Do you remember the moment you knew you wanted to have children? Did you wake up in the middle of the night, a cold sweat, sitting straight up into bed and shouting: “I must have kids NOW!”
No?
Just me then?
Kidding 😉
They say that if you just wait for everything to line up, to have all your ducks in a row before you have kids: a good job, a nice house, a big car, a cushy savings account – you’ll never have kids. Before you know it, “they” warn, you’ll have waited to long to have kids and missed your opportunity.
For the infertile, every single day of our journeys is about the waiting.
. . .
This post is part of Kathy’s Time Warp Tuesdays, a blog hop that allows us to dig up a post from our past that reflects on that week’s theme. This week’s theme is waiting. What a perfect way to kick off this blog hop, because if there’s one thing that’s defined my infertility experience, it’s waiting.
. . .
Larry and I knew we were going to wait to have children after we got married. There was no rush, we assumed. We had a ballpark idea that we’d toss the birth control in the trash can, Mad About You style, sometime in our third year of marriage.
With our fourth anniversary four months away from yesterday, obviously, those plans didn’t exactly work out.
This time two years ago, I was really feeling the crunch to have children. I was six months out from my diagnosis. In all the rush of being diagnosed – well before we had ever planned to start trying – all of sudden, I wanted babies now. My biological clock, in all the irony of being so estrogen depleted at the time, was in overdrive.
The problem is that Larry wasn’t exactly on the same page.
At the time, I was seeing a counselor to reconcile dealing with the flood of emotions I was felt. Dr. S. had a background in counseling infertility patients and couples and for the brief time I saw her, she was an immense help to me. After a while, my sessions turned into bitching and moaning that I wanted kids RIGHT NOW and I felt like I was practically dragging my husband into that idea.
Dr. S. had this to say, as I wrote in my post 2 years ago, You Can’t Wave a Magic Wand:
Dr. S pointed out something interesting, that kind of took me by surprise. If Larry called my bluff right now, and said, “Yes! Let’s do it. Let’s go ahead with everything, right now” …would I do it? I was taken aback by this, and honestly I don’t know. I think I might hem and haw for a little bit, wrestling all of the uncomfortable emotions that come with committing to a process like this, but I’d dive in. Well, that’s what I tell myself. I really don’t know how I’d react to that kind of calling out.
It was one of those moments that really made me stop and think: am I really ready to have children right now?
And for a variety of reasons: our finances (Larry was still looking for work after being laid off six months earlier), our living arrangement at the time, Larry’s personal level of parenthood readiness – we waited.
And waited.
And still we wait.
. . .
Two years later, still no children. I struggle with this on and off; some days are better than others. As the season turns, it gets a little harder. I’m fighting nature’s rhythm while trying to fight my own biological urge. So usually, as the fall begins, I start to get very sad about where we are, about not having the children we both so desperately want in our lives.
But the waiting feels different now. The biological urge comes and goes a lot less now. I stopped focusing with tunnel vision on IVF then adoption then back to IVF – I’ve taken off the blinders and tried to live my life more fully, without feeling so defined by all this waiting.
It helps too that the waiting is less about trying to get my husband on board to the idea, because as he told me Sunday night, that time is getting close.
As we cleaned up from dinner, I mentioned that I had been having a rough time of infertility things the last couple of weeks.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Of course. I just get a lot more sad; I’ve felt that pull and that longing a lot more recently that in the past few months,” I confessed.
“Anything I can do to help?” Larry offered.
“I don’t think so. I’ll let you know what I need when I need it.”
Larry started to walk out of the kitchen.
“Can I ask you something? Very candidly?” I called after him.
He turned around. “Of course.”
“Are you getting to the point that you really want to have kids too now? Where the waiting is starting to get to you?” I asked, point-blank.
Larry paused for a second and with a hint of a smile, said: “I think I’m getting close.”
I really wasn’t expecting to hear him say that. I expected the same old “party line” I’d gotten in the past from him – that he just didn’t feel that same biological pull or urgency like I do, that maybe it’s a guy thing and because he doesn’t give birth, he just doesn’t feel that same level of intensity that I did.
“Oh really?” I said, incredulously.
