In acknowledgement of Infertility Awareness Week, we reached out to the Ovry community to share their own stories and experiences of infertility. We received several heartfelt submissions, which we’ve shared below. Submissions include the whole spectrum of emotions that the TTC journey inflicts: hope, frustration, disappointment, impatience, sadness and everything in between. We are so grateful to all of our anonymous contributors for bravely sharing their stories to help others in our community who may be experiencing their own infertility story. Share these excerpts with loved ones who may need the support in what can be a difficult and isolating time.
“The unknown is the worst while TTC. After years and years and still no answer, the world around you can be crushing because your family, friends and strangers on the internet are all growing and moving on with their lives while you are feeling stuck in this situation.
After 4 years, and now being on a waitlist for IVF our miracle baby has shown up! I want to take this opportunity to share what me and my partner did that helped us so that hopefully it can help at least just one other couple to conceive. I understand you might need to cut this out while sharing and that our experience and individual situation is unique, but I want this knowledge to be known by as many as possible :
In my case, I have DOR (diminished ovarian reserve). Simply put, I don't have many ovaries left, and they are not all of quality. For my husband, he has a very low sperm count. During my fertility window, when we would TTC, I would insert a -clean- menstrual cup (Diva Cup in my case) right after we were done, not a second too late. I kept the cup inserted for many hours before removing it. We did this for a week, to really make sure even though I was testing ovulation. This method worked on the 1ST try. We could not believe it.
After many Google searches, the "science" behind it does make sense. Sperm basically moves around like pinballs, when they hit a wall, they turn around and try another way. With the menstrual cup in place, it created a wall that the sperm had to hit and went back up. This made sure that the maximum of sperm possible was in the right place at the right time.
I would love to send hope and strength to everyone who is battling an infertility journey. 🤍”
“Two years of infertility. Two years of hope followed by disappointment. Two years of avoiding pregnant people, two years of people telling me to just relax, two years of failed treatments and so many invasive tests. Two years waiting for a woefully inadequate and unfair publicly funded option (which we’re still waiting for, but grateful that it’s even an option in our province!). Two years of being told my fibroid was “nothing to worry about,” only to find out that it’s inflaming my kidneys and needs to come out ASAP — oh, and it’s definitely preventing implantation. Two years of peeing on sticks, having unromantic sex, and over-analysing every cup of coffee, hard workout, skipped vitamin. Meanwhile, everyone I know is growing their families, raising their children, and not inviting us because it would be awkward since we don’t have kids. Two years of running in place while everyone else has already crossed the finish line. When will it be our turn… or when will we give up?”
“You wait until you have the husband, the job, the house, the support network, the time, the space. You wait until all the pieces are in place…just to find out that you may have just waited, a little too long 💔”
“7 years TTC. I live my life in 2 week chunks. I’ve lost 7 years. I wish I could stop and get on with my life but I can’t because then it’s like I’ve spent 7 years and for what? To make it all for nothing? The worst part is I felt this way after 3 years, 4 years, 5 years. Every new year I want to give up and every new year I decide not to because I’m too far in. THAT is the cruelty of infertility.”
“Infertility is a time warp. Waiting for appointments, waiting for results, waiting for your period, waiting for answers, waiting for ovulation. The slowest increments of time you can imagine. Waiting, always waiting. It’s all just waiting. And then you wake up one day and realize 3 years have gone by and you still don’t have a baby. It’s fucking exhausting.”
“I got pregnant quickly - and stopped being pregnant quickly. I'm so jealous of the person I used to be, who had no idea how much this could hurt.”
“My infertility journey has taught me to be patient. With myself, with my body, with others. I went through 4 failed IUI, and I am now going through IVF, waiting for our little fertilized egg to thrive. Waiting for the nurse to call is dreadful, but I must be patient. Knowing that I am not alone makes it easier.”
“We struggled with infertility specific to my husband, and two miscarriages that felt like my failures, emotionally. Even though intellectually, that's not even remotely fair. Tracking it so closely was a double-edged sword and in hindsight, it's so much more common than one would think. Giving myself grace and working as a team on this, openly and vulnerably with my partner, has strengthened our bond and we have a beautiful baby girl now and trying for a second. In hindsight it's the dismissive responses from former friends which hurt most - I wish more women were open to talking about this without having to go through this!”
“While I never faced infertility, I did face recurrent miscarriage. While trying for our first baby, my husband and I faced 3 different types of losses - a missed miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy in my ovary, and a spontaneous miscarriage. For our first 3 losses, I had made cute little gifts to announce the pregnancy to my husband and our families, like a onesie, a dad mug, Christmas ornaments, etc. We had faced so much loss that by the time we finally got pregnant with our sweet boy (who is now 5 months old), we didn’t have it in us to make any special announcement as we had lost hope. Our families didn’t get excited when finding out anymore, the excitement turned to worry for my husband and I’s mental health and my physical health (if I were to experience another ectopic). We were robbed of those special announcements and the initial excitement of pregnancy. No one knew what to say to comfort me. I heard a lot of insensitive comments and advice from people who never experienced loss or infertility. I had to watch one of my good friends get pregnant first try, with the same due date as the baby I had just miscarried. My life got very dark and I didn’t know when I’d ever be happy again. Now that we finally have our sweet baby after all the loss, I can confidently say that our bond is incredibly strong and we call him our miracle each and every day. While infertility and loss feels like the end of the world in the thick of it, I can promise you it does get better once you’re on the other side.”
