Category: How infertility impacts your emotional health.
What if I have to learn to live childfree with a smile….forever?
This used to be my fear and still is in many ways. Every once in a while I find myself chanting, I can't have children, I can't have children, an imaginary response to the question "So do you have kids?". It's often as I pass the elem. school on my way to work that I find myself doing this. Five years of TTC with 7 miscarriages under my belt has made me have very little faith in myself. In fact there is little that I don't doubt myself on anymore. I question my ability to achieve anything. Five years ago we started to TTC, I stopped taking the pill and just knew I would be p/g in 3 months. And I was... only to lose the baby six weeks later. Back then I thought by 2010 I would have two kids and considering a third in two years.
My life my plans my view of myself have drastically changed in so many ways. IF/RPL will push you to your very limits. Make you question your will to survive. After my last miscarriage in August I found myself thinking about driving my car into a tree. While in Oregon I envisioned throwing myself off the cliffs and into the Pacific. These terrible thoughts gave me peace during that time. It is macabre. It is sad and disgusting. It is true.
I'm more than aware that these are symptoms of major clinical depression. Over the last six months those thoughts have gone away. I never really wanted to die I just wanted to stop, escape the pain, suffering, guilt, sense of failure and disappointment on repeatedly losing my child, my hopes, my dreams. Quite frankly losing whole pieces of myself to where I couldn't recognize me anymore.
This experience has stripped my husband and I down to our very cores exposing the ugly parts of our souls. It has pushed our marriage to the edge.
Through prayer and sheer determination and will power, I feel we have clawed our way through to the other side.
The thought that we may live childfree does not scare me anymore. Sometimes it makes me sad, but sometimes I think it might be fun. It will hard to not belong to that club all our friends belong to, but we can have very full lives without children. No matter what happens IF/RPL has forever changed me, but finally I can start to see glimpses of myself again. I am still here and I can still love. That gives me strength for another day.
To see more of this project go to:
Stirrup Queens, Bloggers Unite
For more information on infertility go to RESOLVE
Please help spread the word and educate others:
National Infertility Awareness Week
About Me
- amylynn
- North Carolina, United States
- I'm a 36yr old, wife, wannabe mom, horticulturalist, halfass knitter, and sometimes runner, searching for my grace
5 comments:
I can relate totally to this post, and I, too, am no longer thrown into desperate anxiety by the thought of having to live child free. I will never be totally immune to wistful thinking and sometimes pangs of jealousy as I see my friends with their offspring, but I can now see myself being ok with no kids.
I can see the positive side to childfree living, and how rich my life can still be without them. I will not, in the end, throw myself off a bridge because I 'lost'.
The pain of being in the cycle of repeated miscarriage (and especially being right in the guts of one, actually LOSING that child- again) is MUCH worse than the pain of simply not having a child. So once I have finally stepped off the TTC merry go round and am in no danger of losing any more children, I know I will be able to cope with a childless future. I will be ok. My marriage will be ok. We will be ok together.
And that is SO comforting to know. It is this knowledge, rather than some kind of 'hope' of a live birth someday, that keeps me going. The light at the end of the tunnel is actually ME.
I can personally relate to wishing to throw yourself into the churning pacific in Oregon. The thought HAS crossed my mind. I think Mel at stirrup queens recently refered to those sorts of feelings as "situational depression" , which is a term I had never heard before but it makes so much sense for people in our situation (I have lost 5 pregnancies) I dont really want to die either, but recurrent pregnancy loss has also shaken me to the core. I have wanted to escape. Only in the past two months have I thought that I might reach the end of this childless, and fundamentally ok. It has made me question everything, what I want career wise, what I want out of my relationship with my husband, and what the whole point of life is. Im lucky enough to have an amazing partner whos excited to live with me and grow old with me, weather or not we want to have children but I agree with panamahat, if that should happen, there will never be a time when I dont get pangs of wistful thinking and jealousy.
what an absolutely BEAUTIFUL post.
I am here through the WHAT IF project..
I can't imagine how you feel, I did try for 4 yrs but I was never PG before we did IVF..so I don't know what it's like to be PG and then not be.
Plus I love how you wrote about wanting it to just stop, to have the pain stop..and then being able to move on because you realize that in many ways you have...you've survived so much of this, you can survive and love again.
I can't tell you what your words meant to me. Thanks for sharing !
Always hoping that you find the path that brings you the greatest happiness and peace... Hugs and Love
Just checking up to see how you are doing. xx
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