The IF Race - Dear Lucky Ones

First, thank you so much for the comments from my “I'm Sorry” post. I decided to leave it up for an extra day during ICLW so more people would have a chance to view it. I will still be doing 7 posts but in 8 days instead.

I was reflecting on potentially who MY infertility impacted (in the prior post) and it started to move into realizing how I, often times, judged other women that had gotten pregnant very easily or had several children. I decided to break it into 2 posts. Here goes part 2...

Dear "Lucky Ones",

I secretly questioned your parenting and why you were able to be a mother so easily and I had to work so hard. I judged you and your ability as a mother and whether you were deserving. I questioned your relationships with your husbands and families. I questioned how you intended to raise your children and turned my nose up if it didn't meet my HIGH expectations. I know this was wrong of me... it was the way that I chose to cope with my own pain.

I realized that I judged you about your fertility vs. my lack of fertility. It was like a race to me in that I was working so hard to get pregnant and therefore I should win (I am competitive in nature)! I thought that you weren't "allowed" to be pregnant because you didn't work as hard as I did. After all, I was getting 3 shots a day, waking up super early to go to the doctor, canceling my vacation plans, and in general scheduling my entire life around trying to get pregnant. How is that fair?

Well, there is no fair in infertility. It is not a race, that the harder you train, the more likely you are to win or the more deserving you are to have a baby. I can't compare my efforts to my ability to have or not have a child OR somehow think that you don't deserve a child as much as me because I worked harder. There isn't just a 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize here. Having a child does not require a set amount of desire, pain, time or effort. It does not mean the lack of any of these makes you less deserving! We all have the right to be a mother and it sucks that some of us have to go through such extraordinary steps to make it happen, if it ever does happen, that is.

 I know I am not alone as I have read that many women on their journey do exactly what I have done. It is natural and normal (I think). What I have learned from this is awareness and acceptance. I know we are all human, we are not perfect as wives, sisters, daughters, nieces, aunts and even mothers. We do the BEST that we have given what we know at the time. It is the only thing we can do. We are not bad people because this is how we cope.. it is just how we make it through some of the days on our journey.

I'm Sorry

Dear Fertile Friends and Family,

 I want to say I am sorry!  I am sorry for never seeing how my infertility impacted your lives.  I didn't think about the far reaching impact.  I only thought about how it impacted me and my husband directly. 

 To my parents, I didn't ever consider the fact that you might truly be grieving for a grandchild that you lost and may never have.  I didn't imagine that you might have longed to see your grandchild's first birthday or Christmas.  It didn't even cross my mind that you could be grieving for that in your life! I AM SORRY!

 To my siblings, I also didn't realize that you might really want to have a niece or nephew and how that touched your lives.

 For my friends, I dismissed the fact that my infertility could even impact you at all.  We are friends and that is that.  But that isn't true, I mean we are friends but it can't be taken for granted.  I didn't recognize that we were disconnected in some ways because I was not a mother and you were. I am SORRY!

To my co-workers, (These people mostly fall in the family and friends category because I work with a great group of people... I consider them to be my family and my friends.)  I know my infertility impacted you as well.  I started to change as a person. I retreated and isolated myself from you, at times.  I kept my infertility a secret because I didn't want to be treated different.  If you did know about my infertility and loss, you were scared to tell me about your joys of becoming a grandparent or a mother yourself.  I would never want to take away your happiness on something that is so important to you.  I AM sorry!

To everyone above, I know that infertility has impacted you in so many ways without actually walking through the shoes of IF.  I know that it is tough to see someone that you love and care about be in pain.  I also know that you felt helpless in all of it.  I know there were times that I got frustrated because you just didn't understand.  You didn't understand what I was going through because you never went through it yourself.  I hope this letter doesn't come to late.  There are some relationships that could have been truly devastated by my infertility because of my inability to cope with it.  I think I was able to see what was happening and finally make the changes necessary before it was too late. 

Is there a relationship that has been significantly changed because of your infertility?  Is there something that you can do today to help mend that relationship? Maybe you can pick up the phone, send a text, write a letter, extend the olive branch in some way to start to resolve a relationship that has been impacted.