I see you. 

I see you buying the 50-pack of ovulation sticks from Amazon, because your cycle is never regular. I see you using those sticks every day, just waiting. Waiting for the rollercoaster to begin. 

I see you. Googling every symptom during the two-week wait. Every month you tell yourself you won’t, but again, you break down. Out of desperation, you start thinking of your symptoms. You’re obsessing over the possibility of “maybe”.

I see you. Loving an imaginary baby, month after month. You calculate the due date, you imagine the gender. You take good care of yourself and cut out everything bad . . . just in case. 

I see you. Taking too many pregnancy tests in hopes of two lines. Month after month. After month. After month. To see stark white. Nothing but white, where there should be pink. 

I see you. I see you angry at yourself, for letting yourself experience hope again, for being crushed again. For not protecting yourself. For spending days not being able to pick yourself up, because your body failed again. Because you loved something made up in your imagination. 

I see you. Mustering strength. Pulling yourself back up. Sharing in genuine happiness for all of your pregnant friends, their ultrasounds, their announcements, their baby showers. 

I see you. But I also see when you cry, when you have to break down, when the jealousy stings your heart, and you hate yourself for it. 

I see you. I see you in the days where you just don’t want to start over again. You are so tired of the rollercoaster. Month after month. Sometimes years. The constant rollercoaster. 

I see you. I see you not wanting to talk about the pain of it, because now it feels like it’s become an old record to everyone. I see you realizing you just have to pick yourself back up. 

I see you. I see you knowing your husband is right there by your side, and he’s been nothing but loving and strong. But sometimes you still feel so alone. 

I see you. I see you being gentle to yourself. I see you letting go, and somehow getting yourself and your strength back. Strength to do it all over again. Another month. Another rollercoaster of high and lows, of hope and grief. 

I see your strength. You’re the strongest of the strong. The fiercest of the fierce. The most resilient. 

I see you not giving up trying, not hopping off the rollercoaster, but instead staying on it because your heart aches for that baby. 

I see you. You are not alone. We’re all right here, on the rollercoaster ride, holding onto hope. Silent tear after silent tear.

You may also like:

Infertility Has Refined My Marriage In Ways I Never Expected

5 Things I Wish People Knew About Infertility 

Infertility Wrecked Me and Made Me Stronger

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Check out our new Keepsake Companion Journal that pairs with our So God Made a Mother book!

Order Now
So God Made a Mother's Story Keepsake Journal

Kaleigh Christensen

Kaleigh is a stay at home mom, wife, and former Kindergarten teacher. In her spare time she loves to write about the things that matter. She shares real and honest vulnerability about the ups and downs of motherhood, marriage, infertility, miscarriage, and just plain life. She loves to inspire others to find the beauty mixed in with the mess of life. To read more of her writings, like her Facebook page, Messy Footprints, @MessyFootprints

Mom Showed Me What It Means to Be a Caregiver

In: Grief, Grown Children, Loss
Grown woman with her mother smiling, color photo

My mother is an extraordinary woman. She inspires me to be a better person. She has spent seven years selflessly caring for my father after a horrific battle with Stage IV tongue cancer. During this time she would laugh with me, cry with me, and express her fears and frustrations with me. My mother is the definition of strength and courage while surrounded by heartbreak and human suffering. During the time my mother was taking care of my father she had her own health issues. Her colon perforated in 2012 making her critically ill. It’s nothing short of a miracle...

Keep Reading

Mom May Never See Our Home, but Her Love Lives Here

In: Grief, Loss
Cute and quaint house, color photo

To the average person, it was a typical Wisconsin Friday in October—wet, dreary, and a bit nippy. To my wife and me, it was a day of both elation and sadness. We put in an offer on a house we both loved. My wife spotted it a few days beforehand; we toured it alongside a couple of other options, and just knew it was the one. And we did it without our mothers. Her mother died seven and a half years before. At the end of October was the three-year anniversary of my mother’s death. There’s something to be said...

Keep Reading

This is How to Support Miscarriage Moms

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Woman with arm around another woman sitting in field

When you hear the term miscarriage, what do you think? My initial thought was the loss of an unborn child, but have you ever really wondered what truly happens when you are having a miscarriage? Our first miscarriage occurred immediately after our wedding in 2019, we had a chemical pregnancy after conceiving while on our honeymoon. This means we had a positive pregnancy test, but by the time we got to our OB/GYN, I had the heaviest period of my life, resulting in a negative serum pregnancy test. That was hard enough to go through but was nothing compared to...

