NIAW: My Story

This week, I have had the privilege of reading some amazing & awe inspiring blog posts. Posts from women that have broken my heart, brought tears to my eyes and given me an overwhelming sense of hope & inspiration, all within a matter of paragraphs. Reading what I have been able to read this week, from more amazing women than I can count, makes this post hard for me to write. How do you follow up to that? Plain and simple, I can't.

All I can do is tell you my story.

When I started this blog a few years ago, I was escaping from a much more public presence on the interwebs, where family and friends galore were reading. I chronicled my first miscarriage on that blog. What followed was a depression so deep, that getting out of bed most mornings seemed impossible. When it came time to start our infertility treatments, I got scared. Not only was I severely depressed, I didn't want people I knew in real life to know about our sperm counts and how many trips to see "Wandy" I had been taking. It was personal. I only knew one other person at the time who was going through infertility treatments -- I was scared of what was to come & felt very alone in the process. So I started writing here to sort of save myself from what I thought, at the time, was an embarrassing situation.

My battle is different from many of the stories that I have read this week. So many of the women I know have gone through years of fertility treatments to have their babies, or continue to fight this disease in hopes of one day becoming a family of three. Our journey, in the infertility world, was short lived. One round of clomid. Two rounds of Femara. One IUI with one little follicle that brought us one amazing miracle. I know that on so many levels I cannot possibly relate to what so many of my friends have gone through, continue to go through, and would never, for one second, compare my struggles to theirs. Pain is pain, no matter how you look at it, but I am lucky. I know this and I thank the stars every day for what we have been given. 

I can only share what we went through get here. The years of trying naturally. The miscarriage that broke my mind, body and soul. The waiting ... waiting ... waiting for my husband to return from Iraq so that we could try again, while so many people around me got pregnant. The friends who had miscarriages the same time I did who went on to get pregnant again, successfully, while I was still playing Army Wife. The tears.

So many tears. And so alone.

When we started our fertility treatments, I quickly started finding fellow IF'ers on twitter and through blogs because I needed to. I had no one who understood this. This community? They saved me. Suddenly, there were others. SO MANY OTHERS who knew this pain. Who had been through what I had been through. An astounding ONE in EIGHT couples battle infertility on some level. There are so many reasons why couples struggle with infertility, and so many ways to help build that family you are dreaming of (oral medications, IUI, IVF, FET, surrogate, gestational carrier, adoption, embryo adoption, sperm donation, egg donation) but the emotional and physical toll these procedures take on couples, not to mention financial, are just as extensive.

Finding these women was one of the best things that has happened to me. It has brought me some of the most amazing friendships that I could ever ask for -- women who, no matter what, will drop anything for you to be the support you need. People that I love, without ever having met them face to face, and people that love me back. Friendships that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. These women are an inspiration to me, more than they will ever know. Every day they fight to make the infertility world better. They fight to make sure that infertility becomes less of a taboo topic and more of an open discussion. They FIGHT for the right of others to have better access to treatments. It is a community that I am proud to be a part of, even though I do not say it enough. They taught me early on to not be ashamed of what we were going through. That it SHOULD be out in the open. THAT is what I want to do in return.

This year, RESOLVE's theme was "Join the Movement ..."

The goal of this year's Blog Challenge is to bring together bloggers to talk about how you are making the difference in ways large and small in the lives of people with infertility. Topics covered in your blog post can include how you broke the silence of infertility in your life, how you advocated for the infertility community, how you advocated for yourself, or how you created a support community to help you through the infertility journey.

I will be the first to admit that I do not do enough for this community. I always want to do more. So much more. But I don't. I can give you a million reasons why, but I will save you from that because the fact of the matter is there is no excuse. So, for now, I do what I can, which is lending support. I can do support. I can do hugs. I can give so, so much love. I can be a shoulder to cry on. More than anything, I can encourage and supply HOPE when hope is nowhere to be seen. I do not EVER want anybody to feel the way I felt after my miscarriage. To hit a rock bottom below the rock bottom. To be so afraid of leaving your house because of what might go wrong. To feel like you have nobody there to pick you back up.

That depression post-miscarriage was the lowest point of my life, and is it a low that I never want to see again. Nor do I want any woman to feel even a fraction of how I felt. So when I can? Whether it's a message or a hug or a phone call ... I will be there.

This is what I do, or what I try to do, on a daily basis. Going forward, I am vowing to do better. I want to give more to the community that has already given me so much, and I am looking forward to what the next year will bring. This is the first year that I have truly been in touch with what has been happening in the NIAW world, and as I said before, I am in awe of who I have the honor of associating with.  I hope I make my friends proud in being a better advocate for the community that has already give me so much.

