~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My husband and I have been struggling with infertility for years now with no end in sight, so, as you can imagine, it’s extremely important that I lock down the kind of mother I am going to be as soon as possible. I think about it constantly. It started as a distraction from Googling “very, very early pregnancy symptoms” during the two week wait of infertility treatment cycles, but it soon became something of an obsession.
“How did you know what to say just there?” I’ll ask my friend, Sarit, as I hear her over the phone answering one of her daughter’s adorable questions. Sarit’s tone is so calm, her words so knowing and loving. My pen and paper are at the ready.
“What did I say?” she’ll ask, as she comes back on. “I don’t remember.”
I put my pen down.
Is being a mother instinctual for everyone? Will it be this way for me?
As virtually all my friends are parents, I see countless articles posted on Facebook about how to sleep train a baby in the gentlest way possible, how to talk to your toddler about their feelings, how to raise strong daughters and sensitive sons, and I will read them all. I’ll read them and think about them and consider them and then I’ll forward them to a folder in my Gmail named “Baby?” The question mark reminds me that I may or may not ever have one – a reminder you wouldn’t think necessary as I take my sixth dose of hormones for the day, hoping that the embryo transferred into my uterus last week is implanting into the lining.
It’s easy, though, to fall down this wormhole of advice and recommendations and best practices. It’s even easier than you think to do when you don’t actually have a real, live baby- only a pretend one. Right now everything I read works like a charm! It helps to be prepared, to do something useful. I want to be a mother so desperately and because the success of every infertility treatment cycle is so completely out of my hands, I furrow my empty nest with information.
But how did you all know what information is the right information? I imagine that the sweet little baby I dream of holding in my arms might not necessarily inherit its mother’s love of reading and could very well come into this world not fully caught up on all the latest articles and parenting trends. What will I do then? I lost my own mother eleven years ago, and while I strongly disagree with virtually all of her mothering of me, it feels uncertain and terrifying still, to become a mother without my own to lean on.
So I worry. I worry about the mother I am going to be to the baby I can’t get pregnant with. Because I have tried so hard for this baby and have gone through so much to create them, I feel like they deserve the very best mother. Thinking this, I find myself quite out of nowhere the other day, talking to the little embryo that may or may not have implanted itself into my uterine lining. Could it know its future mother has no idea what she’s doing? Could the other failed embryos have sensed my lack of confidence!? I lie back on the couch with a firm hand on my belly.
“Can you feel me embryo?” I reassure it. “Can you feel my strength?”
“I’m here for you,” I say. “We’ll figure this whole thing out together.”
And we will, won’t we? We’ll figure this all out. I assure it that despite everything I’ve read I have no expectations. I don’t need him or her to be brilliant or talented or above-average in any way at all. Saying this out loud, I feel some of my fear begin to slip away. I’m not trying to raise a super child here; just a child. And that child might not sleep through the night or be as in touch with their emotions as experts say they could be-but hopefully, no matter what I read, they’ll just be kind. I just want them to be kind and I’m not sure you can read that in an article. So until they get here, I will keep focusing on being kind to those around me myself. Should I be lucky enough to have a child at all, I just want them to have a good heart. I want them to love our cat and dog, care deeply about the planet, show tenderness and compassion to those around them. I hope they will rise and flourish in their own special way so that they may eventually grow up to write a blog post about how their mother did everything wrong.
Wendy is currently writing a web series about her experience with infertility, called “How To Buy A Baby.” You can check out the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLqSlmok9KA or check them out at howtobuyababy.com.
Oh infertility is so terrifying – it’s all the unknowns and I think it’s totally natural to try to want to surround yourself with information. It’s both an escape from the current terror of not knowing whether you will ever have a child and a way to rationalize away hard feelings. We were lucky and I feel like I can’t compete with Wendy’s feelings (not that infertility should ever be a competition). We went from a startling prognosis telling us that our only option of we could get any viable sperm at all was Ivf with icsi. Now I say we were lucky in that it worked the first try. So I cannot fathom having to do that more than once. It’s awful on so many levels but I can say without knowing Wendy at all, that she shouldn’t worry about the type of mother she will be – she cares so much and she will always care. I think the one thing infertility did for me is to love so hard and to sacrifice other parts of my life because when it did happen, everything else material fell away. I so hope that this is your cycle and that all your note taking can transfer to something else.