When Getting Pregnant Isn’t Happening

We are trying to have a second child, and it is not working. It took us just shy of three years to get pregnant with our first child. That was 35 months of, over and over, knowing that it was “not this month,” and of asking ourselves, repeatedly, “Do we really want a child? Why?” It was 35 months of changing diets and exercise, of going into clinics and labs to get all sorts of private things checked and poked, to get blood drawn, hormones prescribed, and statistics returned to us. It involved two different infertility clinics, a lot of monthly consolation sushi dinners, and finally an insemination procedure, before I finally became pregnant.

At the surface, this story could be one of overcoming the obstacle of not having the child we wanted. But that final part, the fact that I actually got pregnant and it ended in the birth of our daughter, is a lucky detail. Those three years (and now this last year and a half of trying) were about overcoming many less concrete obstacles.

There were society-prescribed obstacles regarding what the perfect family looks like and what it means to be a woman. There was the philosophical question of how far was too far to go, for me, to have a child: how extreme a medical procedure would I be willing to undergo? There was envy of friends with children and trying to figure out how not to distance myself from them all. There was my fear of getting old and of being alone in my old age. There were pregnant women everywhere I looked, and I’ll admit that I kind of hated them all – their glows, their smiles, their bellies.

Which brings me to high school. Every few years I find myself going back to a small book that I first read in high school, called Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Frankl survived a concentration camp during the Second World War, and he wrote about the differences he saw between those whose spirits were broken by the experience and those whose spirits remained intact. The biggest difference he observed was in how a person chose to react to the situation:

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

And this seems to be the thing I learn, time and time again, about the obstacles in my own life. They are never as simple or one-sided as they first appear. And when I say that I’ve learned this often, I mean that I kept trying to charge headfirst into surmounting an obstacle like infertility and would inevitably find myself bouncing off of a brick wall.

It is only when I get into the details of a given obstacle that I start seeing ways to work around it. Most often this is in the form of redefining what it is I am trying to overcome. I may not be able to conceive naturally or even at all anymore, but I can do the hard work of thinking through what is most important to me about having a child, and see where that road leads.

Lest I sound like I have gracefully arrived at this state of peace with whatever may be, I have not. I did not choose to learn from obstacles because I planned to. I chose it to save myself from having to feel like I have failed at life. I did it because I didn’t want to retreat from the world. I have only gotten here through incredible sadness and anger, and by connecting with other people in similar situations. I could not have made it without women and men who understand what it is to be not pregnant, again and again. And I could not have made it here without learning to respect my suffering and my sadness.

Which brings me to the second piece of wisdom from Frankl, which is about suffering. He says that suffering and pain is like a gas: it fills whatever container it has. The worst thing in one person’s life feels to that person equal to the worst thing in another person’s life, even though in one case it might be a toothache and in another, a death in the family. We should not ask ourselves to treat our pain in relation to that of others. I have a child, and another family somewhere, who was not as lucky, does not. This does not mean that I cannot feel sadness or loss about not being able to have another child. It does not mean I do not have the right to grieve the loss of the thing I have longed for.

That grieving helps me move forward. Perhaps we will adopt a child. Perhaps we will make life decisions about living closer to certain family or friends who have children of the same age, to give our daughter the companions of her age I think she will need for the future. Perhaps we will focus more on helping children who are already alive, but not as lucky as our daughter in the details of their birth or their living conditions. We may choose to do more work on ourselves individually, and as parents, to make sure we are not a smothering family of three. I may jump into my career with much more purpose, to ensure I am not looking to my only child to fulfill my creative and personal needs.

In the end, “overcoming” infertility has been about gaining insight into myself, my family, and society. My life has been enriched by learning to see less in black and white, and more in shades of grey – to not define my womanhood by my ability to have a child, to realize the importance of meaningful work for women, to respect my own sadness and that of others, and to think about the many ways to leave a positive, lasting legacy in this world.

By Audra Baleisis                          Illustration by Ivy Hieber-Kwok

Audra has been in Zurich almost four years, with her husband, her daughter – who was born after she arrived – and her dog. She is originally from Chicago, but spent many years in warm, dry and sunny Arizona. She works part-time in science communication at the university level as well as with the public.