BurlingtonVT Moms Blog is partnering with Northeastern Reproductive Medicine to bring you our latest series titled “Lullaby Wishes: raising infertility awareness.” 1 in 8 couples suffer from infertility and yet the subject is often not openly discussed and seems to carry a stigma. Through this series we hope to open the dialogue and help women battling through infertility know that they are not alone. Thank you to the courageous women who have chosen to share their stories as part of this series, as we know that this topic is often deeply personal and difficult to discuss. Our desire is that those reading this series will find encouragement in the hope and beauty that is weaved into these stories of heartache, loss and love.

Let’s Talk About Grief…

Let’s talk about grief … because heaven knows when you lose something precious, you must grieve in order to release it and return to your natural, flowing energetic state. Without grieving, you risk having stuck places, energetic blocks, and thus will prevent the healing that is intended to come from the loss.

Grief looks different for everyone.

There is no time frame, no guidelines, no expectations… except that you feel your pain all the way through until you come out on the other side of it, where it’s lighter, more tolerable … and perhaps, if you’re lucky, you even find the purpose in it. For some, this may take a lifetime or more. For others, maybe only a year or two. But in my experience, any time I’ve tried to move through grief too quickly, I almost always had been denying some aspects … missing some part of the bigger picture.

How does this relate to infertility? Well, my husband is sterile.

After two years of unsuccessful trying to conceive “the old fashioned way”, this diagnosis hit us like an earthquake … totally shocking, tearing apart the very ground on which we stood. It sent us into an almost immediate whirlwind of searching for whatever we could find to help bring us the children we knew we were meant to have together.

I’m not exactly sure where the urgency came from, except that stubborn part of myself (my ego) was bound and determined to prove my place in motherhood. Not only is it one of the most basic biological reasons I am here on Earth, but it was also a long held dream of mine and being told that your dreams will never come true is tough to digest. Anyone who has ever been told, “you will never have children” (and actually wants them) surely understands this. So month after month, we pushed and pushed through mountains of stress and heartache, until alas, a positive pregnancy test!

A beautiful tiny flickering heartbeat at 6 weeks turned into, “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat” at 11.5 weeks.

The heartbreak was sharp, and raw, and deeply stirring. Amidst all of the searching, pushing and grasping to join the “Parents Club”, we never took the time to grieve the devastating truth … good old fashioned sex would never bring us a child … and no child of ours would ever inherit the giant-hearted, curly-haired genes of my teddy bear of a husband.

Between the diagnosis and then the later miscarriage, I realized I had a lot of grieving to do. For me this meant mourning the loss of a child, the loss of inspiration for our sex life, and the loss of my ideal of a perfect family. Somehow the miscarriage took less time to make peace with, although it still took quite a while, as it was acutely painful. I think this is because it was concrete … no heartbeat means no baby. But the rest is more diffuse and more complicated, as infertility often is.

These losses are real, whether explicit or subtle, and all feelings around them must be honored, validated and given space to breathe so they can complete a life cycle of their own. Only then can the healing come in.

So let’s take the time to talk about it, feel it all the way through, grieve the loss of the parts that hurt … because otherwise they just become part of your shadows, and somehow, someway, they will inevitably beg you to see the light.

Northeastern Reproductive Medicine is graciously sponsoring our ‘’Lullaby Wishes: Raising Infertility Awareness” series…and we would not have it any other way!  We are passionate about all that they are doing for women and couples in our community, and we encourage you to contact them to help in your journey to becoming a mother too.

To learn more about Northeastern Reproductive Medicine or schedule an appointment, please contact ::

1 (802) 655-8888

or

info {at} nrmvt {dot} com

Written by Kristen Maslow

Kristen Maslow is a Registered Nurse, Professional Doula and mother of one living in the foothills of NH with her husband, daughter and puppy. She loves to hike, run, XC ski, cycle in the great outdoors with her family. She is also an avid yogini, baker, gardener and seeker of truth who believes deeply in divine feminine wisdom. Writing is one of her favorite forms of release.