First things first, let me say – CONGRATS!!! You made it to motherhood. This day has finally arrived, so let’s just take a minute. This is a BIG DEAL. The day you weren’t sure would come. Now you’re finally rocking the maternity pants you were once jealous everyone else got to wear. Or you’re holding your miracle baby in your arms. The long-awaited adoption finally went through. It’s truly a surreal moment, isn’t it? I’m so stinking happy for you. I know the feeling and there’s not many in life like it.
Unfortunately infertility doesn’t just get completely left at the door as soon as we become mothers. Especially if this season of our life has lasted quite a few years. Anything painful in our life that we don’t deal with intentionally and directly usually tends to follow us into whatever comes next, and I’ve found the same to be true with infertility. It can often make our transition into motherhood more complicated and riddled with fear, threatening to steal our newfound joy with our miracle baby. So while not every new mother will relate to all of them, I just want to share these five things I’ve learned now being three years into this motherhood journey after infertility.
1) Having a baby doesn’t suddenly heal you from all the pain and struggle that your infertility journey created.
While there IS a healing element to having a baby and finally entering the motherhood you’ve been working so hard towards, it doesn’t just wipe away everything that’s happened. The infertility rollercoaster finally ends and there is major relief with that. And that in and of itself brings some much-needed healing.
But all the loss, marital struggles, feelings of inadequacy, shame, triggers, FEAR, etc…those don’t just automatically get wiped way. There is still work to be done. Any deep, intricate pain that is created is going to take some deep, intricate work to truly heal. And to be the best moms we can be, I really think we owe it to ourselves and to our children to keep working on that part of ourselves.
How do we do this? Well, unfortunately the answer isn’t the same for every woman.
Infertility affects every woman differently. This is something to be addressed with a trusted counselor, mentor, or your closest friends. It might even be worth digging in with another group of moms who experienced infertility and are now also on the “other side”. I encourage you when the triggers or pain comes on to face it, journal about it, process it out loud to someone, and even let yourself continue to grieve when it hits. Use the pain as your guide – if it still hurts, it still needs tending to.
2) Giving yourself the freedom to struggle in motherhood does not mean that you’re not grateful for your miracle baby.
If you lock yourself in and never let yourself admit what’s hard or what’s disappointing about motherhood, then you won’t be the best mother you can be.
No matter how your baby got here, whether it was on accident or a million cycles of IVF…every mom struggles. By being honest with these struggles, it does not mean that you’re not grateful enough. It just means you’re working on being better, and that’s what that miracle child deserves.
I realized pretty quickly that there’s “mom guilt”…and there there’s “infertility mom guilt”. Basically it’s mom guilt on steroids. Any time I felt exhausted or frustrated or had any negative feelings toward my daughter in any capacity even if it was just the tiniest thing, I immediately felt so horrible. I beat myself up for it. I felt so guilty for being frustrated with her. Like after all I’d been through and how deeply I desired to be a mom…how could I let myself feel this way? The voice in my head would scream at me, “You should be more grateful for her right now!”
Oh ladies. There is so much grace for this. We are HUMAN. We are NORMAL. We get tired. We get frustrated. Does it mean we love our child any less? Not even for a second. Those things are just simply not related.
Let yourself be free to be the human mother that you now are.
3) Give your child their own identity apart from how they got here.
For the longest time whenever anyone met my daughter, my introduction would sound something like this: “This is Scarlett Faith! Her middle name is Faith because of how much our faith grew when we were waiting on her to get here because it took us four IVF cycles and eight embryos to get her here so she’s a little miracle girl! Our little IVF wonder!” As if that child nursery worker needed to know that whole back story to truly enjoy or appreciate her or something. I might as well have just stamped it on her forehead when we walked around anywhere. “Scarlett Faith: Our Four-Cycle IVF Rainbow Baby”.
Poor child.
The girl has a beautiful spirit and personality, and she definitely doesn’t need that kind of introduction to be enjoyed! It took a lot of counseling to finally get to this place where I realized that I was dumping my “infertility identity” right onto her too. She wasn’t just Scarlett…she was Scarlett The IVF Success. And that’s so not fair to her because she is way more than that. I want her to have the freedom to be who she truly is apart from my journey.
