Stepping out of the darkness...together

....This post was from earlier in the summer.... I am just getting around to editing and publishing it now. 

The winter and spring were dark times.  I didn't realize it at the time, but there was a quiet undertone in my thoughts, where I blamed myself for what I was feeling.

I chose fertility over adoption, again.  Maybe it was the wrong choice. 

My body failed us, again.  

If I had made my life fuller, and crafted more meaning and purpose in other arenas of my life, maybe this loss wouldn't hurt so much. 

I shouldn't need so much support.  

Why me, why us, why our baby, AGAIN? 

Today, I realize it wasn't all my fault.  We made choices together with the best information we had at the time to get here.  There were a lot of compounding factors.  There was just so much to grieve.   I remind myself that my three pregnancies and four babies were (and are) a big deal.   That our infertility is a big deal.   That is why I was (and am) grieving.    

I want to write it out here so that I remember.  So, if I ever have to visit those depths again I can re-read this.   They are not excuses.  They were my reality.

Note to self:  You can't control how you feel.   It is ok to grieve, even if it takes a long time.  There were compound factors to my situation.  

There was a recipe to my grief:

Winter weather

+

The cumulative grief of infertility and loss

+ 

A lack of social support

+ 

Social isolation

+ 

Hormonal manipulation &  pregnancy/miscarriage hormonal factors

+

No positive distractions

=

Grief, Depression & Anxiety

We have been at the cottage since early May. We've made plans to return home, which have changed again and again. Now finally, we have arranged to travel back in the third week of August. I love it here- and already I feel sad about leaving. We have been away for much longer than planned originally and we need to check in at home. 

Taking a fertility break for this long was not what I originally wanted, but it is what I got. It has been so tremendously healing. Eating, drinking, and no pills. Ahhh. 

I/we needed this time and place to recharge so desparately. I am still fragile but at least I feel that I have time to glue the pieces back together.  

Sadly though, this summer, D has sunk farther into his depression.  His anxiety has also grown. 

After a big talk yesterday, I understand now that he needs more support from me.  I am all he has, his friends and family only talk about only "level 1" topics as we refer to it.  He needs more support. 

He's grieving heavily.  He is sad about turning 38. He is very sad about not having children.  About the big changes that have happened in his industry.  About his loss of spirituality, and about the loss of mine.   I think he may be sad about being away from home, and his friends too, but he insists he likes being where we are, but yes, he does miss 'his people' at home.  

His grief is expressed a lot different than my grief, and it is harder for me to recognize.  His grief is angrier.  It is moody.  It is grumpy.  It is more frustrated.  It is lonely.  It is less sexual.  It often seems more mad than sad.  It worries, a lot.  All of those symptoms are hidden in other places and situations, and not necessarily discussed within the context of infertility and loss.  

At times, even when I do recognize his grief,  I've been selfishly shielding myself.  I am embarrassed and ashamed to admit this.  However,  I have been treading water for so long myself, I was exhausted.  I finally felt like I could see the shore.  Getting back in the water with him is difficult. I feel like I barely escaped it the last time. 

After our chat, I know he needs me to swim beside him. To be his lifeguard.  So, I'll be jumping in more.  

I wish I could waive my magic wand and make things all better for him.   It's so hard to see him suffer. 

The missing piece

I left my professional career for a few reasons. The main ones were because a) I felt like it was sucking the life out of me, b) I wanted to be a stay at home mom, and c) I was convinced that I needed only some time and (ewww, I hate to admit this),  a little less stress to figure things out a.k.a. solve our infertility problem, become pregnant, give birth and live happily ever after, the end.

What started as a one-year leave of absence from my employment turned into a resignation and four years gone by.   I’ve cherished a lot of the time that I’ve had.  And I've been through some pretty rough stuff too, including coming this.close to losing my sister to a massive stroke and helping her rehabilitate.  I’ve been able to do some things and learn about myself in a way that I don’t think I could have, had I remained in the rat-race.  At my job I was work-alcoholic fueled by coffee, anxiety, and positive reinforcement.  It wasn’t a pretty combination.

