Feeling like a failure

The hardest thing about facing a loss of fertility is finding a way to be with my loss. How do I accept that my child-bearing days are over? And not only that, how can I get my head around the fact that my womanhood has been compromised?

We watched Earth this weekend. What an amazing wilderness documentary. The crux of it is about life and survival - about procreation and all that many of our species go through on our planet to keep the cycle of life going. Tragedies happen even in the animal kingdom. One species needs to feed - so another loses a member. Yet the breeding side of the cycle of life is so very natural. Without the breeding, then there would be no point to the life of the average polar bear, humpback whale, elephant, or even duck as depicted in this epic movie.

Living in the Western world we could be mistaken for thinking that life is about obtaining things - material possessions and reaching our true potential. As we eventually discover; not many things to life fulfill us quite like raising a family does. Despite the challenges and the effort required to nurture a child; there is undoubtedtly nothing as satisfying as watching your off-spring grow. No wonder many parents don't stop at one. Parenthood almost becomes addictive.

Until I faced infertility I perhaps didn't appreciate how magnificent and precious parenting is. Now that I cannot have what I so desperately want: all the other external things don't seem important at all. Not that I have ever been terribly materialistic. But I would give up a lot of things just to be able to create another human being again.

As a woman I am so angry and feel so wronged that what should be my God-given right to produce has been taken away. I cannot seem to accept that I don't have a choice in all this. The powerlessness has quite frankly almost driven me crazy. We cannot control many things in life but surely our right to conceive as humans should be something we have some say in.

A sense of failure in one significant area in ones life can quite easily waft into other areas. It has with me. I feel like a failure across the board. My useless uterus and stubborn ovary cause me to feel less than in so many ways. I feel as though I may as well have a used-by-date plastered across my empty womb.

In time I will reconcile this grief and will reinvent myself as a woman - that's what the counsellors keep saying. That's three counsellors within a year by the way. None of them of course have experienced infertility personally. They expect me to cry in a few sessions and to just come to the conclusion that my lot is my lot. But unlike some forms of grief in which progress can be ascertained from time to time; infertility is so very different. I can be fine for hours/days and sometimes weeks. Yet invariably the pain takes over from time to time and feels like I am grieving as if my loss has just occurred all over again. I for one am sick of drowning in it.

On Sunday at work two MOTs-to-be were sharing how they flippant they were now that they were pregnant for the second time. They were apparently eating ham sandwiches and sushi and wolfing down junk-food. They'd produced a child each before and trusted that all would be fine the second time round.

Sometimes my internal dialogue around MOTs-to-be and MOTs is not unlike Ally McBeal. I want to slap these women across the face and exclaim You can't be too careful you stupid women! Don't abuse the gift of life you have - you are so, so incredibly lucky!!

But I don't say anything do I. I smile and appear fine outwardly - certainly not as though my heart is breaking into a million pieces. I for one am sick of picking up the pieces and trying to put them back together again. It is exhausting.

Today is the first day of Winter on this side of the world and I kind of wish I could go into hiberation for a few months. To sleep off my infertility heartbreak feels so very inviting. Yet I continue to go to the gym and be social; proving to the world and myself that I am able to carry on, even though some days it is such a struggle to do so.