This week, while reading old drafts for my blog, I found this one. It seemed fitting to share it now, during infertility awareness week. I wrote this over a year into our journey trying to get pregnant. I know ours was short in comparison to others’, but during that time, I was able to experience an ache and a sense of emptiness that I had never before. I am grateful we get to hug Eli today and it makes me think of those who are hurting right now, waiting. Waiting is so hard.
“If I look at a baby long enough, I will cry. I don’t want to, it just happens. I look at pregnant women and often wonder what it feels like to carry within yourself your growing child. What it would feel like to feel the baby kick and feel yourself be completely changed from the inside out. And I wonder if it will ever happen for me. And that’s usually when the tears come – when the fear of the unknown takes over. I don’t really remember a time in my life when I didn’t know with certainty that I would one day carry a baby. It was obvious to me, just like growing up and getting wrinkles. It happens. I just assumed it would be easier and the road to becoming a mother would be a little less painful and less uncertain. I also didn’t know how lonely it would be when you are the one left behind as all of your friends successfully (or accidentally) get pregnant. When you look around and everyone is bearing a baby but you. There’s a deep desire to post about it just in case other lonely people out there want to join in the fear and sadness that comes with attempting to become a parent unsuccessfully, but then again, I don’t want the whole world to know that I am trying to have a baby. So I quietly wait and look at babies and sometimes cry because I want one. I want to bear a baby, to raise a child, to become a mother. And sometimes, waiting sucks.”
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