I’m so stupid for believing this again. I know better.”
Bargaining -“Maybe I caused this. What if I would have just ate better or worked out? What if I did something wrong during those two weeks? What if this was just another miscarriage? What if my body is too broken to have children?! Maybe if I just shut this down I won’t have to feel this pain right now. I was foolish to think I was pregnant anyways so this is really just my fault. I let my hopes get too high. If I would just have kept my guard up, this wouldn’t hurt so bad.”
Depression – “Maybe this is it. Maybe this means I’ll never have a(nother) baby. Maybe this is God’s way of saying we should go ahead and adopt. Maybe I’ll never have a little girl/boy biologically. Maybe I’ll just lay in bed today. I couldn’t possibly see anyone right now. They would never understand my grief over getting a period.”
Acceptance -“You know what? I’m going to be okay. This happened. It hurt. I’m not going to bury the hurt anymore. Even if nobody else understands the pain, it doesn’t negate my pain. I have a God who loves me and won’t ever let me go. He knows my pain. He is with me through the whole rollercoaster and He knew the outcome the whole time. He didn’t send me a sign to stop Hoping because He is the God of Hope…His name is Hope. And there’s never a good time to stop Hoping. There’s always Hope. I’m not going to make any big decisions right now. I’m going to take today to feel the weight of what happened, love on myself and my body and my family, and pick myself up and move forward. And when we are ready to try again, we will.
I see you, nodding your head furiously while reading this with tears streaming down your cheeks. I know this all rings incredibly true for you. I see you. He sees you. ❤️
I honestly debated whether or not to share this. At the risk of looking incredibly foolish, or ruffling some feathers because I’m talking about “trying” and periods and hormones, I decided to share. I decided we are all adults here and we can all talk about adult things without shaming or judging someone. You see, I needed to talk about this. 1. I needed to process. This is how I do it. And I would have done this as a private post, except I have learned that my pain is very rarely only for myself. My pain typically helps me get free, and then helps someone else get free. So I decided to share because 2. Someone else needed to hear this.
Someone else needed to see that they aren’t crazy and they aren’t alone. They needed to see that this pain is a cycle they’ll work through, but there is light at the end of the tunnel if they’ll just embrace their pain and work through it rather than stuff it down. Or worse? Pretend it never happened.
Don’t do that Mama. Don’t stuff it down. You’re not alone. You’re not crazy for Hoping again this time. My goodness, the strength it takes to hope in a time of shaky uncertainty?! You. You are a woman of great strength. Your babies will rise up and call you BLESSED. They will come. I don’t know how or what that looks like for either of us, but they will come and you’ll look back at these grief cycles and know that not one of them was ever in vain because they made you stronger, and more compassionate, and eventually they led you to your tiny one(s).
Your pain is not in vain. You are not alone. Breathe in and out. You’ll get through this because you are a Warrior Mama.
I love you.
-Nikki
