National Infertility Awareness Week: There's so much we didn't know
/If you ask anyone who's encountered infertility, they'll probably tell you the exact same thing:
There's so much we didn't know.
Infertility is a diagnosis no one wants, and no one wants to talk about. At least, I know I felt like talking about it would make it more possible for the infertility goblins to come find me.
As part of National Infertility Awareness Week, I want to introduce you to a term I discovered last summer:
"secondary infertility."
This is infertility that shows up AFTER you've become pregnant successfully without any medical interventions like IUI, IVF or medical boosters like ovulation shots. This means that for some reason, your body was able to get pregnant once (or many times) before, but now something has changed, and it's just not happening.
I've been pregnant twice in my life. And both times it was "like clockwork." We tried once the first time and were pregnant. We tried once the second time and were pregnant. Both times felt like miracles because I'm intimately acquainted with my friends' infertility journeys. I knew then what I know now: it's a goddamn miracle to get pregnant.
I've written a lot on my blog and on Instagram about the children we've lost. I'm a mother; my babies just aren't with me on this side of Earth.
We lost them six months apart.
Bunny was 21.5 weeks in March 2019 when we lost her; Briony was 16 weeks when we lost her in December 2019.
After both losses, I kept petitioning the universe with my thanks—thank you that we can get pregnant easily, thank you for that gift.
Secondary infertility showed up in summer 2020 when I felt some of my depression lifting enough to want to try again. Except this time I knew things were different. No matter how much we tried, it wasn't happening, which felt like yet another punch to the stomach in an already long, tiring journey.
I've learned a lot about secondary infertility.
It shows up even if you've had multiple pregnancies that were carried to term (or not, in my case).
Sometimes it shows up just because things like your eggs and sperm are older than the first time you got pregnant. (I see you families trying to give your babies a sibling!)
Sometimes it's because your body didn't quite heal the way they were expecting after previous pregnancies. (I see you, brave Mamas!)
Most of the time—and this is the maddening part—the doctors have no answers at all.
More often than not, there's nothing obvious pointing them to a solution. In being treated for secondary infertility, I've been examined and tested for all the same things as my friends who have never been able to get pregnant at all:
Egg reserve, egg quality. Uterus shape. Tube blockages. Hormones before and after ovulation. My partner's sperm count/quality.
The fact that I've gotten pregnant before has no bearing on what they look for or examine in secondary infertility. That surprised me.
On top of all this, we also don't know why I've lost two daughters in the second trimester.
So while we are trying to "solve" the issue of secondary infertility, we are also being tested and re-hashing all the medical reports, DNA tests and placental analyses from our two girls.
I think that's the most surprising part about infertility: it can reach so far and touch so many areas of your life as a family. It is unrelenting and rarely straightforward.
So if you know someone who's on a journey with infertility, here are a few things you can do:
send them love,
give them patience and
say thank you.
You likely know way more about your body (if you're of the ovulating persuasion) because of the knowledge they've shared along the way.