The other day, I went to a meeting for work. Usually, I end up working remotely – taking calls from excited expectant mothers and fathers who need help with caring for their newborn after they arrive. We often chat on the phone for close to an hour for that first phone call, discussing their excitement and their nerves, their family structure, sometimes their journey to the baby.
But the other day, I went to a meeting, and discussed many of these things in person. We talked about the mental health of new mothers and babies, and the things that can affect it going wrong and right. I talked to a coworker about her pregnancy scare. I talked to others about their children at home, about the babies they nanny, about their own prenatal and postpartum experiences. During the meeting, I got an email from Enfamil, welcoming me to the second trimester of pregnancy (which, I figured out, was where I would be had only transfer one worked.) I am not sure how I got on that list, or why I was still on it at all.
I came home, after this meeting, and I slept for 3 hours. I slept because my soul was exhausted, discussing what felt like everyone else’s pregnancy and baby experiences instead of my own. Because why shouldn’t it be my own? It seemed to unjust and unfair, why do they deserve it more than I do?
Infertility and IVF are hard. The feeling of emptiness, of loss, and also of resentment can grow so big they swallow you sometimes. And I love my job, more than I’ve loved any other job in my life. But it is painful, and it is hard, to spend all day seeing other people’s children and other people’s dreams come true. There have been times I have babysat, or taken phone calls and heard about someone’s twins and how they “just happened”, and I have sat down afterwards and stared into space, just utterly emotionally exhausted. Which, granted, is an improvement to the torrential flood of tears of six months ago. But it is still just all too much.
In childcare, there is no escape. You never stop remembering that they have a baby and you don’t, that they’re holding everything you could ever dream of. It’s always right there, reminding you. And the children, and often the parents, while they bring you so much joy, they also bring you a constant thought of your potential as a parent, your lack of baby, your path that they didn’t have to travel to get there.
I think I am – along with many others – still trying to figure out how my mind can feel so much happiness for one person, and so much heartbreak because it is them and not me. Because when I talk to them, and hear how much joy they have, I truly am so excited for them. But, I am also so sad for me – when will I join them, when will I be arranging care for my own newborn baby?
Sometimes, though, when it all seems very hard, and very impossible… There is a ray of hope. The other day, we had a new client, who was very kind, very peppy, very excited. I began to talk to with her, discuss her needs, her due date, her ideal care. And then she mentioned her baby was conceived via IVF.
She was everything I wanted for myself. She struggled and she succeeded, just like I hope so much I will, sometime soon. And now she is there, the place I want to be, happier than anyone has ever been. And she, and the people like her, keep me going.
Because, one day, that will be me.
Inara xx
Learning with Whimsy 