About a year after my son was born, the millions of questions about if my husband and I were going to give him a sibling came in fast & furious. Of course we said we were planning on giving him a sibling, but we were planning on waiting a little longer to start trying again. After starting to try an conceive again in August of 2015, here we are almost three years later: three fertility treatments, three rounds of meds in and still no sign of becoming parents for a second time.
We only tried for eight months to get pregnant with our son, despite knowing it could be hard to get pregnant due to me having Endometriosis & PCOD. We certainly were blessed with being able to conceive in under a year. This time around, I know it was going to be even harder to conceive because as I get older my Endo & PCOD keep getting worse. Regardless of knowing that it could be harder, it’s still so difficult to accept.
Unlike primary infertility, with secondary infertility there’s this unspoken stigma attached to it. Since you’ve already had a child, there’s this perception that you should be happy with what you have and that those who have never conceived are worse off than you. I feel like secondary infertility puts me in such a different predicament: I feel like I shouldn’t grieve about being infertile even though I am still experiencing all those same things those without any children are going through. Yet, I feel guilty about feeling sad.
An important thing to remember is that someone you know may also be going through it. Up until recently, I didn’t want people to know the private hell I was going through in regard to this infertility. It wasn’t until I started talking about it with a private group of moms who I’ve known since I was pregnant with my son that I decided I wasn’t going to be quiet about it anymore. I deserved to get my feelings out, to let it be known that I was struggling, and in return I have connected with several others who have or who are on the same journey. It also helps to have someone to turn to because on more occasions that I care to admit, the thought has crossed my mind to blurt out “I’ll tell you how our next insemination goes, after my husband ejaculates into a cup and we rush it over to our doctor’s office” upon the ENDLESS questions of when we will be expanding our family. Obviously, I never said anything remotely similar. Instead, I smiled with the response, “We are hoping to very soon!.”
I owe it to those who have been there for me, whether they’re going through the same thing or they are just being supportive, for keeping me together enough to not respond with anything but grace. It’s real and it’s awful, and no one should ever have to go through it alone.
Almost three years in to this secondary infertility journey & I feel like the stigma is still very much alive. In my opinion, the bottom line is that when you are told you can’t do something as natural as carry a baby {you know, what women were made to do}, it hits you at your very core. No one should ever feel ashamed or apologize for feeling the way we do. No one should ever have to go through it alone. Instead, we should use our experience to help others who are on this same, extremely difficult journey. You never know who you could be helping by sharing your own story.
