Trying

An unexpected battle with unexplained infertility

I wrote this essay two years ago for a national publication. After reading it, my editor there told me she thought I should hold off- it felt like my story wasn’t finished. That unfinished feeling and uncertainty around what the future would hold was, to me, the point- all I saw all around me were stories with endings. People became parents, or chose (or accepted) a child-free life. The not-knowing added an extra layer of pain for me. I wanted to capture what this vulnerable period felt like in hopes it would help me, and maybe someone else, feel less alone.

Unfortunately, my editor was right- things were about to get much worse. With the next year came miscarriage and IVF, isolating miseries that turned me into someone I did not recognize. Someday maybe I’ll write about that, but I still feel tenderness for this earlier chapter. Even if I didn’t yet know that 2024 was the one that was truly going to kick me in the nuts.

If you or someone you love are dealing with the grief around unexplained infertility, this is for you.

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The summer between 7th and 8th grades I got contacts and boobs at the same time and my whole life changed. A slightly cooler friend urged (bullied) me to swap my rolling backpack for back pain and try something that didn't have wheels. Suddenly guys in other grades knew my name and, crucially, did not know I did not have the personality to pull off being actually popular. I got invited to the movies and prom. My mom's actress friend gave me an old velvet dress of hers I tried on with a new push-up bra. "Oh boy," sighed the actress to my parents. "You're in trouble now."

From then on, I was terrified of becoming pregnant. At school, our education around sex was more about fear-mongering than it was about mechanics. One mistake and your bright future would go poof, that kind of thing. It would be years before I was doing anything more than kissing a teammate in the back of the swim team bus, but still. I knew that if you were getting your period, you could get pregnant.

Or theoretically, anyway. Two decades later, I have discovered that I am not, in fact, someone who can get knocked up if a man so much as sneezes in my direction. It felt like such a big deal when I decided I was ready to go off birth control. I didn't care about a wedding or a house when envisioning my future with my husband, just being a parent. The logistics of motherhood often sound awful in a culture that doesn't provide any meaningful support for families, and yet unfortunately I want in. I want it so much.

We went on a hilariously misjudged "last trip," partied with pointed enthusiasm, then agreed to reach for The Next Thing. My god how cute the baby would be, we said, uploading our pictures into a “What will your child look like?” image generator. We are Ready, I intimated to a fertility goddess who was surely listening. Mother Nature, you may finally bring it on.

Trying for a baby, the wink-wink part, is fun, obviously. "You are super fertile," my husband said solemnly, massaging me after a meal because, not unlike an infant, I sometimes need to be burped. "I can just tell."

Despite his degree from the Doesn't Exist school of medicine, this turned out to be incorrect. Coming up on two years since I went off the pill, still no baby. We both went through a bunch of tests, mine more painful than his (as seems to be the way), only to be told there is no findable reason why we should not be able to conceive.

I’ve optimized my diet and habits to prioritize my health, cut back on drinking. I work out every day, a sad consolation prize to be in good shape. In my early mid-thirties, everyone around me is, of course, pregnant. My best friend from childhood, my closest circle from college. Coworkers past and present, my favorite yoga teacher. People on TV shows, eternally, after a one-night stand during which they apparently just so happened to be ovulating. Cousins, in-laws. I become a person who squeaks "I'm so happy for you!" when loved ones tell me their news and then hides in the bathroom, filled with self-loathing over embarrassed tears I can't control. I can’t believe what a sad sack I am, weeping as though it’s a zero-sum game.

I know there are medical options to explore when we’re ready, but I’m not quite there yet. I am stuck in limbo, not old enough that people think I should panic, but I am panicking. These reproductive organs I have spent a lifetime aggressively mistrusting are now giving me a completely unexpected fight. I baby my dog, smother her until I begin to see my own anxieties reflected back through her usually vacant eyes. "Get a grip," I’m sure she’s saying, as she wriggles away from me. "Get a life."

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I make a show of trying to do that. I assure sweetly tentative friends I am not triggered, optimize for fun like I have something to prove. I savor my free time even though I would trade every single minute of it in a heartbeat for a heartbeat. "You have no idea," my mom says, "how quickly it will all change. Enjoy it now." She is confident this will eventually happen for us, but I don’t know why. I’m not getting younger or more fertile as the years tick by. I listen to "Happy & Sad" by Kacey Musgraves a lot. I have so much to be grateful for. I am healthy and loved, I remind myself. Well, healthy enough for one, anyway.

An acupuncturist tells me to dial back the HIIT classes where I work out my sorrow and not to eat anything cold, to zap my salads in the microwave. She wonders if my teenage bout with anorexia, when I stopped getting my period for a while, could have had lifelong repercussions. I still remember so vividly what it felt like to punish myself during that time, the row of bruises down my spine when I sat down where each vertebra jutted against the chair. I feel like I am being punished again. There’s no one to blame but myself.

I have a Chinese medicine consult with an herbalist who prescribes me 10 expensive pills a day that make me nauseous and, excitingly, throw up on the street. I eat up other women’s stories; I especially like the ones where they find out they are pregnant the day they were scheduled to begin IVF, like when you're waiting for your food at a restaurant and it comes as soon as you get up to pee.

There are tragic stories too. Women suffering through miscarriages, and abortions they needed but didn't want, or ones that they did. I hear through the grapevine that a mother of two I know is depressed because she is unable to have a third. I have a complicated reaction to this that I am not proud of. I berate myself and buy an iced coffee to turn my mood around on the walk to the gym, then remember what the acupuncturist said. I sip it guiltily, wondering if I really am trading ice cubes for the prospect of a child.

My yoga teacher's end-of-class platitudes have begun to hit hard. If that ain't a bad sign, I don't know what is. She puts on Otis Redding for our wind-down. Shielded by darkness and the sound of 20 tone-deaf people chanting "Om," I hear mine turn into a whimper and can't stand myself for a second. Shut the fuck up, I say to my inner voice. Then, ashamedly: I'm sorry.

I will get a room-temperature coffee with no ice cubes tomorrow. I will try a little tenderness. I will try.