25.Talk about a time when you made someone in your life understand more about infertility.
I honestly am not sure I ever really tried to explain this. I just...was super-emotional. I never tried to explain that it is grief, that I didn't feel like a real woman. I was blessed with fairly understanding people in my life.
During our IVF cycle, I did explain why my sister's baby shower would be fairly impossible to attend. I pointed out that I was going to be hugely swollen, nervous, and in pain. And that seeing joy over her belly was going to be too much for me. And that I needed to focus on making OUR baby happen. But I was a bit more graphic about it.
I also sent out an email early on about ways to help an infertile friend/relative that I got from the Resolve website, though I never heard from anyone who received it. Not specifically regarding that, anyway.
I honestly am not sure I ever really tried to explain this. I just...was super-emotional. I never tried to explain that it is grief, that I didn't feel like a real woman. I was blessed with fairly understanding people in my life.
During our IVF cycle, I did explain why my sister's baby shower would be fairly impossible to attend. I pointed out that I was going to be hugely swollen, nervous, and in pain. And that seeing joy over her belly was going to be too much for me. And that I needed to focus on making OUR baby happen. But I was a bit more graphic about it.
I also sent out an email early on about ways to help an infertile friend/relative that I got from the Resolve website, though I never heard from anyone who received it. Not specifically regarding that, anyway.
I've been reading back on your journey, and relate to so much of it. I had a lot of losses in my attempts to be a mom, though never through any attempts to get pregnant. One of my biggest struggles was when I was deeply mourning the children I was never going to have, once I finally decided to stop pursuing adoption, and it seemed like people either got it, or they didn't and no amount of explaining would allow them to get it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, look at me now: The thing I wanted more than anything in this world was to raise a child, to be loved so totally and instinctively by a young child. Less than a year after I really worked through mourning never having been a mom, Chastity was born, and though I'm not her mom, I'm her primary parent.
OH! This is Leslie, from Delaware. :)
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