What Motherhood Looks Like After Infertility

Becoming a mom after fighting infertility is a big win. There’s a huge sense of relief; a feeling of finally joining the “club,” and finally being able to put all that came with infertility behind you. Goodbye hormone injections, goodbye frequent tests and scans, and goodbye to the constant yearning to be a mother. You are one now!

Infertility doesn’t totally leave, though. It changes you, and you are a different kind of mother because of it. There are so many lasting effects, some of which we don’t see coming.

You don’t feel like you fit in at first. This is one that’s really hard to deal with and based on talking to other infertile moms, kind of surprising. You’re all moms now, what’s the big deal? But at first, some of us feel a bit disconnected. The moms we’re socializing with didn’t go through everything we did, and some had surprise pregnancies. The good news is, this fades with time, and soon you’ll be having play dates and realize you have more in common than you thought.

Congratulations! Now you get to pay off debt. Infertility is not covered by most insurance plans in Georgia. New parents who did fertility treatments are faced with a mound of debt to pay off and/or depleted savings. Babies aren’t cheap, either.

Mom guilt is on a whole other level. We all are too familiar with mom guilt. I’ve heard from many others after wanting this for so long, especially if you publicly shared your struggles, you might feel like you have no room to complain about the hard parts of being a mom. But motherhood is hard for every mom, fertile or not, and you are allowed to talk about it!

Pregnancy announcements can still sting. This is personal and obviously affects different people in different ways. But sometimes it still hurts when we watch others grow their families larger than we have a chance to, and it hurts to see others get pregnant seemingly without much effort, even though we are still so happy for them. In my experience, this wound heals over time, but it can hit you when you least expect it.

You might not be done dealing with infertility. We’ve all heard countless stories of couples having a surprise baby #2 (or 3, or 4) after they fought infertility, but this just doesn’t happen for everyone. On top of that, you are still going to deal with unwanted comments, even if you’re happy as a family of three.

You’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Infertility is traumatic. It is filled with grief. Many of us spent so much time bracing ourselves for a bad outcome, and it carries over into motherhood. Most new moms are nervous and have similar feelings, but infertile moms often feel like all those feelings from infertility are connected.

If you’re a new mom on the other side of infertility, and you have these feelings, they are valid. You’ve been through a lot. But there’s a big upside: I and many of my friends believe that infertility has made us even better moms than we would have been. It has made us more attentive, more empathetic, stronger, and we were more ready for motherhood than we were years ago when we sought out infertility treatment.

I am so thankful I’ve connected with other moms who went through infertility. Without them, I would feel isolated, and I wouldn’t know these feelings are normal. If you’re feeling this way, I encourage you to reach out to other women who went through the same thing you did!

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