Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Can Love Survive Infertility? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Can love survive infertility? Short answer yes. However, infertility has a way of exposing everything else that isn't surviving. Your perfectionism, your need for control, your fear of not being enough, your communication, your coping skills, your trauma, your relationship with your own body. I thought infertility was going to test whether I could become a mother or not. What it actually tested was whether my husband and I could grow while grieving something neither of us could control. Hi, it's me, Kimberly. Before we go any further, quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't, and listen in a way that feels supportive for you. When people think about infertility, they often focus on the medical side. Appointments, testing, medication, procedures, pregnancy tests, miscarriages, and so much waiting. What doesn't get talked about enough is what infertility does to your relationship. not only with your partner, with yourself too. In fertility asks questions you never wanted to answer. Am I enough? Is my body failing me? Will my partner still love me? Will I still love myself? If you already carry wounds of perfectionism, people pleasing shame, control, abandonment. Infertility will expose them. Not because you're weak. Instead it's because infertility sits right on top of those old herds. I started my fertility journey at 25 in 2018. At first we weren't actively trying. It was one of those things. Well, we're not preventing pregnancy. Then my OB. Asked a couple questions, have you had a period? Not regularly, and I explained how they usually work, just for her to realize I wasn't ovulating. My body wasn't doing the thing everyone assume happens naturally. What followed was years of appointments, medication, Hope, disappointment, and a lot of waiting. I spent about three and a half years trying with these doctors until finally they sent me to the fertility clinic. By then I was already exhausted. Physically and emotionally Hope got very heavy. Especially when you carry it for so long. Every period felt like a failure. We tried medication. The first doctor I saw ended up moving away. I bounced between providers and clinics, trying on and off for years. Each time something almost worked. It felt like proof. And then Ant flow came. And it was another no. I learned the hard way that even ovulation isn't necessarily a guarantee I'm gonna get pregnant. I didn't realize when the floping tube receives the eggs from the ovary that is essentially a claw machine. Even if my egg was being released, it didn't necessarily guarantee it grabbed it. it really was a game of chance. I wish I would have known that earlier, because I beat myself up a lot about it. I thought there's something wrong with my eggs. I thought so many negative things. I was wondering, are my husband and my DNA just not meant to be? the truth is it really wasn't any of that. It was just luck. But I blamed myself a lot. One thing nobody warned me about was how many times infertility asks you to hope over and over again. You hope this time the medication works, you hope the follicle grows. You hope you ovulate. You hope the timing's right. you hope the eggs are good and they make the journey, and then you wait and wait. And every month, when that period comes, your answer is set and it's a no. The repetition of hope, the disappointment breaks you down in small, crushing ways. I think my crash came because I had carried hope for so long. the first treatment that didn't work wasn't just disappointment. it felt like all hope collapsed. I took a year off after that. Before we went back, I gave my husband a boundary. I will try four times and then I think instead we should try to adopt embryos. Because my uterus was fine. It was my eggs either struggling or just not coming. Looking back, infertility didn't create my pain. it found pain that was already there. I grew up in a family dynamic where my needs were silenced and my feelings were mocked. I learned that love could feel conditional and deep inside I carried that belief I had to perform to be worthy. So one thing led to another. I didn't just feel disappointed. I felt like a failure. I felt the pressure to get pregnant quickly as if my family's approval depended on it. As if I was on a timeline to keep their love. The pressure is not the same as wanting to be a mother. I both wanted to be a mother and felt forced to chase it for the timeline. And those are very different roads and they're very hard to carry. infertility created an identity crisis for me. I think many of us who wanted children just assume it's just gonna happen one day. And when that path becomes uncertain, the future you imagine feels like it will never happen or it's slipping away. Ambiguous grief, grief without a clear ending, dreams in ways most people don't see. You don't know whether to hold on to hope or protect your heart You don't know whether to keep fighting or step back. Fertility medications were brutal on me emotionally. I became hypersensitive. My mind felt like it was falling apart. I couldn't communicate. Mostly it just came out as rage. Or what was the point? Because oftentimes the people that I thought cared didn't really care to hear it. I was raw and I was volatile. I understand that. And my husband had to step up while I was crumbling. As a partner, a friend, and a support. He held so much of that practical and emotional labor during that time. The easier version of the story would be that infertility almost broke us. It's not completely accurate. I truly feel it exposed cracks that were already there. His triggers were feeling not enough. Mine was perfectionism and needing to control. Before I'd explode he'd withdraw, he'd get quieter while I got louder. We weren't Fighting each other. We were fighting our wounds. The turning point wasn't getting pregnant. The turning point was learning to grow. We learned accountability, communication, limits. We started to say, I know you're hurting instead of immediately offering to fix it. we created safe words like see cucumber. See cucumber. We learned to recognize When we were triggered. We stopped expecting each other to stay the same and started allowing each other to change. He had to focus how emotionally distant he could be. I had to face how my rage could be violent towards those I loved. I had to learn to respect my limits and stop equating my worth with performance. He began to open up more, and I started to soften. We still have off days, of course. However, we now own our mistakes and take accountability. That change is what allowed love to survive. Fertility clinics can feel like a funeral home, Especially if you don't set limits. They can become a place of constant small losses. Every negative test, every failed treatment, a quiet grief that slowly gets louder. I wish someone