Loss, grieving and gratitude during miscarriage and infertility

I was really inspired reading The Port of Indecision’s Post: Lessons from a drag queen about gratitude during infertility and the misperception that gratitude for the good things in life can’t co-exist with the painfully real desire to start a family.

I too have noticed how infertility and miscarriage get downplayed and even dismissed as “not real” medical problems.   Often when the topic comes up in mainstream conversation it’s downplayed and seen as not a big deal.  It’s not as if we have something terminal, right?  What I hear (and read on comment boards online) is, that we shouldn’t be so upset, there are bigger problems we could be facing.  After all, people can live without having kids, they say.  It’s not a like missing your legs or losing a vital organ.

On the one hand I find myself guilty of thinking this way.  I know I have a good life and it feels almost greedy to want more.  I have good health (all working organs and limbs), a loving husband, a well-paying steady job (despite the odds in a terrible economy), and we live in a perfectly comfortable home that we’ve been able to keep (despite foreclosures all around).  We are really lucky and I do feel very, very grateful, every day.

What hurts is that sometimes people use these gifts against us.  As if somehow we have “enough” and wanting a baby too is somehow not being grateful.  If you don’t believe it check out some of the really cold comments people post in response to online stories about celebrities with infertility.  As if being rich and famous cancels out this problem as a real problem deserving of sympathy.

Several of my single friends who are my age and still looking for a mate have outright said that I don’t have a real problem, like they do.  I see their point and I don’t want to compare pain so I generally just avoid talking about it with them.  I accept they don’t get it, and that complaining makes me seem ungrateful for what I have.

My other friends, the ones who have young kids, are often so wrapped up in the challenges of parenting young ones that they can’t see another perspective.  The message I hear from them often is “Look at US, don’t you see how HARD parenting is?  How could your problems be anywhere near as difficult?”.  In a conversation with Misfit Mrs. recently we joked about how we’d gladly trade places with these folks.  The invitation would be – “Sure, I’ll take your infant for a while and you can try having a few miscarriages instead and see how you feel…”.  I hear so often from new parents about how HARD parenting is.  I get jealous of how they can casually joke about it openly and how all the mommy talk actually opens doors for them to bond with other parents like a built in support network. Meanwhile I feel like noone talks about just how hard NOT parenting is.  Not just that but how hard it is to not be able to talk about it openly either.  It is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  I had NO IDEA just how painful and isolating and socially destructive this was going to be.  Before we started TTC I was fine, but once the failures started (esp. after the second miscarriage) I was in a world of hurt I’d never known before.  Sometimes I find myself nostalgic for those pre-TTC days when things seemed so much more normal and I could actually talk openly with people about the problems in my life without feeling judged as a freak or as a hopeless self-consumed victim.  I feel surrounded by people who just don’t or can’t get it.

People who haven’t tried (yet) or have had no trouble having children just don’t understand how this could be painful.    For them the dream of parenting is either still a real dream ahead of them, or has already been realized (or maybe not a dream at all in the cases of people who have decided they don’t want to have children).  For those of us struggling in this space, each setback- a miscarriage, a failed IUI or IVF, cancelled adoption or other bad news is a personal loss.  It is the loss of a dream and the loss of a huge part of our drive for living as we look to the future.

With miscarriage they say that the length of time of the pregnancy often is a way to determine the length of the grieving period.  The idea being that losing a baby at 8 months is harder than losing one at 3 weeks.  The truth is really  much more complicated.  It’s not just that you lost a baby, it’s that you lost a dream, the dream of being a mother and having a child.  Chances are you had that dream LONG before you tried to conceive.  Likely it started with childhood playing house and later influenced who you dated and married (someone you may have thought would be a good parent). The dream of parenting drives so many things, the neighborhoods we choose to live in, houses we choose, school districts we consider- all things that came into mind before trying to conceive.  When I hear younger people talk about “when I have kids…”it reminds me how I used to talk this way too.  RPL took that kind of talk away from me, the dreaming, optimistic part.  I can’t use the term “when” anymore.  I’ve changed to “if” and I am still struggling to create and embrace this new picture of my future- the if we have kids future, and the if we don’t future.

My point in all this is that IF and RPL are about loss, loss of something real.  Even if our lives aren’t at risk, our modest dreams/drive for living may be.  When someone loses a child, noone says to that person- you can live without kids, at least you still have your spouse, job, house, etc.  When their child died so did their visions for their future with that child- seeing them celebrate their birthdays, graduate from school, get married, etc.  Those dreams and hopes die for that parent when they lose the child just like they die for us when we fail to have one.