Naturally Getting Pregnant

A friend of mine turned 40. To celebrate, he invited his family and friends to a hut over the weekend on the top of a mountain in the Alps. I’m always game for a weekend in the mountains and am excited to help him celebrate his big, as he called it “downhill birthday”.

We set off up the mountain and reached the hut after only a few hours. The clouds gave way to the sun and we sat outside the hut to enjoy the weather that seems to be accommodating his birthday wishes. This was the highlight of the weekend. From here it went downhill for me.

The weather got cloudy and I started to feel out of it. We hiked further up to the peak and returned to the hut for dinner and drinks. At midnight the birthday boy blew out his candles and stood before us thanking us all for coming to celebrate his birthday with him. His wife handed him his gift. He cleared his throat and said that his wife gave him the manual to his gift, which he can enjoy when it arrives in six months. At this point everyone was clueless - even her family. She vehemently had been telling everyone that they wanted to wait several years before trying to get pregnant. So it was quite a shock when he opened the gift to reveal a book with “baby” printed in large letters on the front.

Oh man. I have gotten better over the years at taking the “we’re pregnant” news time and time again. But in the past I have always been able to emotionally prepare myself for the situation. This was not something I had time to prepare for. I tried to grab the reigns of my emotions before they ran away into despair but it was too late.

I ignored the blackness overtaking my body and chatted with a friend of mine next to me. We noted how happy all the parents were and how they seemed to all be totally surprised. With every bit of energy I had, I tried to concentrate on how happy I was for this couple. My other emotions were magnitudes stronger, however, and I knew I could only hide them for a limited amount of time. It was then that I looked over to my husband sitting across the room. He was worse off than me. He looked like he was scanning for an escape route out of the corner. He then suddenly stood up and headed out the door. I didn’t want to run after him and make it obvious that something was wrong so I waited a couple of minutes and made my exit.

I opened the door to the blackness of the night and saw a faint shape a ways off, staring out at the city below. When I reached for him in the dark I felt the wet tears on his jacket and heard him sniff. We talked in incomplete sentences to offer comfort, but really there was nothing to say. We were in indescribable pain and to top it off we felt ashamed to feel such pain when we actually wanted to just be happy for our friends.

Had we been anywhere else, I would have claimed headache and we would have headed back to the safe haven of our own four walls. Our pain would be limited and we wouldn’t bring down the mood of the wonderful celebration. But this wasn’t anywhere else. This was the top of a mountain in the middle of the night with no way down. We were stuck.

We stood looking out over the mountain until I started to shiver in the cold. We couldn’t go back inside and enter the room with our depressive state, so we headed up to our room which was shared with three other people - hardly a retreat. I then put on my warmest clothes and we headed back outside. We climbed to the top of a small rock pile and hugged each other waiting for the pain and emotions to subside. Within seconds, though, our friends and their parents came out the door. What are they doing out here? They put their cell phone on speaker phone and began calling family members that couldn’t make it to share their news. I couldn’t take it and began to cry quietly. Richard put my hood over my head and said, “Don’t listen”. He rubbed my hood which beautifully drowned out all the noise. We stood here for what seemed like an eternity. When the path was clear we went back inside and I went to bed and Richard headed back to the room - he didn’t want anyone to catch on and think we were bitter.

It is so hard to explain to someone who hasn’t struggled to have children the emotions that are involved. For me the best approach is to try to hide them from others and myself until I can deal with them.

The next morning I stayed in bed until 11:00 to avoid the long discussions about pregnancy, childhood and parenting. When I did head downstairs I sat in the middle of a discussion on how this couple is likely to have a girl since vegetarians have girls more often. This brought a flow of memories back from my miscarriage in January since my sister-in-law told me the same thing. I ate my oatmeal barely able to appear normal.

Due to bad weather we all headed down the mountain. The pregnant women walked together and I took a path down that was off the main road and much better for my knees. I had planned on taking this route down the mountain when we were coming up but now it looked even more appealing than before. Richard saw me turn off and joined me. We ended up on a totally different route and when we got to the car at the bottom I felt totally better. It was the time I needed away from the situation.

Will these feelings ever subside? According to a study by A.D. Domar published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 1992, women experiencing infertility have a depression level twice that of other women. The peak of this depression is reached after 2-3 years of infertility and after approximately 6 years the depressive symptoms subside - probably due to the acceptance of the situation.

Hopefully, I will have children and will never be able to say whether the symptoms subside after 6 years, but for now I am just learning how best to deal with my emotions in all kinds of situations. Because escape just isn’t always possible.

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