“Yeah,” he began. “I have these moments where I see young couples, people our age with little kids and I think, ‘Yeah, that would nice to have.’ But only when those kids are being good. Not when they have a meltdown in the grocery store.”
I smiled a big wide grin – my heart just melted to hear him say that.
He’s going to be a great dad one day.
. . .
They say that there’s about a three-year difference in “parenting readiness” between males and females, the men typically being about three years behind. I guess we’re averaging sooner than most to meet in the middle.
But when I really thought about it, I wonder if our infertility didn’t speed things up for him a little bit. Because there simply is no chance for an oops baby. There’s no “let’s just ditch the birth control and see what happens” scenario. We are locked into our wait, for better or for worse. Perhaps it’s because he’s seen more now our unique limitations than most couples that has accelerated his desire to be a father one day.
Maybe that, and the fact that he turns 30 in three months.
Who knows.
. . .
Two years ago, I wrote about that pull, that deep ache within where I long to be whole:
But the yearning – I like the way my counselor described it last night- the yearning is so constant. And she articulated a feeling I’ve had for months at this point: I see pregnancy and childbirth not so much as a necessity, or a measure of “keeping up with the Joneses.” For me, these things are about healing. I see them as rights to a fundamental wrong. I see a big round belly not as a competitive commodity, like another engagement ring or a wedding dress – rather, I see it as the bandage, the salve on a deep wound.
That sense of longing to be pregnant has faded somewhat in these two years. The waiting, the longing is still there, but now it’s more of longing to teach, to raise, to parent a child. The pregnancy experience is still very important to me, and that’s why we’re eventually pursuing IVF with donor egg. This waiting can be better expressed by wanting to teach my child about the world around them.
They may not share my genes, but I can still teach them to marvel at the world around them, as their mother does. To look up at the night sky and shine a flashlight up there, to wonder how many millions of light years will it travel.
After two years, the wait isn’t about waiting to give birth. It’s about waiting – and wanting – to parent.
. . .
I asked Larry if he’d tell me when he went from “close” to “absolutely knowing” he wanted to be ready to start the whole shebang.
He promised me: “Don’t worry. You’ll know.”
And so that’s where I still struggle with the waiting: the constancy of not knowing while we wait. Of not knowing whether IVF with donor egg will work for us. Of not knowing if I can emotionally handle a miscarriage or a failed cycle. Of not knowing exactly when we can begin this family building process.
It’s not that the waiting gets any easier. It doesn’t. It’s hard reading blogs now that I started reading over two years ago and seeing them resolve, or even seeing some lap me at this point. The waiting most certainly doesn’t get any easier.
But over time, it just becomes a part of the routine.
Just as we aren’t defined by our infertility, we aren’t defined by the waiting either.
We just live it.
This post is part of the Time Warp Tuesday Blog Hop hosted by Kathy at Four of a Kind. Swing by her blog today to see who else is participating and join in the fun for next Tuesday.
There are so many things I love about this post. I love your comment that the waiting has become about parenting (which I think is actually a good thing, since pregnancy lasts 9 months but parenting lasts a lifetime) I also love the line about the waiting not defining us … but that we simply live it. That’s all we can do, isn’t it? Live our lives, be where we are, each day a little closer to meeting the people we are to become.
You and Larry are going to be such awesome parents some day.
Timing is everything in relationships, isn’t it? Getting in synch with desires. The 3 year thing rings true for me. An guess what? I married a man 3 years younger than I am 🙂
Still, I was the driver in the process.
I’m excited to see what happens now that he’s getting very close. Sometimes that energetic shift can be quite powerful.
I had no idea about the three year rule, but that makes complete and utter sense. Larry’s comment cracked me up 🙂
I’m glad you two are moving closer to what you both want, together. It’s a hard and little talked about part of infertility.
Darcy didn’t want kids until suddenly he did, and then it was a high pressure situation. Like, he wanted them yesterday once he wanted them. I think he went into full biological clock mode.
Wow Keiko, I feel like you just reached back into my past and wrote a post from my brain 2 years ago, at least so many parts of it felt like they came from my own hand.
I remember that yearning, that NEED, to be working towards building my family. I remember that feeling of being alone in my desire (or being scared that I would always be somewhat alone in that desire) because my partner was just not there. I remember feeling like I just couldn’t wait any longer, that I might just burst.
