Opening Up About Infertility

Opening up about our journey with infertility.

I will never be 25 and pregnant. I will never be 25 and a Mom.

It sounds silly, but one of my life goals was to start a family at 25. I just had this idea that 25 would be the perfect time to have my first child. I even wrote about it in a school assignment once when I was 15. We had to write an essay about what our life might look like in 10 years and I wrote that I would not only have one baby but twins.

I thought it would be a good age – not too young, not too old – I’d be stable enough, it wouldn’t interfere with my career but I’d be young enough to have as many years as possible with my kids. It was idealistic of me for sure. It’s so funny to look back on those goals now. I’m 26 (almost 27) and my husband and I are infertile.

I can honestly say, this is a topic I never ever thought I would write about. Frankly, it never crossed my mind that this would be something I would ever spend much time thinking about let alone live through. Yet, here we are, and here I am writing this.

And despite this being a huge part of my life for the last 3 years, I didn’t want to share it with the internet. I didn’t want to write about it. It is an incredibly difficult and intimate personal experience that felt too painful to try to explain to other people. But on the other hand, I feel like this is something that so few people are open to talking about that I feel obligated to share my experience. I feel inspired to share these thoughts in the hopes of helping someone else weather this storm despite how painful it will likely be to come up with the words. It’s so important to show all the many ways a person can live their life (with children or not etc.). So, here we are.

2 years ago, I would have thought we would have a baby by now. Holding our little one in our arms – a little bit of me and a little bit of my husband all mixed up into another unique being. But after 3 years, our arms are still empty and still waiting to be filled. We have watched countless others have babies, even their 2nd or 3rd child and we sit on the sidelines and wait and wonder if it will ever happen for us.

I knew it wouldn’t be instantaneous, I knew there would be some waiting, you never know how quickly you will conceive but I never would have guessed this would be our reality. Infertility tests your relationship, your self esteem, your sense of purpose and meaning in life. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety throughout this journey.

Over the next while, I will be sharing a short series of articles with different thoughts and experiences I have had living with infertility. I won’t be sharing every detail of our journey as some of it is just too vulnerable to share but I want to share the pieces I think would be most helpful for others who might be going through something similar.

Don’t worry, this won’t be the only thing I write about, so for those who are not interested, there will be other content mixed in, I am more than infertile after all.

I told myself I would be more vulnerable on here as part of my 2022 goals and so here I go. I started this blog to share my journey of figuring out how to live life well and this has been a huge challenge and part of that journey.

If you would like to follow along for the rest of this series, make sure to sign up for email notifications of when I upload new content.

Write soon,

Hannah B.L.