Overcome Infertility | Recognizing the Stages of Grief

To overcome infertility you must first understand grief. During my years of struggling with infertility, I didn’t realize where my thoughts and feelings were coming from. I didn’t realize that I was actively trying to process a loss. I was in the midst of the seven stages of grief and I felt hopeless.

You may ask, “How do you grieve something that you never had?”

Infertility is tricky. You have feeling and thoughts that you never thought you could or would have. For example, during my struggle with infertility, I remember wishing for a miscarriage…How messed up is that?? Of course, my sane mind now thinks that ‘grieving me’ was crazy and I couldn’t imagine the loss that women/couples that have experienced one go through. However, when you are desperate, you will wish for anything that might be a sign of hope (however backwards it may be).

That hope is what you are grieving. You are grieving:

Your one shot at life not turning out the way that you thought it would.
Never experiencing the joy a positive pregnancy test result could bring.
Not getting to experience pregnancy.
Never getting to feel a baby kick from the inside.
Never getting to see what your child would look like, sound like, act like…etc…

All of the expectations that you once had for a family of your own you now have to readjust… It’s a lot to process.

And it has to be processed through the seven stages of grief:

1. Shock

This is your initial reaction to hearing that you are suffering from infertility. This is the moment that you feel frozen.

During our struggle with infertility this happened to me twice. Early in our battle we were told that my husband couldn’t have kids. It was a shock but at the same time we kind of expected it due to family history of male infertility.

After moving through the stages of grief with that acceptance, we tried with donor sperm multiple times, unsuccessfully. I was then categorized as someone with ‘unexplained infertility’. This diagnosis is so much harder to accept because there is no answer. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take me a while to finally accept it.

2. Denial

The stage in which you are trying your best to avoid the inevitable is denial. After hearing the results of my husband’s first semen analysis we did not just accept it and move on right away. We did several more after adding or removing vitamins/certain foods to his diet, wearing certain clothes, avoiding certain activities, etc… We also had a testicular biopsy done in which they surgically went into each testicle to see if there were sperm that weren’t making it into the ejaculate. All of this took roughly a year. And all of it ended with the same answer…

3. Anger

This is one of the longest stages and the stage that I came back to over and over. If you read my article, Dear Fertile Myrtle, Kindly Shut the F*** Up, that is this stage. During anger you become this bitter, jealous person that you don’t recognize.

4. Bargaining

During this stage you are actively trying to find a way out of your grief/anger. Each month you make promises to yourself/God like, “I will never do [insert habit here] again if I am pregnant this month.”

5. Depression

This is another stage you may return to multiple times. This is the stage in which you can’t see anything positive about your situation. You may stop being as social because it is hard to be around people that don’t understand. Crying at random times throughout the day may become a normal thing. Increased alcohol or food consumption may also be a sign of your depression as you try to comfort yourself. This stage is where you feel the most hopeless. I will be the first to tell you, if you are feeling anything like this, just talk to someone/anyone! I have found that the only way out of this cyclical stage is to express your feelings. I went to quite a few counselors during my depression and it was such a relief just to talk about it. Obviously now I am very open about it, but I wouldn’t be that way if I had kept struggling in silence like most people suffering infertility do.

Normalizing Vulnerability

6. Testing

When you start to look for REALISTIC solutions for your infertility then you have entered the ‘testing stage’. After my husband was found to be infertile, we got to this stage when we decided to move forward trying to conceive via donor sperm. However, after multiple rounds of unsuccessful IVF and IUI we were also diagnosed with my ‘unexplained infertility’ and dumped us right back to stage one again. After processing the fact that we were never going to have a biological child we decided to move on to the adoption process to start our family.

7. Acceptance

The last step in the stages of grief, acceptance, is where you FINALLY see a way forward. The recognition of this phase, for me, was when I changed my answer to the question, “When are you going to have kids?”, changed from a lie to the truth.

It took me a LONG time and a lot of work (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) to get to this stage but I did get there. So if you are in the midst of the grieving process, please know that there is light at the end of the tunnel!

After adopting our two girls, I could not imagine having a different family. If I told my ‘anger me’ or my ‘depression me’ that they would eventually stop wanting to have a biological child I would have thought I was insane. However, it’s true. All of those people that I used to want to punch for telling me, “God had a plan”, were right. It was definitely not my original plan- that plan was not in the cards for me. After I finally accepted that, I realized that this plan, His plan, was the plan for me all along. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

If you are struggling with infertility, please talk to someone:

To find a therapist near you, visit: https://www.sondermind.com

For affordable online grief counseling, visit: https://www.betterhelp.com

Baby dust to all!