Infertility, pregnancy loss, and my relationship with my body

It’s National Infertility Awareness Week and we’re wearing orange to help raise awareness and show support for those in the trenches of infertility. Today I did some stretching after Piper’s walk and I snapped this picture. It made me think about the complicated relationship I’ve had with my body for so long and the whole new layer infertility has added to it. 

For years I hated my body because of the chronic pain and other symptoms caused by my connective tissue disorder. I felt like it was always against me and constantly causing me problem after problem. But one day I realized that mindset wasn’t serving me and I started making a conscious effort to change how I viewed my body.

I committed to doing a self-love meditation every day where I would tell my body, “I love you, I am listening.” I know it sounds a little “woo-woo” but it actually made a difference. Eventually, the way I saw my body started to shift. Instead of focusing on my pain and limitations, I began to thank my body for all it allows me to do. I began to show it love and compassion. And damn did it feel good. 

But then infertility crept into my world. And my relationship with my body began to feel strained again. I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life, but struggling with infertility for the past few years has caused a unique kind of pain that’s hard to articulate. 

Infertility is not just wanting to have a baby and not being able to. It is a profound loss of control over your life and your body. The feeling of repeated failure. The loss of time and dreams for the future. The shattering of the picture you had of how your life was supposed to look. It is ongoing trauma in the name of hope for something that seems to get further away as each month passes.

When I finally got pregnant last summer, I thought it meant the ride on this roller coaster was over. But after we lost the baby, my faith in my body hit an all-time low. It was supposed to be the place that nurtured and kept my child safe, and it failed. It couldn’t do the one thing a woman’s body is designed to do.

For a while after my pregnancy loss I blamed myself and my body. My faulty body that has let me down time and time again. But this time it felt like my body didn’t just let me down. It let my child down. And that broke my heart. 

But as I’ve ridden the waves of grief and worked on healing my heart over the last 8 or so months, I’ve realized that none of this is my fault, and it’s not my body’s fault either. Infertility is an incredibly hard part of life but it is not my fault. And it isn’t yours either. If you’re also in the trenches of infertility or pregnancy loss, I want you to know that. And I hope you’ll join me in trying to learn to love your body again. Because hating it and blaming it isn’t serving you, I promise you that. 

No one should have to go through infertility or pregnancy loss. But if you have, I want you to take a second and recognize how strong and amazing you are. I know you’re tired of being strong. You never wanted to have to be this strong. Infertility is unfair and I don’t understand why it has to happen to some of us.

I don’t know what the future holds for me or for you. What I do know is that if you’re walking a similar road, your body and spirit have been through so much and the grief you’ve experienced has probably changed you. But if you let it, it can change you for the better. It can deepen you. As I’ve written before, pain can give us a unique perspective on life that we wouldn’t otherwise have. Knowing that is what helps me get through it and make some kind of sense out of infertility.

I’ll wrap up with the words from a book that really helped me after my loss about how this grief changes us:

“I don’t see how [it] could not change me. But change isn’t bad. The new me is much more grateful, much more appreciative of all that is good in my life. The new me is more compassionate, more aware that people are suffering with secret things all around me. The new me has a better perspective on life, takes things in stride, sees the proverbial forest for the trees. Maybe all these changes would have come naturally with age, but maybe not. All I know is that I quite like who I am now.”

-Kim Hooper, All the Love

Here’s to learning to like, and maybe even begin to love, the person we are becoming because of the pain and struggles we’ve been through.