Hello, my name is Barbara. I never thought I would be creating a blog of this kind — then again, secondary infertility is not something most of us would expect to experience. It was just one of life’s tough surprises. As I have decided to stop treatment, after several years of trying, I want this blog to be for people who, like me, are ready to face their loss and make the most of their life ahead. I want to hear from those who have found peace with their situation and resolved to live a full and happy life with what they have, and also from those who are still struggling and want to share their pain. This one is a lonely journey, and online companionship is often the only thing we have to fall back on. Even though there is an abundance of infertility blogs, there aren’t many that support people who have tried, not succeeded, and somehow had to get their heads and hearts around that crushing fact. Many blogs will cheer you on in yet another pursuit of pregnancy, no matter how improbable it may be, or how detrimental to your health, well-being, relationships and financial stability. The fertility world does not like quitters. But here, quitters are welcome, and celebrated, because they have decided to reclaim their life and step away from the endless torment of TTC, BFN, IVF, FET, DTD, IUI, AF and the rest of the abbreviated misery which could be effectively summed up in just one: WTF. In this blog, we do NOT use abbreviations. We write whole proper English sentences, because what we have been through cannot be abbreviated: it deserves to be articulated fully.
Actually, there are blogs for quitters. They are great, such as http://www.gateway-women.com or http://www.coming2terms.com. But those are for childless people who have a special kind of companionship among them. It is hard to explain to them how much it hurts when you cannot have a second one — you may seem greedy to them. So it’s close, but not quite. We can empathize, they perhaps a bit less.
Also, I have found no blogs for those who are experiencing secondary infertility with a new partner. As this is my case, I feel especially isolated. It’s a mix of primary and secondary infertility, in a way. You’ve had the experience of being a mother: you’ve given birth, you’ve brought up a child, sometimes on your own. But you cannot share your past with your new partner — your child is decidedly YOURS, especially if you met your new other half later in life and your little one is older. This brings with it a special kind of frustration: the inability to create a new life with the one you love, and the inability to share your own child the way you would want to, simply because you made it with someone else, and that someone else is no longer in your life. You can talk about past events but you cannot remember then together, whether it’s your child’s first word, that time he managed to run away from home in his pyjamas while you nipped into the loo, how it felt to hold him for the first time.
I hope to create a place where we can sit with our grief and loss, and in acknowledging it we can move forward, one day at a time, toward a life well lived.
LIFE FOR THE THREE OF US 