Unlike you I pushed my partner before I was ready (and I know we have different situations and different paths to take) and honestly, there are times, so many times, when I wish I hadn’t. I think most of our relationship issues these past few years have been due to me pushing him, being unable to wait. And of course our financial issues are also due to an inability to wait (though I probably wouldn’t have faced them even if I had waited, I was just too clueless and naive).
And now here I go making my comment all about me…
I’m so sorry you’ve had to wait so long. I’m so sorry you felt that yearning, that need, for such a huge quantity of time. I literally cannot imagine enduring that. I’m so sorry you have had to.
I can’t wait for your husband to meet you in the middle and for you to start building your family. You are going to be the most amazing mother some day, of that I am certain. I just wish you didn’t have to wait.
PS I’ve noticed that comment luv never works for me on your site, while it does work for me on others. I just wanted to let you know.
Ironically, my last post is titled ‘waiting’ even though I’m not part of the blog hop. 🙂 As it turns out, parenting is full of stressful waiting, too. Infertility has really helped in that regard. Where other parents freak if they have to wait for an answer, my husband and I consider it par for the course.
You and Larry will know he is really ready when he can look at kids having a meltdown and be able to say ‘I want THAT’. After my miscarriage, when we were about 5 years into our IF journey, my husband went to a friend’s house to help him install a window. He had twin toddler boys and an older son, and they were tearing things up like crazy. When my husband came home he was just sitting in the car outside, so I came up and sat in the passenger seat, and he was quietly crying to himself. All he could say was “I want THAT” and I knew exactly what he meant. All of it, the chaos, the noise, the fun, the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, the homework, all of it.
It’s really interesting to read about your experience of waiting and how you deal with it. Especially the part about the difference in your and Larry’s sense of urgency, and how that changes over time.
I can really relate to what you’ve said about how one of the hardest parts is not knowing when Larry will be ready to start the doner IVF process. I often feel that I could get through any number of additional miscarriages, if I only knew exactly when I would get a pregnancy that will result in a living baby. Not that each miscarriage isn’t painful, just that knowing that a living baby is at the end of all this would make it easier to bear the pain in the present.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear that Larry feels that he is “close to ready”. That sounds like a huge step forward for the two of you!
Wow Keiko, just Wow! I am typing through my tears… What a beautiful post about “waiting.” I have spent time this morning reading through and commenting on other’s Time Warp posts and I am fascinated by the perspectives that each blogger has taken on the topic, as well as the common threads.
Thank you for sharing how things have changed for you since you wrote that original post. I also appreciate what you learned from therapy. I think everyone can benefit from spending time in therapy at some point in their lives, but I also respect that there comes a time when you need to move on.
I love this: “After two years, the wait isn’t about waiting to give birth. It’s about waiting – and wanting – to parent.”
Also, I really enjoy how you write about your relationship with Larry. You capture the love and respect that you clearly have for each other and I can almost feel you flirting with him and he with you in this post.
I appreciate how bittersweet it is to see other bloggers that you have followed for years becoming parents and in some case even “lapping” you. I used to notice that a lot when we were struggling with SIF and loss. In the time it took us to finally bring home another healthy baby, we have friends that were on #4.
You are going to be such an amazing mom and Larry will be such an awesome dad! I know that the two of you will pursue treatment when you are both ready and though I don’t want to rush you, I can’t wait to follow and support you on that part of your journey. xoxo
P.S. I think I will have to find a way to be more concise if I am going to keep up w/ this blog hop thing! Thank you soooo much for participating in Time Warp! I hope you will “do the Time Warp” with again next week (or another Tuesday in the future)!
Just started regularly reading your blog – great post. Totally agree that men are 3 years behind us – we are almost hitting year 4 in our journey and my husband has recently been making comments about his feelings of desire and urgency in having babies – we’ve always wanted them, but now I see that emotional connection and urgency in his comments about playing ball with a boy, getting sweet hugs from a little girl… its definitely weighing on him, where I’m getting more engrained in the defeat and “whatevers”. Funny how that works. And yes – being lapped is no fun and its definitely happened on several occasions.
Great post!