The Worst Part...

In my opinion, the worst thing about infertility is how alone you feel. I mean, I get it, if you don’t have kids then you are probably alone more than people who do. That’s not what I am talking about. I mean, when you are infertile you can be in a room full of hundreds or thousands of people and still feel alone. It is amazing how every step of the journey towards a family sets you apart from the groups you had previously belonged to.

On November 2, eight days before my wedding, I received my infertility diagnosis. I was alone then too, because J didn’t think it was something he needed to go to. Over the next few years I slowly lost people I had been close to, because they had children and I was hurt and jealous. It was mostly my fault because I couldn’t stand hearing about being pregnant, or listen to their kids in the background during phone calls. To this day I haven’t even met most of those friend’s children. I had some friends dump me. One even told me she couldn’t be friends anymore because my inability to have children made her feel bad.

But, as time moved on, I made a new group of infertile friends. I met them online and at RESOLVE meetings and things were great. They were smart and funny and we never talked about kids, unless we were detailing our latest treatment cycle or commiserating over seeing pregnant women everywhere.  But then, the same thing started happening. One by one many of them got pregnant and began to drop away. At the time I just thought they were some strange version of Fair Weather Friend that used me for support when they needed it and then couldn’t or wouldn’t offer it back when their situation changed. But now that I am one of the lucky ones, I know that’s not the case either.

When I got pregnant with Delilah I wanted to talk to my friends desperately. I needed them still, but I didn’t dare utter a word because I knew how much it would hurt them. While spending days alone in my room on bed rest I wondered over and over “What the hell have I done? Do I even want this?”. But I literally had no one I could share this with, no one to talk to me and tell me that it would be alright besides one friend whom I texted constantly and then felt guilty about because she may never get to be pregnant, and even then I tried not to talk about it.

When I had Delilah I was just lost. What the hell was I supposed to do with this demanding little thing? It’s not like I had any friends to ask, because I either hadn’t talked to them for years because they had children without fertility treatments, or they were still infertile themselves and listening to me complain about how hard it was to be a mom was not high on their lists of things to do. It’s like I finally got to join the “Mom Club” but didn’t feel like I belonged there, because I was just masquerading as a mom.