I Am Not Alone

I have just been reading some blogs written by other women who have been through IVF or other forms of fertility treatment and guilt seems to be a common emotion. We are all trying (and mostly failing) to me everything to everyone. The perfect mother, the perfect wife, housekeeper and friend. I am only just beginning to realise that with a baby this simply isn't possible.

Life is fabulous now and my little princess is a joy to me but I found the first 6 months of her life very difficult and struggled to get through each day. I sometimes feel that because we had such a long wait for her that people think that somehow it isn't so difficult to cope with our if it is, that I shouldn't moan.

Women who are mothers after infertility are just as entitled as anyone else to find it all too much sometimes.

I feel like I should be better equipped to handle it when the Princess is difficult to please or that she won't allow me to clean the house or do the ironing. I feel that infertility should have magically given me unending patience, a constant mindfulness of our good fortune, an unwavering gratitude — in short, an ability to do this job (which I have longed for) as well as I have done every other job in my life and to be happy doing it.

But it hasn't, and it kills me.

I struggle to be the parent she deserves. Is it no more than the same guilt every mother feels? I don't know, but I do believe infertile mothers put enormous pressure on ourselves not only to be fantastic parents, but to love or at least appreciate every minute of it. It's hard to remember this when you are bogged down with the fact that you are unable to make a gourmet feast for each meal let alone clean your windows.

We do it because we know how difficult it was to become mothers at all, and we do it because of every unthinking person we speak to reminds us, "Well, it's what you wanted"

We couldn't enjoy — could barely endure — conception. For us, pregnancy was a time of white-knuckled fear instead of teddy buying fun.

And that's why we should try to liberate ourselves from that special kind of guilt we carry around. We couldn't be normal before, but now, as we feel frustrated or exhausted, as we find ourselves only half as competent as we thought we'd be, we are finally perfectly normal.

I wish I could say that being infertile prepared me in a special way for the everyday challenges of being a parent. No such luck. In the end, the struggle hasn't made me perfect. It hasn't made me anything but a Mother.