I spent a portion the last four years going back to school.  It started as something to do and a strategy to keep my grey-matter from becoming mush.   A few courses turned into a few more, and the next thing I knew I had signed up for a full year of classes to complete a degree.  I’m tremendously grateful for the opportunity to learn just for the sake of learning.  I think it might just be one of the greatest luxuries in the world.  I love learning.  I just wish more of it stayed in my head!

One of the first courses I completed was also one of the most valuable and fascinating. It was a class in positive psychology.  We studied questions such as “what makes a happy life?”  The professor taught us that this question is probably the wrong one.  And eudaimonic wellbeing is really what we should be talking about. 

A person could think of it as happiness = pleasure, and eudaimonia = human flourishing.   Eudaimonia is arguably made up of several things.  One of which is having meaning in your life.  

(This website provides a detailed explanation if you are so inclined.  It’s a bit of a read, but it is definitely faster than taking a course in positive psychology!

http://www.positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/eudaimonia/34-the-concept-of-eudaimonic-well-being.html)

I often question why I want to be a parent.  Sometimes I think that maybe it is just a biological need, and can’t be explained?  I wonder, if I am just trying to fill this “meaning-void” with a little one when it could be filled with something else? Like maybe a different career?  I wonder if parenting is going to live up to my expectations? I wonder about my marriage. Parenting can be stressful. Will D and I get along as well as we do now, or will we grow closer in our new roles?

D and I agree that our search for parenthood is tied closely with our search for meaning in this life. I strongly desire the full-circle life experience that only parenting is able to provide.  I want to grow in my view of the world by seeing it through the eyes of a child.  Sometimes when the IF road becomes really rough, I wonder if I could instead find meaning in another life pursuit to compensate for a life that is childfree?  If all of the time, effort and money were spent somewhere else, would I have a better sense of wellbeing?

As we debate important decisions about OE or DE in our upcoming journey, I can’t help but wonder if it is silly for us (personally) to be chasing a genetic connection to a child?  Is it going to change the amount of meaning we get from being parents?  Nope.  Will it bring us less pleasure? Doubt it.  

Maybe for us DE is a better choice, as it has a higher probability of making us parents (and sooner)?

5 years

Five years is what I'm thinking about today.  Five years of dealing with IF has changed me, my friendships and my marriage.

Some good things have happened in my marriage because of IF.  There's no doubt.  D and I have grown stronger, learned a lot more about each other and what it means to support each other through something really hard.  We have dealt with the repeated loss and grief associated with infertility and we're still standing...together.   It has been difficult, and there have been fights and silence too.  But I think we are much stronger together because of IF.

It's sad to me that many mornings, D asks me how I'm feeling right away.  He can see my mood before I've even had a chance to really notice it.  He knows that some days I wake up in a cloak of sadness or anxiety.  Nothing may have changed from the day before, but somedays this burden feels heavier.  I'm sad that D has to see me like this and sad that I have to feel like this.

In my friendships, I've learned to be more comfortable around someone else's grief.  I've learned to not judge another's choices when they are grieving or in difficult situations.  Because, honestly you don't know how you'll react until you get there.  It has also made me more guarded in my friendships.  I no longer am as easy going about what I do and when I do it.  I'm cautious now, thinking about things like what fertility related news I may have just received, and whether I'll want to go to that gathering with a million kids.  I like to plan my "baby hangovers", (the fall out I feel after spending time with beautiful families) carefully.

Five years in, I not only think of the changes in my relationships.  I think about how IF has affected me.  I used to think that "everything happens for a reason", now I simply don't.   I think things are random and unexplainable.  I don't think God controls everything, and this is scary and relieving all at the same time.   IF has robbed me of feeling hope the way I used to.  It's robbed me of feeling like you just have to work hard enough to get what you want.