How Do You Grieve For Infertility When There Is Always Another Potential Route to Parenthood?
“Don’t grieve,” they say. “It’s not over yet.”
Don’t miss the Sustack LIVE conversation between Ali Hall (Life Without Children founder) and Charlie Brown (writer of this piece). It’s on Thursday, 6th June, 6pm UK time (10am PST, 1pm EST, 7pm CET).
Don’t leave it too long before you get going on that donor egg.
He said it matter-of-factly. In his mind, I can’t conceive naturally, so this is the next stage.
An easy fix. Procure an egg from someone else. Stick it in your body. Be happy and grateful you have this opportunity.
I sit there, quiet. What can I possibly say to someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be told you can’t have children? To someone who has never felt their reproductive system shut down with all the physical and mental exhaustion that comes with it?
What he doesn’t understand is that I’m grieving. I’m grieving for the biological child I never got to have. I’m grieving for my body.
But there’s no time for that because there’s always another way to parenthood. Another IVF round. Another adoption process.
Don’t grieve, it’s not over yet!
When there is always another route to potential parenthood, are you allowed to grieve for everything you’ve already lost? Or do you have to paint on a smiling, determined face and keep moving forward?
There are always ways, they say. IVF with your own eggs. Doesn’t work? No problem, just use someone else’s.
It’s a male issue? Sperm donors are ready and waiting to give you your dream baby.
Your body isn’t responding? Too many miscarriages? That’s what fostering and adoption is for!
Don’t worry that you’re taking on some of society’s most vulnerable children with no qualifications other than you can’t have a child of your own. Don’t worry that the average time to adopt in your country is seven years which would make you close to 50. Having a child is worth it! You’ve got this, adoption mama!
I’ve heard iterations of the above more times than I care to mention. From friends. Family. Strangers on the internet. Doctors.
I feel the weighty expectation that I should try to be a parent by any means necessary, regardless of how much it costs or how stressful and traumatic the process is. I feel the expectation that my own feelings should be shelved as I relentlessly slog through parenting alternatives.
Don’t grieve, it’s not over yet!
When you’re infertile, it’s never over. There is always another round of IVF. Another donor egg to procure. Another sperm donor to use. Another vulnerable child to adopt. And of course, there’s always another payment plan to help make your dreams come true.
The day I found out I had no viable eggs left in my body was one of the worst days of my life. But there wasn’t time to think about that before my doctor told me about all the alternatives. Would I like to start IVF next week?
My infertility diagnosis was considered a snag. A problem to overcome. I had no time to grieve the loss of everything I was taught a woman could have if she wanted it.
For a long time, I considered it like that too. I thought I could bypass the grief by focusing on IVF. Two rounds didn’t work, so then it was onto donor eggs.
Don’t grieve, it’s not over yet!
No, it’s not over yet. But I do want to grieve. I want to mourn the biological child I will never have. However my story ends, it can’t end with a child related to me.
I also want time to say goodbye to my reproductive system. The system that has ruled over me since puberty.
Every day it made itself known. Hello, you’re ovulating! Hello, here’s a dose of PMS! Hello, cramps calling!
Now, thanks to the medication I’m on, it’s fallen silent.
I want to process that loss.
But there’s no time for that. Not when there’s another round of reproductive assistance to aim for.
Don’t grieve, it’s not over yet!
It’s a weird grief, being infertile, because you’re grieving for something that never happened.
Yet it’s very real. Women call it the most upsetting experience of their lives. It comes with anxiety. Depression. Guilt. Shame.
It’s called disenfranchised grief and it’s something not always recognised by society. Or as leading expert in the childfree/childless field Jody Day Gateway said in her lecture to York University:
The experience of involuntary childlessness is a silent one and the non-death grief of childlessness is often missed or dismissed by grievers themselves, their families and communities, and often, sadly, by the helping professionals around them too.
And because we don’t talk about it, it can be difficult for many people to understand this sort of grief. It’s much easier to offer what might be considered a ray of hope — don’t grieve, it’s not over yet — than understand we are mourning a huge loss and need space and compassion to make it through.
It’s no surprise so many childfree-not-by-choice women feel isolated. I know I would rather stay at home than visit family who have an uncanny knack for making insensitive remarks. I would rather stay at home than visit my friend’s new baby or child’s birthday party.
That isolation, mixed with the grief, doesn’t always make us an easy bunch to understand. I get that — it’s not easy to know what to say or how to act around the childfree-not-by-choice.
People make well-meaning mistakes. Sometimes they assume you’d want to be around children if you can’t have your own (sometimes I do, often I don’t).
Sometimes, they hit a phrase on the childfree bingo card:
If you spent one day with my children you wouldn’t want them anymore!
I know someone who was told they couldn’t have children, then it happened for them. You never know.
I get it. How can people know what this specific brand of grief is like when they’ve never felt it themselves? When they’ve never been taught about it? When infertility is a hidden thing, women often suffer through alone.
Honestly, it’s why I put myself through the often torturous process of writing about what it’s like to be childfree-not-by-choice. I want other women in a similar position to me to know they’re not alone.
And I hope, in some small way, my words might help others — those who have not had these experiences — better understand what we’re going through. To better understand we need space and time.
And to never again say, don’t grieve, it’s not over yet.
There will always be another route to parenthood. There will always be new technologies packaged up to look like hope (stem cells to regenerate ovarian function, anyone?).
I am grateful and happy these technologies exist. I am grateful I have the opportunity — and live in a country where it’s not so expensive — to explore some of them.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do them forever. At some point, I will seal off my routes to parenthood. I have to.
And it doesn’t mean I should be denied the opportunity to mourn what I‘ve lost now. Grieving is a healthy and important process, and I want to find out what it looks like on the other side.
Infertility diagnoses are their own special brand of heartache. If you’re staring down the barrel of your own, I permit you to grieve for as long as you need before looking at alternatives — if you look at them at all.
And if you know someone going through infertility, give them some space. Some time. Let them mourn.
After all we go through, we deserve that at least.
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Well, this really hit home for me. In the early 1980s my first husband and I tried to get pregnant and I will never forget the day the doctor told me I was infertile.
I came home and told my husband and literally collapsed on the floor.
My marriage then fell apart due to many factors, was one of them being my infertility? I’ll never really know.
Your article is so spot on. People with children just don’t understand what it’s like to have that choice taken away from you by your own body.
Thank you for the article.
This really resonated...I ended up doing IVF in three different countries (China, Singapore, and US) and found big differences in how much space I was given to feel emotions (grief, frustration, cautious optimism) at every step. This isn't invisalign, people! Let us feel things.