Tucked away in a remote closet in my hallway, on the top shelf where no one would suspect, is a wicker basket. Inside it is a world of pain: 20 pregnancy tests, all positive. Some have dates (hand-written, often through the blurriness of tears of elation). Many boast dark, double pink lines; others are precariously positive, faint whispers of hope or the possibility of heartache.
Like many women, I am part of a silent demographic that takes multiple tests because there is always an element of incredulity with the initial positive. So we test. And re-test. And then, we test again.
In the past three years, I’ve been pregnant three times: once for 10 weeks, once for 16 weeks, and most recently, with natural twins, for another eight weeks. In total, I’ve been pregnant 34 weeks. In a story with a happy ending, this would mean a bouncing (though slightly premature) baby.
But this is a different kind of story.
Most “fertility narratives” feature a woman baring her soul after she has experienced the miracle of birth. I admire these women deeply. By sharing their struggles, they create a bridge of hope for women like myself.
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My husband and I are at a different stage: our greatest hope still eludes us. I am writing anonymously, and I want you to understand why. It’s not because I’m ashamed. The reason is that, even when well intended, pity wounds, scars and deepens isolation.
I share this story because I want to reach out and embrace women enduring this alone. I share it because, as Jews, we were created to heal: ourselves, one another and the world. This reflection is my expression of tikkun olam.
Despite all the profound love that surrounds me from my husband and our family and friends (for which my gratitude knows no bounds), infertility has been the most isolating experience of my life. It is with this in mind that I share my journey here: if it makes even one woman feel less forsaken, it will be the right decision.
I also write this for the “uninitiated”: those who have never experienced infertility first-hand or even second-hand. I want you to know you have a powerful role to play. I’m opening a window into my soul – praying and believing it may affect your behaviour. I am also writing this for the unsung heroes – the husbands, parents, siblings and friends of people struggling with fertility.
Well-intentioned people spontaneously approach us and say things such as: “Relax and ‘it’ will happen.” “Just enjoy each other.” “Have you considered donor eggs?” “What about adoption?” And the grand prizewinner: “Why didn’t you freeze your eggs?” These questions (though seemingly innocuous, mostly) are unspeakably painful. I know most of you ask them, or offer to help, with purity in your hearts. But please stop.
Women are perhaps the most resourceful of all of God’s creatures. We have considered our options deeply, often through tears. What you’re not realizing is that we hear other advice like yours up to 10 times per day. Your words, when lined up together like stones, are like dead weights around our hope.
I say this next thought with conviction, grounded in compassion: It is never helpful for you to offer unsolicited guidance. If I want your help, God gave me a mouth to ask for it. And I would. Honour me.
For those of you who stare brazenly (but probably completely unconsciously) at the stomachs of women in my “position” – please, I beg you, stop. I know many of us have been married for a while, but that does not give you permission to stare at our breasts, so why would it give you a right to stare at our wombs? Be conscious. Be respectful. Be sensitive. If we are pregnant and we want you to know, we will tell you.
This leads me to one of the most painful but instructive moments I have had on this journey, but one that I must share. A bright, kind, intelligent woman I know looked me up and down and said: “You’re pregnant.” I denied it. She continued to press me for five minutes in a public hallway – the longest 300 seconds of my life.
“Trust me,” she insisted, “you’re pregnant. I’m never wrong.”
I replied, “Sorry, I’m not.”
The devastating truth was that I was. There was a tiny fetus with a flickering heartbeat inside me. I prayed that it could not hear my disavowal of its existence. (Can fetuses hear? The question, however silly it seems, plagued me for weeks.)
What this woman could not have known is that I had found out the previous day that our fetus had a genetic abnormality so severe it would have lived at most a week. For the women who proceed after a genetic diagnosis to have a child, I honour your courage; every day on earth is precious.
But I made a different choice. I got the call for my appointment to terminate the pregnancy about three hours after my hallway tête-a-tête with a woman who made my fertility about her, not me. I was 16 weeks pregnant.
Before the operation, I asked to see an ultrasound of our baby one last time. The fetus was kicking. I could see the heart beating. I could also see the leg’s frenetic movement, a habit I recognized since I do it myself. It was the final, motherly connection between my baby and me. I closed my eyes, hoping to have a sense of closure when I awoke.
But that didn’t happen. Life is never neat, is it? The first feeling I had was an infinite emptiness, a hole so deep I couldn’t see the bottom. Then I went completely numb – not physically but emotionally. For many months this psychological and spiritual paralysis enveloped me.
Time has passed. “Turn, turn, turn,” as the song says. There is another song, this one by Leonard Cohen: “The crack is where the light comes in.” I feel like I should sing that from the rooftops every day. Some days, I would sing it to reassure myself: do not give up – there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. Other days, when I feel more faith, I want to reassure others that I have found at least one precious jewel in this wasteland of loss: a deeper connection with my husband. Our experience has shown me that nothing can break us.
Infertility teaches us more than we would ever want to know about control, connection and letting go. This has been, if nothing else, a deeply existential reckoning. My husband and I have grown more in these few years than in the past two decades of knowing each other.
Like the light of the Shabbat candles that illuminates my face every Friday, I remind myself there is always light, even in the darkest recesses of our failed hopes.
When my husband and I consulted with our rabbi about our situation, he smiled sagely and said, “I feel your pain so deeply.” And then, “You have two options: you can choose to sink or you can choose to swim.”
As Jews, we swim. It’s in our DNA.
And then there is our indomitable spiritual DNA. As Theodor Herzl said, “If you will it, it is no dream.” And so I will it, or at least I try, even on the low days.
When I am in the mikvah, immersed in the waters, when I feel holy, strong and embodied, I visualize my husband and I swimming in a deep blue sea, surrounded by calm, crystal water.
And then I see it. It is no dream: we are cradling our baby in our arms.
*Not the author’s real name
