It Only Has To Make Sense To You

My full circle path navigating infertility and motherhood.

* Content Warning: fertility struggles, grief and loss *

I have a random memory from my high school Spanish class — I think it was my junior year. We were still learning the basics: vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing and speaking. I had to get up in front of the class to introduce myself, include some numbers, and share a fun fact about me (cringe).

Hola, me llamo Elisa. Me gustaría formar una familia cuando tenga 23 años e idealmente tener cuatro hijos.

Or maybe I wanted to get married at 23? Either way, I distinctly remember talking about being 23, which seemed lightyears away when only a ripe 16. And wait, I wanted four kids?! My southern, Bible Belt roots were showing (I ended up married at 21, divorced at 25, married again at 28, and have no children now at 38 — but more on all that another time).

I always thought I’d have a family. It was ingrained in me, it wasn’t really even a question, or a choice. I loved kids, babysat throughout high school (I even nannied for the kids whose dad created the Koosh ball toy, lol). I recall running my fingers over the Anthropologie clothes lining a successful working mom’s closet, in her big expensive house, driving her fancy SUV to pick up her children, envisioning my own similar future one day.

Was this what I really wanted, or was it wanted for me?

Fast forward to 2020, in the midst of early pandemic days when things were so uncertain. Dan and I were ready, whatever that means. I knew realistically that it probably wouldn’t happen right away, though nothing can prepare you for the process until you’re in it. Day in and day out. The cramping that just maaaaybe is a sign of implantation. The sore boobs that surely must mean I’m pregnant. Anxiety each time I sat down on the toilet. Praying I wouldn’t wipe and find blood again. The all-consuming, minute by minute rollercoaster of grief.

Everything in the world around us seemed so out of control, perhaps this was the one decision we could control for ourselves.

After a couple months of trying, we had a chemical pregnancy. Three positive tests, some phone calls with doctors, and several days later… a gushing of blood. Another friend calls with their happy news. Oops, we weren’t even trying! Maybe you feel a twinge of gladness for them deep down, but also, fuck them. Even the glowing pregnant stranger walking by on the street — I idolized her while cursing her under my breath. My empty arms and heavy heart were dragging me deeper into darkness.

All my friends were becoming moms. I begrudgingly co-hosted a virtual, long-distance baby shower while driving to Minnesota to meet my newborn niece. I hid the video, muted the speakerphone and cried the entire time. I felt like a failure, like I wasn’t hitting all the benchmarks that I should have been in my thirties. No obvious career path, no child to point to, no money to fall back on.

A few panic attacks later, following a cross-country move and over a year of TTC, I could barely get out of bed. We finally visited a fertility clinic in Los Angeles and I started on antidepressants. TTC means “trying to conceive,” by the way. Short-forms and language that once seemed foreign became a part of my new identity: TTC, RE, 2WW, BBT, FSH, HSG, IUI, IVF.

So. many. fucking. acronyms. I learned all about progesterone and cervical mucus. I was so desperate that I’d even send photos and videos of my sticky discharge to a friend who worked at a birthing center. Was this a sign of ovulation? Am I in my fertile window?

“Unexplained infertility,” the most frustrating diagnosis of all. No glaring issues. A feeling of defeat. A glimmer of hope. An unresolved question. No satisfactory explanations. In the exam room next door, I hear a doctor happily exclaim “congratulations!” to another patient.

Waiting room after waiting room, test after test, bloodwork samples, semen analyses. There are so many ways to have a family, and I wished so desperately for it to happen via a passionate sex-filled evening with my husband, though it almost always felt like anything but that. We decided to move forward with the doctor’s recommendation to start with IUI, or intrauterine insemination — a type of fertility treatment that involves placing sperm inside the uterus close to the fallopian tubes in order to increase the chances of conceiving. The success rate typically ranges from only 10-20% per cycle.

I started repeating affirmations and coping statements — I had 46 of them written in my Notes app and read them aloud to myself every morning. My body has everything it needs. I trust in the timing of my life. My baby is coming: I may not know how, I may not know when, but I am willing to wait for my baby.

At night, my husband would prepare the hormone injections, rub my belly with an alcohol wipe, and hold my hand as I injected the shots into my abdomen, alternating between the left and right side each time. Our bathroom smelled like a hospital room for months. I had to stop getting acupuncture — too many needles. I starting seeing a therapist who had struggled with infertility herself, and I set boundaries with friends and family members. I wrote in my Five Minute Journal, which was all I could seemingly muster in a day. I found “fertility friends” who built me up and empowered me along my journey. It’s long, windy and painful, and no story is the same. If you are reading this and resonate with any of these words, I am sending you all of my love.

After three failed rounds of IUI, we needed a break. My hormones and emotions were wreaking havoc on every area of my life. Dan and I chatted with the doctor and knew we’d need to save up financially before considering the next (and more expensive and invasive) step of IVF. We were already $20k in the hole from our first attempts.

Eventually, for the very first time, we began to ask ourselves what our lives might look like together if we didn’t have children. I had been too afraid for too long to even consider this thought — superstitious and ashamed when my body felt like it was failing me. Dan is the person I’d be so excited to create a family with, but he is also the person that I’d be so excited to not have a family with. I’m so lucky and grateful for that.

While nothing is quite this simple, the conversation unlocked something new and curious deep down in both of us. We have allowed time (years) and space to grieve, to check in, to dream both ways, to change our minds, but we feel overwhelming peace in our ultimate decision: to not have children.

As I’ve untangled layer upon layer of questions, dreams, and expectations, I’ve found so much unexpected healing and ease. I think, in some ways, infertility led me to a deeper, more raw and inward place. I’ve learned so much about myself that I want to continue to explore — about desire, gratitude, mystery, belonging, wholeness, love.

It only has to make sense to you.

Since this decision, I have had a newfound energy and capacity for kids of all ages. We hosted our friends’ 4-year-old’s birthday party at our pool — melted popsicles everywhere, the kids climbing on the tables and peeing in the pool. I loved it. Some of our dear Danish friends visited with their three-month-old in tow, and he fell asleep in my arms and I refused to move. I sat outside alone for hours watching him coo, in awe of this beautiful, perfect, sleeping baby. My arms fell asleep but I just couldn’t care, I wanted to cherish such a precious moment.

I see so much of my younger self in my niece, who is four and a half now. When I look into her big gorgeous blue eyes (don’t even get me started on her eyelashes), I see my own childlike joy, wonder and innocence. I may not have recognized this as much if my life had taken a different direction.

What feels like joy today may feel like grief tomorrow. New paths reveal themselves. The view changes once you start walking. I think life will ultimately continue to feel this way — the both/and thing I talk so much about. I will always carry grief and questions, even amidst the peace and contentment. I can’t help but imagine how sweet my husband would be as a father, if our daughter would have his piercing eyes or my curly hair. What would it feel like to be a mother?

I took a selfie of us holding up the positive pregnancy tests in those earliest days. I wonder now, who are those people? I’m sure our lives would be so beautiful with children, and I know our lives will still be just as beautiful without them. Replace the word “beautiful” with any word, really (hard, meaningful, special, loving, heavy, purposeful, joy-filled, complicated).

Maybe younger Elise would be shattered by these thoughts, but not me. I feel loose. Free. Alive. Like there exists an opening for things I haven’t yet imagined. What might my future hold? What path is being cleared for me, that I may not have been able to see if I had assumed this identity of mother?

“And then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together.” - Nick Cave, from Faith, Hope and Carnage

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Photo Credit: ‘The Travelling Companions’, 1862, oil-on-canvas painting by British artist Augustus Leopold Egg.