How I lived through the grief of infertility by Alice Rose
It wasn’t the longest journey.
I did not lose any pregnancies.
How then, can I profess to understand the grief of infertility? Or write about how I lived through it?
Grief is ‘very great sadness, especially at the loss of someone’.
I don’t think I even realised at the time, month after month, that I was in fact grieving someone; someone who I didn’t yet know, who didn’t yet physically exist.
Someone who I longed to hold, care for, love.
We had ten failed rounds of fertility treatment (Clomid and then Ovulation induction via injections) and for each one, I had to grieve the loss of the baby we had hoped to create.
Before this there was grief too; when we realised we’d need treatment, I grieved the loss of many things.
The loss of the dream of:
How we would become pregnant
How I would announce it
The versions of me before experiencing infertility
Others might be grieving the loss of genetics if they go through donor conception; the loss of a pregnancy; the loss of an embryo that didn’t develop, or implant. The loss experienced when a treatment cycle is abandoned or cancelled.
There is no comparison between the experiences of people who are trying to bring home children - how could there be when so many different grief journeys exist?
We have to let ourselves feel as sad, desolate and grief stricken as we need to - because only through truly letting this pain be, will we be able to process it.
Do not ask yourself why you’re finding it so hard, or compare (‘Sarah at work has been through 8 losses and 7 years and I’m only 18 months in…I should be able to deal with this’) and equally, if you have been through many years or losses: make sure you get the support you need.
I had a counsellor, she was wonderful - but while the sessions we had were needed, I knew if I really wanted to live through this I had to do the work at home too.
My true processing happened mostly outside of that room. Me and my morning pages transformed and transmuted the grief from all consuming, to finding out that in order for it not to be - I needed to live my life too. I needed to reconnect with who I was. The version of myself as I existed in that moment; the new version of me.
If the communities that exist now had been available for me then - that’s where I would have gone too.
There are many different modalities that exist to regulate the nervous system and process emotions too like tapping, breathwork, yoga, shaking, dancing.
Learning how our brains and neuroscience affects our ability to process grief - for example, did you know 30 minutes of walking a day has been shown to positively impact the architecture of the brain?
Everyone experiences infertility differently. Your journey is important and living through the grief in a way that honours your loss; supports your need for feeling it and finds the best, most gentle ways through to the other side - is all available. Support is here and it can really, really work.
Take care.
Alice Rose