Michelle

Infertility….. A word, a fear that has been haunting me since 2012. I never, like most of us I will presume, thought in a million years that I was going to be challenged by one of the most financial, time consuming, frustrating and devastating health concerns I have ever experienced in my life.

People completely annoy me, but how could they not; A: I am on a huge dose of hormones, I am crazy even with the normal dose :) and B: they do not understand what it is like to be in our shoes. The question “do you have children?” started boiling my blood more and more rapidly as time went by and when I provided the most efficient answer, “NO”, they will often ask the reason why, they will tell me that there is never the right time so I better get going and that my husband and I will be perfect parents. I learnt early in the infertility treatment that the best answer was, “I can’t have children” and voila! they will back off and leave me alone pretty much immediately. However, saying it so often made me to start losing faith on the possibility to conceive and believing that I indeed was never going to become a mother by birth.

I am taking this opportunity to write as a way for venting all these explainable and reasonable thoughts and to put my mind to rest for a little. My life in the past has been a rollercoaster and our last unsuccessful IUI has taken my mental health to the worst.

A little background my fellow readers, I was born and raised in Mexico, in a Catholic family, and in a society that had (has) the ideology that getting married and having kids were big goals in life.. Predictably, they became two major goals of mine.

I met my husband at the aged of 23, and got married 4 years later. My husband is the most caring, loving, supporting person I have ever met in my life and he has also been suffering from this journey. Ladies, take a look at what your partner has to go through (yes, we are the ones who have to take this “bomb” pills, get pocked and go through the physical changes in our body while preparing it for conception) but they are the ones who need to support us, their desires of becoming a father (mother) have also been crushed little by little. In the case of my husband, he also carries a huge weight on his shoulders, he believes his low T and his lack of libido is the cost of all these…and it is not only that. Who supports our partners while we ate being supported by them? This is a crazy journey that in my opinion affects couples equally (it might be manifested in different ways though). I just understood this, and I am making sure I am more supportive, understanding and respectful. I must say, I could not have chosen a better partner to go through such a difficult treatment than my husband.

But let’s get to the point…. Fertility has broken me apart… Little by little, treatment by treatment, and now it has broken my marriage apart.

I made the error of leaving projects and goals on the side, just so I could become a mother; I put my dream career on hold and made specific choices just in case I became a mother. For the past almost 5 years, all I have been thinking is pregnancy, babies, folic acid, prenatal vitamins, don’t drink alcohol, prepare your body for conception, don’t make this decision in case you get pregnant, I have not seen my family in Mexico for a while due to the Zika virus and so on and so forth.

Infertility has made me forgot who I am, what I am passionate about, meanly because it is hard to feel motivated. When you don’t feel passionate about something and feel extremely unmotivated, at least for me, it was a welcoming to depression. Yes….depression, anxiety and more craziness have been present in my life for the past while and although I would like to blame it all to infertility, I just simply forgot who I was.

Lucky my sleepless nights have made me realized that perhaps I was not ready to become a mother, I was not motivated, strong and confident. How could I raise a loving, motivated, strong and confident person when I do not possess such qualities?? How can a marital relationship last when I have forgotten why we got together in first place? My husband and I haven’t forgotten that we want to grow old together and love each other until the end of our days…. But, I am referring to the day to day activities, passion, laughter, individual goals, etc….. For me, we became great companions with one goal, make a baby. That is what broke us apart.

Infertility has made me feel physical abused and broken, to the point that I feel completely lost as a woman, as a wife, as and individual, as a human being.

This is the interesting part though, it cannot get any worse than what we are going through, what I am going through!. There is only one path for me: to find my way back.

I must remember what I like, what motivates me, what makes me dream and laugh. I need to remember who I want to become, who I want to be and build myself back together. I can assure you all that there is a new goal in my life, that is, to make Michelle as strong as she has ever been. I will then, be ready to have a strong relationship and I will be ready to become a Mom.

Thanks to me being broken due to infertility, I have allowed myself to focus on me and enjoy this new ride. I will always have to thank our infertility for that.

Thank you for reading, good luck with your treatment, I hope something great will come from it, just like it did to me.

Much love,
Michelle

P.S. I strongly recommend getting counselling while going through a fertility treatment. My husband and I thought we didn’t need it…. We were so wrong.