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.