Finding Peace

In the world of infertility you often feel as though you should be "game" for anything - you know that you are going through all of this to have a child and you can sometimes be made to feel selfish or unenlightened if you have a desire to have a biological child. If you want to be pregnant, you often have this niggling thought in the back of your mind that pregnancy should not be a goal - a baby should - and that means that you are always cautious when you talk about conceiving. I always made sure I talked about wanting a baby instead of saying "I want to be pregnant" for fear that I would be judged as… [more]

When you are struggling to conceive one of the things you long for the most is just to be normal. Nothing could make my jealousy peak more than when someone would tell of the fun and unique way they told their partner they were expecting. The innocence of a newly pregnant woman at only 8 weeks already planning her nursery and thinking about names would make me green with envy. The couple who talked about planning to have Johnny or Sally in the summer to coincide with vacation from teaching would literally make me want to scream. All of those reactions are very "normal" when you get pregnant easily, but when you stare at negative pregnancy tests month after… [more]

This is not really advice or guidance, but rather reassurance that your thoughts and feelings are normal. When you are struggling to conceive, or when the only thing you can think about is having a child it often seems as if EVERYONE is pregnant. I was reminded of this recently when having dinner with friends. Out of the four of us, two were pregnant, I am in the midst of caring for two infants, and one of the girls was just about to embark on more extensive fertility treatments after a year of trying Clomid therapy, every diagnostic test imaginable, and a couple of IUI attempts. I made efforts to put myself in her shoes (where I… [more]

When I was going through fertility procedures, I struggled with hating my body. I already had issues of self-loathing to deal with from things that happened to me in my childhood. The last thing I needed was a "defective" body that was preventing me from being able to share a bond with a child.

It is normal to become angry with your body for failing to work the way it is supposed to. When all of the people around you get pregnant after trying to conceive for only a month or two, it is easy to wonder what is so wrong with your body that it cannot do what most people's bodies seem to do with ease. It can be easy to think very negative… [more]

Are there any perks to being infertile? Maybe the use of the word "perks" is a stretch, but I have found some benefits to the delay in starting my family.

By the time my son came along, most of my friends had already completed their families. This meant that they had a lot of boy clothing that they no longer needed. I did not have to buy any clothing for my son until he turned four years old. In fact, I received so many hand-me-downs that I had enough to share with others. I could not even fit all of the clothing into my son's closet.

Because most of my friends were experienced parents by the time my son joined my family, I had many mentors… [more]

Is it possible to have positive thoughts while you are going through fertility treatments? I am the first to admit that I was not very good at it. I seriously doubt that I even tried. I truly believed that I needed a baby to be happy and that my life was going to be miserable until I held my baby in my arms.

I have been through other equally as challenging life circumstances since my infertility years, and I have learned that the thoughts we generate have a lot to do with how good or bad we feel in our current circumstances. Even when we are frustrated with our life circumstances, we can feel better about ourselves as we change our thoughts.

For most of… [more]

When you are in the midst of battling your fertility, it is easy to buy into the lie that every single moment of your life is terrible. As I was living through it, I believed that my entire 4-1/2 year journey to parenthood was one big dark cloud of pain. However, in retrospect, I realize that I have happy memories from events that happened during the time that I was going through fertility treatments.

There was my friend's wedding, where I was a bridesmaid and had to wear a knee brace that prevented me from bending my leg. Meanwhile, another bridesmaid had her foot in a cast and could not straighten out her leg. We looked like the bridal party had been a barroom brawl… [more]

Goodness knows, I could go on (and on and on and on and on) about the negative aspects of struggling with fertility. In fact, I have done just that in the Challenges category of this blog. But what about the good stuff? Is there anything good about struggling with your fertility? Believe it or not, I have found some good things about being infertile, although I could not see them until after I became a mother through adoption.

The first good thing is actually kind of funny. Hub and I went to a parenting class as we awaited our son's birth. I was the only woman there with a flat tummy, and everyone made a big fuss about having a hopeful adoptive mother join… [more]

While I was going through fertility treatments, I became very depressed. I found myself in a deep funk and had no idea how to pull myself out of it. I was listening to a talk radio show when a woman called in to talk about her own deep depression. The radio host asked her, "What have you done for somebody else lately?"

I thought that was a really weird question until I listened to the radio host's explanation. She talked about how depression keeps us focused on ourselves and that, when we reach outside of ourselves to help another person, we find relief from our own depression. I figured it was worth a shot. What did I have to lose?

It just so happened that a local… [more]

I just finished reading a fascinating book about reincarnation. I always believed that reincarnation was a silly concept (somehow I cannot see myself as a cockroach), but I found this book fascinating nonetheless. I cannot say that I am convinced that I have lived multiple lifetimes (and definitely not as a cockroach), but I did find a lot of underlying wisdom in this book.

The author talked about people having past lives (as humans, not as animals) and that our spirits have lessons to learn in each lifetime. The lessons are the same things you see in pretty much any religion, such as compassion, patience, and kindness. It talked about how what matters in life are the lessons we learn rather than… [more]