would have told me to decide my boundaries earlier, how much I was willing to try. What compromises I would accept, where my line would be. Not because giving up is easy. Rather because protecting yourself is necessary. treatments have a cost physically, emotionally, financially, and relational. Men struggle too, often without spaces to talk about it. Men factor in fertility or involvement in treatments bring out its own shame and fear. both partners can be hurting quietly. When I finally got pregnant on the final try, I didn't feel relief. I felt terror. After years of disappointment, I couldn't trust good news. I disassociated through much of my first pregnancy. I wasn't dreaming about nurseries. I was measuring survival by milestones. The first heartbeat. Then every heartbeat after, trimester markers, every week mattered more and more each ultrasound. I passed with flying colors and still even when I was thirty nine weeks. Pregnancy didn't feel real until I heard my baby cry. And that sound finally made everything real. to anyone who disassociated during pregnancy you did what you needed to survive. You can love that baby, and still you were probably scared. depending on where you're at in your journey. My husband and I shared that fear. He was scared too. After so many disappointments and him seeing how I felt from every negative test, every piece of good news felt very fragile. Things did become different my second pregnancy. This time I had my oldest and it felt different because my toddler was there, my anchor. We didn't use fertility treatments the second time. I really didn't want to go back. I wanted to just focus on my health And eventually I gave up. it's wild because it happened as soon as I stopped caring in that particular anxious way. It's complicated and sometimes frustrating to say it that way because people think it implies stress causes infertility. For us it was more that the second time I had a different internal landscape, more acceptance, more support from my friends. And I didn't feel pressure with my family anymore. I kinda just didn't care about how my family thought. My husband continued to step up through pregnancy and postpartum. He took the night shifts so I wouldn't struggle mentally like I did the first time. And that made a huge difference. No more postpartum rage, no more psychosis, very little depression, very little anxiety. this time it was different. This time we knew what we needed to do to support both of us in our journey. He needed me stable and rested during the day to take care of our children so I could work and balance them and he could make it through work that way I wasn't sleep deprived And he's my hero. We saw how when he showed up for me and he started taking the night shifts with our oldest before we got pregnant that it allowed me to finally heal for my C section. And I didn't feel so depleted. I'm so thankful for him. I really wish someone would have told me your worth has nothing to do with that positive test. You are not more valuable because a test is positive and you are not less valuable if it isn't. You are not broken. you are a person navigating a massive uncertainty and you probably really want it. I'm really glad someone had told me infertility treatments can feel like a morgue and that they encouraged me to have limits. that you need to decide what you'll try and what you won't, not because you're giving up. Rather, you're protecting yourself. You're setting boundaries early with your partner and care team. You gotta know you're non negotiables. If you don't know what to say to someone going through infertility, the most helpful thing you can do is just to listen. You can't fix it and you gotta stop trying to find solutions for something that just sucks. That's hard. That's something that people either keep trying. Or they have to find different routes to have their baby. To start a family, whatever that looks like to them. Or maybe they change their mind about having kids. Either option's okay. They need space to lean on someone. Offering compassion and permission to agree what they thought their life was gonna look like. People in fertility need listening, not quick fixes. And honestly, my marriage survived because my husband chose me over this idea we must have kids. He chose me when I was ugly feral and honestly mean. I mean, luckily it's his kink, He understood that a lot of my responses were trauma based. He always saw me even the parts I wanted to hide. When we started to make changes together, when I became softer and he became more open, things shifted. I led in honesty even when it hurts. Even when it was hurtful, not intentionally, sometimes I couldn't form the right words. He led in steady presence. We still have boundaries and safe words. See Q Gamber We still miss the mark sometimes. The good days have outweighed the bad he continues to be my rock. Love for us becomes less about outcome and more about choosing each other repeatedly. Becoming a parent really exposed me. I had patterns and I needed to parent out of myself. I have been emotionally abused for years sometimes I found myself reciprocating harmful behaviors and that terrified me. That awareness forced me to change. It made me fight my inner demons fiercely to protect my child Because it's more important for my daughter to have a healthy, regulated mom, than to chase after love that comes with conditions. to listeners who are struggling with family dynamics, you don't have to let your family define your worth. You get to choose who feeds your heart. unconditional love is not unconditional tolerance That's really helped me navigate what I want in my life. We set limits We made communication rules, safe words, check-ins, and owning our mistake. We prioritize mental health and allowed breaks when hope collapse. we let go of friends and family who consistently triggered pain and caused harm and we leaned into those who supported us instead. We found a whole community of people who supported us and wanted us just to be us. We named our grief and didn't expect it to be neat or fast. when I asked the question, can love survive infertility? I do believe it can. Survival isn't about staying the same, it's about changing together. Couples who make it through aren't those who avoid the pain. They're the ones who learn to face it together. They stopped making infertility one person's problem and remembered the enemy was grief, uncertainty, and shame. They learned partnership and compassion. They chose each other. Evo in life didn't follow the script. If you're in the middle of infertility right now, I don't have a magic answer, and I do apologize for that. Most people really don't need a solution when it comes to this. They need space, compassion, and permission to hurt. Give yourself grace. Decide your limits. Communicate them to the people who make you feel like you matter. And know this, your worth isn't on the other side of a pregnancy test.