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Join the movement! You don't have to suffer from this disease to be an advocate for it. For more information on infertility and National Infertility Awareness Week, you can visit the following links on the RESOLVE website:

http://www.resolve.org/infertility-overview/what-is-infertility/
http://www.resolve.org/national-infertility-awareness-week/about.html

Depression After Miscarriage*

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week. I hope to post on as many topics as I can in order to help spread the word about Infertility. This post was originally posted by me over at Attain Fertility a few months back. I haven't shared these details to this extent here, but thought it was worth putting it out there again!


In November of 2008, just two days after my husband deployed to Iraq for a year, I found out I was pregnant. We had been trying for almost exactly one year, and I had accepted that I would not be pregnant before he left. On that morning, I noticed one pregnancy test left in our medicine cabinet and decided to use it. Not because I thought I was pregnant, but because it would expire before my husband got home and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Silly, yes. But imagine my surprise when I walked back two or three minutes later to throw it in the trash and noticed that faint pink line we all dream about getting. I was ecstatic.

On January 10th, 2009, I found out that I had miscarried. I had gone in for some slight bleeding, to ease my nerves. Even the doctor on call at the hospital said with my symptoms, he never would have had me come in. It was 3 a.m. I was completely alone. I sat in my car for an hour until I could compose myself enough to drive home. That night was also the first time I had found out I was carrying twins.

The months that followed were some of the hardest months of my life. Going home to an empty house after suffering a miscarriage was more than likely the worst choice I could have made. I didn’t want to be alone, but my friends around me didn’t know how to react to my news. Nobody wanted to talk about it, even though part of me did. I became secluded in my sadness, to the point that leaving the house became a chore. I was so afraid of something bad happening that it took everything I had to go to work in the morning. I couldn’t wait until I could head home in the evenings. A trip to a friends house a few weeks after the miscarriage resulted in a panic attack after leaving early. Going anywhere became almost impossible. I’m convinced now that had I been honest and gone to a doctor, that they would have diagnosed me with mild agoraphobia.

And then there was the resentment. I found out that multiple friends were pregnant in the months that followed. Some of those friends understand (now) why I couldn’t be happy for them, and others still don’t. It took one night, a bottle of wine, a very good friend and a lot of tears for me to realize that my post-miscarriage grief, something that is so normal for any woman who has suffered a pregnancy loss, had spiraled into something much bigger. I had let the depression that I was in get the best of me, and at the time didn’t see any way to move forward. Five months after my loss, I finally went back to my doctor and was put on anti-depressants. It as the best choice, for me, and something that I needed to overcome the hole that I was in.

Follow Up With Your Doctor
I had no follow-up from my doctor after the miscarriage, or after my D&C. I was never asked if I was OK by any medical professional, and so I didn’t know if what I was feeling was normal. I was simply told, you’re having a miscarriage. End of story. Make sure you call your doctor if you have any concerns. Sometimes having that reassurance that things are they way they are supposed to be, even if it’s not what we wanted, will help you get through it.

Talk About It — If You Want To
I wanted to talk about what was going on in my head, because I wanted some reassurance from my friends that what I was feeling was OK. Keeping things to yourself is good at times, but not always. The big things can tear you up inside. After my good friend sat me down and forced me to talk about it, I wanted to talk about it more. For me, it took calling a couple of friends and saying look, I need to talk about this. This is not something I want to tip toe around. Miscarriages are a difficult topic, and many of your friends and family may not want to bring it up for fear of hurting you. Let them know it’s OK to talk about it.

Take Time Off
Suffering a miscarriage can be one of the hardest thing we as women go through. In the immediate aftermath, you may not want to be around people for a while. Make sure you take care of yourself. Take time off work, or if you can, take a mini-vacation to get your mind off of things.

Pick A New Hobby
The Christmas after I found out I was pregnant, my parents bought me a very nice digital camera. In our family, it was a tradition, when the first child came along, to give the parents something to help keep the memories. After I miscarried, I took all that energy and turned it towards photography, something that I had ways been passionate about. Since then, I have started a successful photography business. Do something that makes you happy, or try something new that you have always wanted to do. Expending that energy towards something positive will help you heal and move forward.

Know When To Seek Help
Grieving for the loss of your baby is normal, and something that we as women must all do. It’s OK to be sad, and to hurt inside from your loss. Do not feel like there is something wrong with you if your sadness lasts longer than you expect. But when your sadness and depression starts affecting your daily life, and is keeping you from doing your normal day to day activities, do not be afraid to seek help. Doing so was a difficult thing, but it was the best choice I ever made, and I wish I had done so sooner. It doesn’t always need to be permanent fix. But it may help you feel better.