How infertility can challenge your identity as you wait for motherhood.
For someone who doesn’t have any children, I’m told I’m already a mother a lot. I guess, according to my therapists and doctors, trying desperately to become a mother earns you entrance into the club.
Motherhood’s supposed to come with perks, though. Even during the most difficult pregnancies or parenthood adjustments, it’s supposed to be rewarding. But I’ve not yet reaped any rewards: No smiling children or kicking limbs in my belly. Just emptiness where my spirit used to be.
One of the first times I was told I was already a mom was about 10 failed artificial reproductive technology cycles into my 2-year-long infertility journey. “Look how much you’ve done for your child already — the lengths you’ve gone to, just to become a parent. You already are a mother,” my reproductive endocrinologist said, when he saw I was struggling. But the label “mother” didn’t feel like it fit.
In fact, it was around this time that I felt farthest away from motherhood. The path ahead of me started to look more endless and winding than ever. With so many failures behind me and a depreciating ovarian reserve, I had no reason to believe I’d get pregnant anytime soon. Surely this wasn’t motherhood.
I was also so far from the fun-loving, confident, and clear-headed woman I was before this. Because of the countless rounds of hormones, financial burden, logistical stress, and inevitable depression, I’d felt — and looked — pregnant for about a year but had nothing to show for it besides a bloated belly, PTSD, and a lot of new knowledge about the reproductive system. I don’t think I’m a “mother” — I’m not pregnant and I’ve never raised a child — but I don’t identify as childless, exactly, because all my energy is put toward becoming pregnant. So what am I?
Once upon a time, I even considered whether I wanted kids at all. That was before I found out that my AMH level — which stands for anti-müllerian hormone and provides information about fertility — was far below average for a 33-year-old.
After processing that shocking news, my husband and I decided to freeze some embryos so we could put off possible parenthood a little longer. We thought we’d do one or two cycles of embryo banking and then go back to our old lifestyles before we knew this information — lots of travel, last-minute plans, and prioritizing our dog above all else. That never happened.
Those first two embryo-banking cycles were far from fruitful, which took a toll on me emotionally. I came to realize I did want motherhood — and by that time, I knew too much to ever be able to return to my carefree self.
Now, with every injection, mood swing, hot flash, and heartbreaking negative pregnancy test, I become more and more aware of my desire to become a mother. And as that desire grows, I become more bewildered at how well I thought I knew my body all these years, while it was betraying me.
About six months into fertility treatments, my body started becoming unrecognizable to me: At 34, I had hormone-induced gray hairs and acne, and depression-induced dark under-eye circles. My ovaries were so swollen and my belly so bloated, I would routinely be offered a seat on the subway by a well-meaning stranger. My emotional state was even more unfamiliar. I felt consumed by a dark cloud of medication, financial woe, discouraging doctor’s visits, insurance agita, and of course, uncertainty.
A year, a few more failed cycles, and an ectopic pregnancy later, I was telling my therapist that I was depressed and hopeless, spending entire weekends crying and dreading the next round of bad news. Or if the upcoming embryo transfer was successful, then what? I was already despondent prepartum, so now I felt like the ideal candidate for postpartum depression. I was spiraling, and then my therapist snapped me out of it. “You have to stop worrying about the worst-case scenario,” she said. “You already are a mother.” But that label still didn’t feel right.
The things that used to bring me joy — catching up with friends, spending time with family, seeing Broadway shows, or getting out of the city for the weekend — didn’t do the trick anymore, and I couldn’t do some of the things that made me feel whole (barre classes, running, wine, last-minute travel). I could barely plan a trip, or commit to plans more than two days ahead because, during a cycle, I’d sometimes know only a day in advance when my next appointment would be. I couldn’t fit into my favorite clothes, some of which I bought only a year ago. I figured I’d face these changes at some point, but I naively thought they’d be accompanied by a full-term pregnancy and a child. The closest I got to that was in November of 2022, when we unexpectedly got pregnant naturally.
Right before Thanksgiving, I experienced an ectopic pregnancy, when an embryo is unsustainably and dangerously developing outside of the uterus. We found it early enough to treat it without surgery, but ending that pregnancy felt like taking two steps back, even though I knew it wouldn’t result in a baby. Meanwhile, this new emotional trauma ensured I’d never be the same again. It was also one of the most physically painful experiences I’d ever been through, resulting in an ER visit on Thanksgiving, when it suddenly felt like my left fallopian tube was in a gnarled knot. The pain and pressure were so intense, I struggled to walk. The on-call doctor advised me to go to the ER for an ultrasound. After an excruciatingly painful exploration of my organs, while I cried and crushed my husband’s hand, the doctors determined my fallopian tube hadn’t burst, and therefore I was fine (relatively).
A few weeks later, I got my doctor on the phone and asked the question I’d spent dozens of nights turning over in my head: Was it unlikely at this point that I’d ever get pregnant using my own eggs? Slowly but firmly, with caution and confidence, he gave me a “less than 1 percent” chance. Of all the pills I’ve had to swallow in this process, literally and figuratively, that one was the hardest: I never considered that I wouldn’t be able to create life with my own eggs, if that’s what I chose to do. Now I’m positive I do want kids, but I still don’t have them, and I feel farther away from motherhood than ever.
“When you’re experiencing the limbo of infertility, you’re in the in-between,” says Emily Pardy, founder and CEO of Ready Nest Counseling and one of the first licensed marriage and family therapists in the country to be certified in perinatal mental health. “You’re not child-free, happily living contentedly without children. You’re also not pregnant, and you can’t envision the finish line yet. Plus, people don’t know how to perceive you, because so much of what you’re experiencing is internal. It’s like walking around with a migraine instead of a broken arm: Nobody can sympathize because they can’t see it. You’re lost in that un-categorization.”
But I’m starting to wonder why attempting to get pregnant isn’t really acknowledged as a possible phase of life, especially for those going through infertility treatment.
The anxiety and heartbreak of infertility mean forgetting what life was like before you went to the doctor every other morning or had to be home by 8 p.m. every night for injections. It’s hot flashes you didn’t expect to experience for another decade or so. It’s losing feeling in your butt cheek after weeks of shots. It’s hormone-induced paranoia that your relationship won’t survive this struggle. It’s not buying a new bathing suit in the hopes you’ll soon be pregnant and then have no use for it. It’s being the sad friend or family member people randomly check in on, and not knowing what to say as they ask how you are. It’s knowing the name of every nurse at the clinic, and agony as you mourn every embryo that could have been your baby. It’s feeling betrayed by your body for not doing what it was built to do. And eventually, it’s numbness to all of the above.
And it’s a phase that’s marked by so much unbearable waiting. Every time you go to the doctor, you anxiously anticipate a follow-up call with the results of your ultrasound or bloodwork. If you fertilize eggs, you have to wait days to find out how many survived. If you implant any embryos, you have you wait two weeks to understand if your very expensive and taxing endeavor was successful. And some of us do that month after month after month. Pardy told me, “We don’t give the ‘waiting’ the incredible respect it deserves. It’s really hard. We don’t know when we’ll reach the finish line and we’re really scared that it’s further away than we want it to be.”
I never anticipated straddling these two worlds — the “childless” woman and the “mother-to-be” — and certainly not for two years. But for some of us, that “in the middle” feeling is how fertility plays out. And through it all, I keep walking further down this interminable path, in the hope that navigating this uncertainty and all the tumult my body’s going through might bring me closer to who I’m meant to be. A mother, maybe?
