Infertility: A Deep and Dark Pit of Sadness That I Carried Around Everywhere with Me
My husband and I started trying for a baby as soon as we got married in 2010, we were both 25 years old at the time. After a few months, I was just convinced that it wasn't going to happen. I don't know if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy or intuition, but unfortunately, I was right.
The next eight years were the hardest of my life.
It is hard to describe exactly how it all felt. I felt a deep and dark pit of sadness that I carried around everywhere with me. Over the years it was as if it was being chipped away at and getting bigger and bigger with every month, I wasn’t falling pregnant, every negative pregnancy test, failed IVF, baby shower I had to attend and pregnancy announcement I heard. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t be happy for anyone else, it was all just a reminder of the emptiness I felt and like my body was a complete failure.
I was really shaken to my very core and didn’t know that my heart was capable of breaking so many times and that it could hurt so much, especially when my second IVF cycle failed in 2017.
However, just before my third cycle I started to focus on gratitude and positivity. I shifted my focus from what wasn’t happening to what I wanted to happen. I changed my narrative from ‘I can’t get pregnant’ to “I can’t wait to get pregnant’. It wasn’t always easy, but I tried to really change my mind-set and outlook on the whole situation.
Finally, in 2018 I was pregnant after our third IVF cycle. I still remember doing a digital Clear Blue pregnancy test and it coming up with the word ‘pregnant’. After seeing ‘not pregnant’ for so many years, it was such a surreal moment for me, one I will never forget. We were pregnant with twins, however one of them didn’t make it past 8 weeks. That was a very trying time for us, but we tried our hardest to focus on the baby we did have.
We were blessed with a baby boy in January 2019.
It is now 2020, my journey started in 2010 and it has taken me this long to share my story. Infertility brings with it a lot of shame and embarrassment, especially in south Asian cultures. By sharing my story, I hope I can help lift some of the stigma attached to infertility. I also hope my story gives anyone who is feeling and broken, hopeless and desperate like I did, I hope this gives you some hope.
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