“I’ve never felt such pain, confusion and sadness like I did after having a miscarriage. A year later, we’re still trying. It’s exhausting, sad and really hard but at the same time it’s brought us closer, we’re more conscious of how we speak to people (you never know what they’re going through) and I’ve learned so much about my body. It’s tough to stay positive through it all, but finding little pieces of joy every day always helps. Sending love to everyone going through it right now ❤️”
“I hate the part when you know you’re not pregnant but your period still hasn’t arrived. It’s a slow crush every cycle. It’s the opposite of tearing off the bandaid. That’s where I am now, waiting for aunt flo so I can try again next month.”
“No one ever prepares you for the aftermath. You hear about miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, other heart wrenching losses but you never know it till you’re here. Monday, some bleeding, Tuesday onto cramping and an ER visit with no conclusive results. Wednesday, still cramping. Thursday, more blood tests and an ultra sound… 3:15pm on Thursday - calling my husband to say I’m on my way to the ER because I have an ectopic pregnancy. Bawling as I drive. Get there, get seen quickly. All while still bawling. Then the news - I keep calling it the best case of a worst case scenario - no surgery, I get to keep my tubes. Methotrexate to the cheeks and along we go.
But no one prepares you for this… getting up Friday morning and starting a new day, without a baby. Making toast, without a baby. Pushing the prenatals aside for now. Working, without a baby. The emotions were a given. I knew it would happen. The grief was a given.
The worst of it all - the physical reminders. The headache Friday, the gas pains Saturday and the cramping and diarrhea Sunday. The bleeding has started. Every sign, side effect, symptom - a reminder. A reminder that life doesn’t stop because you lost your first try at a pregnancy. Life doesn’t stop because you’re in emotional and physical pain. Get up, keep going, go to work, clean the house, walk the dogs, make meals all while being physically and emotionally torn down.
I know it wasn’t our time and I know it will happen when it is meant to. But the idea that you’re supposed to carry on with all these reminders, emotions, thoughts is what gets me. When do I get to grieve? Do I just tell the world to stop or shut it out?
Day by day it is. We try to go to the office tomorrow and make it through the day while I bleed and likely am still cramping. Put that smile on, they say I light up the room at work. Let’s see if I can still do that. Let’s see if I can just make it through without breaking down. Without being in pain.
Step by step…”
“I have always been at odds with my body. A product of the 90s, I was never thin enough, never beautiful enough, never toned enough. I spent a decade repairing that relationship with my body only to discover that it can’t give me the one thing I’ve ever truly wanted in life: a family. I can’t help but think this is my body’s way of paying me back for a lifetime of scrutiny.”
“This is harder than I could have ever imagined.”
“This journey is exhausting for so many reasons, but lately the saddest thought is knowing I'll never give up so I may as well get used to being sad and exhausted. I never pictured my life like this.”
“I’ve learned more about my body in the 3 years trying to get pregnant than I did in all the 32 years that came before. I wouldn’t wish infertility on my worst enemy, but sitting here 27 weeks pregnant, I’m weirdly grateful to have learned so much through this experience.”
“We had a miscarriage and lost our baby on April Fools day. People asked us if we were joking. Our rainbow took us three years to conceive after how traumatic loosing our baby was.
Infertility made me a kinder person. You don’t know the silent battles people are facing until you’re facing one yourself. I give so much more grace to strangers.”
“Physically, I am the healthiest I’ve ever been because of my TTC journey. Mentally, I’m the least healthy I’ve ever been because of my TTC journey.”
“I unfollow people I’m not super close with on Instagram if they have a baby. I wish it didn’t bother me but it does. Sometimes I even feel like unfollowing close friends with kids. Instead though, what I do is “mute” their account so that their posts don’t show up in my feed.”
““At Least You Know You Can Get Pregnant Now” isn’t a comforting or supportive sentence. I didn’t fully realize that until I went through the loss of my first, and so far only, pregnancy. I’d been TTC for over three years just prior to our pregnancy and I’m very ashamed to admit, I almost felt as though those who had been TTC and had pregnancies at all - regardless of outcome - were ‘lucky’. My mindset was, they know their body has the ability to be pregnant. It must be such a relief. I have no idea if I’ll ever be pregnant, at least they ‘know’. But now I know better.
Fast forward to seeing two pink lines on an Ovry test after multiple fertility treatment cycles. Even though almost two years have passed now, I struggle to find the words to describe just how I felt in that moment; it was the most joy I’ve ever known.
Our pregnancy didn’t last and our baby didn’t stay. I was told about a few weeks later that my body was beginning to miscarry. The other end of the spectrum - the most profound sadness I’ve ever known - set in. I think a piece of it will always stay with me and I feel changed as a human because of it.
Despite trying an additional half-dozen rounds of fertility treatments since, increasing intensity of treatment and doing various tests and procedures, we have not had success. I’ve not been able to get pregnant again.
During my loss, I was told by many people ‘at least you know you can get pregnant now!’ as if our loss was something to celebrate. I can see where they were coming from and how they couldn’t possibly understand the sadness that comes with trying for a baby for years that you finally begin to grow inside you, only to lose. I wanted to shout back ‘what good is a pregnancy if it doesn’t end in a baby?? how dare you ‘at least’ the worst experience of my life!’
While throughout the years of TTC, my goal was to get pregnant. Now I realize more clearly that is not the goal at all, it is to have a baby. And pregnancy unfortunately doesn’t guarantee that.
If you know someone going through loss, please don’t try to give comfort in the form of ‘at least you can get pregnant!’. I am an example of how one pregnancy doesn’t guarantee another, and the words felt like a slap in the face to someone losing their much-loved future child.
Supporting someone through loss is such a tough role to find oneself in and that isn’t lost on me. ‘I’m sorry’. ‘I’m here for you’. ‘Would you like to talk about your baby?’ are all great alternatives to ‘at least’-ing someone’s immense pain of loss.”