By Olivia Grist 
I’ve been quiet about our journey with infertility for a few months. I’ve had things to say, I’ve rehearsed this post a dozen times in my head, I’ve even started to type it a few times, but I can’t find the right words.
I guess the problem isn’t so much with finding the words as it is with reading them once they are typed out. I know my heart, God knows my heart, and my husband knows my heart, and that should be all that matters. But unfortunately, it isn’t. I would love to stand (metaphorically. I’m in bed with 3 dogs, a snoring husband, and an acai bowl) in front of you and tell you that fear of judgment never crosses my mind. Again, unfortunately it’s not true.
A few months ago, we made the decision to stop taking the handful of fertility meds that I was filling my body with every month. Not because we don’t want a baby or because we have given up hope, but simply put, because I missed our life before we became the people who were struggling to get pregnant.
Aside from all crazy hot flashes, emotional ups and downs, and painful acne that took control of my life, I missed our marriage. I missed having sex because it was fun. I missed being excited for the future, even without the possibility of a baby.
There are several different personality types, I happen to have one that’s obsessive. It can be such a blessing; my house is clean 99% of the time, I am completely dedicated to my workout routine, and I can whip up a blog post or social media content in 20 minutes once an idea comes to mind. But it can also be a curse, and in the case of infertility, it’s a constant reminder of how you’re failing at something that your body was created for.
I know that everyone who offers advice and shares personal experience on this topic means well and always has good intentions, but I don’t think I can stand to hear the phrase “it will happen when you stop focusing on it” one more time. I saw a pair of boots a few weeks ago that I wasn’t sure if I wanted, so I left without them, only to realize on the way home that I actually did want them. A few days later, I went back, and they were gone. I haven’t stopped searching Amazon for them since.
It got to the point where the thought of sex would make me cringe. My husband has been nothing but supportive and has never made me feel like this was my burden, but the feeling of guilt would take over, like this was all my fault. It was my fault that sex was now “scheduled,” that every window would be open in the middle of the night, that I was becoming hard to be around because my husband never knew who he would find when he got home each night, the crying, emotional wreck that I had become, or a glimmer of his wife that he used to know, who had an existence before obsessing over this little {very important} thing she couldn’t do.
And so we decided to stop the medication, take a break maybe. We wanted to spend this time that God’s given us as two people who aren’t currently responsible for any other people, who just love being together. We wanted to enjoy the holiday season and all of the blessings that we have. We wanted to be grateful instead of being absorbed by thoughts of the future – what about the now?
I wanted to trust God with this, and instead, it just became one more thing I was trying to control. If I could just find the right medication, see the right doctor, time sex perfectly… me. me. me.
And when I type this out, all I can think is how selfish this probably sounds. I would judge me for this. I would judge you for this, I probably have. I would read this post and my takeaway would be simple; she obviously doesn’t really want a baby as much as she says she does.
You might be right. Maybe. I don’t have a rebuttal for that thought right now, and after months of playing this out in my mind, I’m finally okay with that. I don’t need one. You don’t need one. We don’t owe each other explanations for the choices we make for our bodies, our marriages, our families, or our futures.
If you’ve ever made a choice in the interest of being your best, feeling your best, providing your best, or loving your hardest and you felt judged for it, I’m sorry. It might not have been me who made you feel that way, but it was someone like me. It was someone like you. It was someone like one of us.
How many times do we hear a choice that a woman makes and we roll our eyes, or maybe we smile politely, all the while, thinking about how we would have done it differently, done it better maybe. I do it all the time. Every single day. I make hypothetical choices about situations that I am ridiculously blessed to have never been in, all the while, judging someone who has the very real weight of that burden. God didn’t give me those struggles and I don’t deserve an opinion on them. However, He did give me this one, and it’s only because He thinks I can handle it or He wants me to learn from it, or hopefully both.
I don’t know when the day will come that we get to welcome a baby, when I’ll get to spend the middle of the night changing diapers instead of blogging, or when I’ll get to teach that little human how to be compassionate and kind to others – but I do know that I can’t possibly teach it if I never learn it myself. Raising baby will come, but maybe growing into the mom I know I’ll need to be one day is the first step.
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