Keep Reading

Every Four Weeks, That Old Heartache Comes Again

In: Loss, Motherhood
Woman sitting with pregnancy test sad

I’m not a failure, I am an infertility warrior. I’ve had to tell myself this countless times and on more occasions than I’d like to admit. The word infertility never even crossed my mind as I was a fairly healthy woman with no medical concerns and a regular cycle since my teenage years. My husband and I were married in 2015, and at the time, I had just finished my sixth year of teaching. We loved to travel and enjoy time together, so the following year we agreed that we needed one more summer of just us before we began...

Keep Reading

Sometimes God Sends a Double Rainbow

In: Baby, Loss, Motherhood
Two sacs as seen in early pregnancy sonogram

I lay on the ultrasound table prepared to hear the worst. While this pregnancy wasn’t totally expected, it was a miracle for me. I knew with the current stress in my life and the symptoms of a miscarriage, I may have to face another heartbreak to my series of heartbreaks over the last two years. I questioned what I did wrong to deserve it all. I prayed I had been stronger in my prior life: to have made better decisions. So I lay there, I held my breath, and I waited as the tech put the cold jelly over my...

Keep Reading

My Daddy Is In the Arms of Jesus

In: Grief, Loss
Grown daughter walking with older father

My daddy went home to the arms of Jesus just a few short days before Christmas. My family was given the greatest gift of time with him individually to speak the words they needed him to hear and to listen to the words he wanted to say. It was a gift we are beyond grateful for because we know not everyone has that time with their loved ones before they go, especially now. So, yes, I am grateful, but I miss him. I awoke this morning with a dance happening in my heart. The dance of grief and joy. I...

Keep Reading

Even Though You Left Too Soon, You Gave Me Hope

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Early sonogram image

This was the fifth time I’d seen those two pink lines letting me know that a baby was on the way, but I only had one child to show for it, so I’d learned to damper my happiness and excitement. Each miscarriage brought its own unique flavor—one was marked by anxiety, another anger, deep sadness, and then apathy. I’d learned not to get too close to a pregnancy, but this time I leaned into it in a way I hadn’t before. There was a tender and growing elation, and I felt immediate love and gratitude. Sure, there was no telling...

Keep Reading

We Picked up Our Daughter’s Ashes Yesterday

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Mother holding decorative urn in baby's room, color photo

We picked up her ashes yesterday . . . our daughter’s ashes. Though the funeral home was only about an hour away, the trip felt like an eternity. I stared blankly out the window for most of the drive, somewhat calmed by the cocktail of medications I had been placed on and was brought back to reality only by the occasional pain searing through my abdomen. When we arrived, the parking lot was completely empty. Snow lined the edges of the lot, and the sun shone all too brightly. We had assumed the funeral director would be there to greet...

Keep Reading

The Hardest Prayer I Ever Prayed

In: Cancer, Grief, Loss, Motherhood
Bald-headed little girl in hospital bed with her mama, color photo

Trigger warning: Child loss I had a plan for summertime fun with my children. We had just returned from a week-long road trip to the Grand Canyon. I intentionally planned to fill the rest of the summer with activities that would chase away boredom. Craft supplies had been purchased, day trips had been planned, and we were just beginning a week of Vacation Bible School. Excitement was in the air! Yet a tiny nagging fear kept resurfacing: Was there something wrong with my 2-year-old? Ever since she turned two back in the fall, she had become fussy. Our healthy, happy...

Keep Reading

My Mom Passed away and I Don’t Know Who I Am Anymore

In: Grief, Loss
Mother and daughter on a carousel ride, older color photo

For the last sixteen months of her life, I was one of my mother’s primary caregivers, and now that she’s gone, I feel lost. My beautiful, strong, hilarious, and fun-loving mom not only survived but thrived after a heart attack and open-heart surgery at age 67. So 10 years later, we were all surprised to learn that the aortic aneurysm with which she had lived for over a decade had expanded to dangerous territory. We were told she would soon die without another risky open-heart surgery. The one thing my mother feared more than going into surgery was death. Her...

Keep Reading