My Darling Child

I dedicate this post to every woman and couple struggling with their ability to start or continue a family. You are not alone. We need to remove the stigmas that stand in the way of building families. April 21-29 is National Infertility Awareness Week. Learn how to help continue the conversation by following the website www.infertilityawareness.org.

#infertilityuncovered

My darling child,

If I never get a chance to meet you in the flesh,

Please know I will always consider myself your mother.

You were a product of deep love.

Unlike others who enter into parenthood with reckless abandon, your life was sparked with articulate consideration.

We acknowledged finances, family dynamics and changes to our work schedules.

We re-evaluated priorities to make you paramount.

We moved homes to make room for your nursery.

And when we couldn’t see eye to eye, we counseled with the most experienced advisors to make sure our marriage was healthy enough to welcome you too.

It has been years now. The time goes by not in months, but in cycles.

Fertile and non-fertile days tick by like the beeping of a basal thermometer.

Digital happy faces mock me at the end of a stick. It should be fun, but it feels like a chore.

Days are regulated by powders and vitamins, PH strips, alkaline tests, homeopathic teas, reduced carbs, eliminated sugars, castor oil wraps...tears.

We have all the best doctors. We’ve had all the tests modern medicine can provide. We’ve learned about sperm size, shape, mobility and count. I’ve watched the screen as the contours of my uterus are traced and discussed flatly in front of me like an architect would a blueprint. I’ve seen blue dye swim through my body charting out the map of your potential journey.

Countless vials of blood from my arm seem almost given in sacrifice to determine my worth. I watch the vials slowly fill and think maybe it is coming directly from my half-empty heart. Laid on the altar of a lab desk, I’d give it all for you...but all the results came back the same.

“Unexplained Infertility.”

Two words so clinical in definition, yet so cutting to my soul.

So when Western medicine failed us, we turned to the East.

I dabble in oils and supplements. I burn sage in our home.

Afternoons spent with tiny pricks of needles canvassing my skin and hot cups sucking out bad “chi.”

As I lay on the table, still and in silence, I do my best to pray. But each time I feel like my prayers are muffled, as if spoken into a pillow or gargling underneath water. My own words choking under the weight of my growing doubts. How could they possibly reach God’s ears?

God may not be listening but the rest are questioning.

“When will we hear some baby news?”

“You better not wait too long!”

“You should start trying now if you want more than one.”

And the most somber question of all, offered up to me at home, in tender surrender…

“How long do you think we should keep trying before we stop?”

The answer in my head? I would try forever.

The answer from my mouth? Silence.
I want you to know, I dream of you often. I’ve pictured your face like a ripe peach and I’ve watched you bounce with laughter into my arms. Once I imagined you so vividly that I woke still feeling the impression of you warm and tingly on my chest. In my dreams you are a little girl. Perhaps you are the one who will help mend my open wounds with my own mother...Perhaps just the thought of you, in a way, already has.

So you see, my Heart,

If I never meet you in the flesh, know you were born from our passion.

Conceived in my Soul,

Birthed in my mind and kept in my faith.

If I am never able to be your mother in the physical world,

Then I will still mourn you.

Because you are mine. My body, blood and spirit gave everything they could to have you.

Know how deeply I love you and how I still feel your presence even if we never meet.

Forever and always, yours I will be.