Fourteen years ago, I embarked on a journey that I knew was one of my callings in life – Motherhood – an endeavor that I believed I was meant to undertake. What I didn’t anticipate was that becoming a mom would be the toughest challenge I would ever face.
I had never experienced true, life-altering hardship until I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility at age 24. I know that I was fortunate not to have faced a challenge of this magnitude until my twenties, and that fact is not lost on me, but without a doubt, this journey changed the trajectory of my life.
It is incredibly hard to share every detail of my story with you in 750 words, but my goal is to provide the big picture of the struggle that I faced, with the caveat that every single woman’s fertility story is hers.
Infertility defined my life day in and day out while I was trying to have children. My days, like other infertility warriors, were consumed with taking my temperature, charting, doctors’ appointments, injections, and managing my diet and exercise. It was my sole focus whether my husband was home or traveling. During his 4 deployments in two years, my eyes were on the prize with research on treatments, holistic alternatives, and more doctor appointments. Call it strength or stubbornness, I was determined to become a mom. I naively thought that after I had my first child in 2011, my infertility would resolve itself. So, when pregnancy didn’t happen a second time a few years later, my stubbornness, or strength, propelled me back inside the ring with infertility.
The turning point for me happened on a summer night in Oklahoma while I was hosting a pool party. Laughter, water splashing, and the smell of food cooking on the barbecue were all just a few feet away from me on the other side of the bathroom window, where I was lying on the icy cold tile floor.
I was crippled with hopelessness. The hopelessness originated from anger. The anger was a byproduct of years of grit, tenacity, unconditional love, and silent suffering that I buried in the deepest, darkest places inside me until that night when I no longer had the strength to conceal the pain.
No one tells you that you will literally give your entire life to the endeavor of having children and most women, like me, do it completely alone. The icy, cold feelings of loneliness and hopelessness flooded my thoughts, and I decided that there had to be a better way to move through this a second time. Once I realized that I had the ability to choose how this journey played out, I was able to find strength for myself again. It was in that life-changing moment that I decided infertility would no longer define my life.
I rose up off that bathroom floor and chose to forgo being silent as I waded back into the waters of fertility treatment and, ultimately, the adoption process. I knew that I would have a hard time finding hope, so I brought people into my circle who could hope for me. They became my cheerleaders, my 2am phone calls, and the arms that held me upright some days. It was the single most courageous decision I made along my journey.
To the woman who is walking through infertility and feels like she has nothing left, I see you.
To the woman who wonders what all the hormone injections, temperature taking, and blood draws are for. I get it.
To the woman lying on the icy cold bathroom floor, I see you.
To the woman whose bank account is depleted and whose marriage is on the verge of collapse because of the journey. I get it.
To the woman who needs a little bit of light and hope, I am with you.