So now, when it’s appropriate, yes, I still proudly and with so much joy share my story to anyone that it would benefit. But as often as possible, I introduce my daughter as Scarlett Faith. My sweet-tempered, music-loving, dance-loving, social, smart, talkative, hilarious little three-year-old. That’s all they need to know to love her. It’s been so freeing to give up her “infertility baby” title.
4) Let yourself move on from the infertility world so you can fully give yourself to your new role as a mother.
When I first got pregnant, I was still very active on all of the infertility facebook pages I was a part of. I was still communicating frequently with my friends who were still struggling. I was still reading lots of comments and updates from those who were still on their infertility rollercoaster, and it took me awhile to realize I was actually battling a form of “survivor’s guilt” with it all.
Survivor’s guilt can be defined by Wikepedia as:
“A mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt.”
This emotion of feeling bad that I was able to suddenly move on hit me each time I read about a miscarriage a friend was going through. I would keep seeing things pop up about another failed IVF cycle or failed adoption and it just broke my heart over and over. I felt too bad to “move on” from the group because it felt like I was leaving them behind, like I was betraying them in some way. But at the same time, staying in that world with this new life growing inside me kept me living in fear and continued heartache that made it nearly impossible to find joy in this new season of motherhood. So if you’re struggling with this, let me just give you permission and be really clear when I say:
It’s okay to move on! Actually, I think it’s necessary that you do.
You aren’t betraying anyone by moving on from your infertility journey! In fact, it would honor the infertility journey that you and others around you have been on for you to fully welcome and celebrate this new season of life. It is time for you to fully soak in each moment that you have with your new little one. It’s okay to hurt for your friends who are still struggling and celebrate this new joy in your life AT THE SAME TIME. It’s not easy, but it’s completely doable.
Eventually I had to turn off the notifications for these groups and just stay out of them for awhile. And it was really the best thing I could have done for my pregnancy and for this transition period. It helped me to more fully let go of this “infertile” title that I had put on myself and begin to really dive into my new title of “mother”.
It might be time for you to do something like this too.
5) If your marriage fell apart during infertility, a baby won’t put it back together.
Adding a baby into the mix is often described as pouring gas onto whatever fires were already burning in the marriage.
I don’t say that to scare you or discourage you, but I want to paint an accurate picture of what I wish had known going into this transition. Often times I think many have this belief that having a baby will “bring us together” or create some kind of magical unity as a family or something. And okay, yes, there is something VERY VERY special about finally being able to have a baby with your spouse. I don’t want to downplay that at all, because finally seeing my husband become a wonderful father to our child?? It was SURREAL. Truly wonderful.
But when the crying baby finally falls asleep, or our three year old toddler is throwing her fifth tantrum for the day while we’re trying to just get in a couple words with each other, do our issues still remain and need some serious attention? Heck yes. While having a baby together was truly one of the most beautiful experiences of my entire life….it actually made our marriage a lot harder. I’m guessing you’ve heard many other people say this too.
There were a lot of underlying things that had been neglected during the season of infertility, and while it wasn’t the sole reason our marriage eventually hit a huge crisis point, it was a huge contributor to that. And a new baby only added to the really complex, volatile, and exhausted marriage dynamic we had going on.
So if you haven’t yet been to counseling……GO! GO now!!! Because there are most likely dynamics and triggers that have gone on long enough now that you won’t be able to effectively work through on our own. Your spouse and your child are so worth putting in the time and effort to get your marriage back to a healthy place. And it’s possible to do it with a new baby in the mix. There is never a more worth-it time than now to put this kind of time and attention into something as important as your marriage. Because when you do, you get to live a life where you experience true intimacy with your spouse and this miracle child. I can’t describe how incredible that is.
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Stepping into motherhood after a long season of waiting and wondering is truly one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever been a part of in life. I don’t take it for granted and I don’t think you will either. I’m so grateful for the perspective I gained through infertility. Even some of the tired, pull-my-hair-out-tantrum moments, my husband and I have just looked at each other and smiled in exhausted gratefulness. There’s still so much to learn about all of this and I surely haven’t done it perfectly. But I love passing on what I’ve learned to you so that you have the best chance at soaking in every single moment as the wonderful mother you now are.