*Content warning: Infertility, miscarriage, still births

I wrote one post strictly about my infertility in October of 2019, just six months after losing my ability to birth a child. (You can read it here.) In it, I wrote that I didn’t feel anything about infertility, that I know many struggling with it, but not me! How cavalier of me.

Things have changed since then. I was in a fight for my life, so my feelings about my infertility didn’t surface until much later. Now, the seemingly constant drum beat of close friends having kids haunts me. I see both parents in their kids at different stages of their lives. Watching from afar on Instagram was tolerable for a while until it wasn’t. I took a break from social media to disengage while healing after my grandma died. And when I got back on, I swear everyone suddenly became pregnant with their second children. To add insult self injury I am not usually one to envy other people online, and I know most of my friends once struggled with traumatic miscarriages and even birthing their babies who died in delivery and shortly thereafter. That is a pain I cannot and will never be able to experience myself, for which I am grateful.

The list for what I am not grateful is much longer now. Recently, I erupted in sobs when my mother called me a mama bear for the kids I advocate and I said “Mama bear to foster kids, actual mama to none.” Woof, that got me. Breaking my own damn heart over here. On a thrifting trip in December, Malcolm and I bought some animals dancing in pink ballet clothes. When the sales associate rung up those items, she looked at me knowingly and said, “Someone’s having a girl!” It sure ain’t me, sales associate. Fuck. A serrated knife straight though my damn heart.

I know I can be a foster parent, which was my whole goal since I was in my teens. I didn’t know if I wanted to birth a child even after I lost the ability. But now that I see my friends, coworkers, and family have children, it’s harder to not feel left behind. I mourn my chance to experience pregnancy, to sense life growing within me, my creation; I lament my ended bloodline; I grieve for what I lost, what I will never have. One of my closest friends in town is pregnant, and I want to support her as best I can. I’m finding it hard to know how I can help not having experienced it myself. I thought about asking others who have been pregnant, but I can’t bring myself to do that yet.

So for now, I will process until the black hole of my sadness retreats. Hopefully my sadness is not too contagious.

Mae