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Friends’ Christmas cards arrived from all around the country, complete
with pictures of their growing families. It only reemphasizing that all
our friends, maybe even the whole world, seemed to have children—except
for us. (Lou Ann)
Year after year, my heart
told my head, Here’s another Christmas with no children’s stockings to
hang on the mantle. My heart kept copious notes on matters like this,
while my head hoped to ignore these painful details and simply survive the
event. Another birthday would slip by. Then one of the toughest holidays
of all—Mother’s Day.
Every event reminded me of the child we didn’t have. For that matter,
everything reminded me of the child we didn’t have.
Holidays can be
disastrous times for the couple already waging daily emotional warfare
against infertility. Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, family
reunions, even your own birthday—the feelings can be so intense, you’re
sure your soul is caving in.
If you have a history of
battling infertility, you could write this chapter from the aching saga of
your own journey, with a long list of holiday horror stories. But if
you’re a novice in the infertility war, the following pages give an
overview of what many people experience when holidays roll around. Is this
meant to plant seeds of fear that will sprout and bear ugly fruit at an
inopportune time? No, but if, during a holiday get-together, you begin to
feel something erupt from deep in your heart, maybe you’ll remember one of
the coping ideas in this chapter to help you keep your cool and maintain
your emotional equilibrium until you find a safe haven to release your
sadness. Knowing what to expect and how to navigate the uneven terrain
ahead helps you anticipate the struggles that may come your way.
Journal your feelings
Over the years when I’ve felt the lousiest, I haven’t wanted to
journal much. All those gray feelings swamped me, so why would I want to
wade through them again to put them on paper? The surprise has been that
when I did journal my darkest hours, I found it to be a surprising outlet.
Occasionally, sentences flowed out of my pen that I hadn’t consciously
figured out beforehand. Sometimes I found myself solving an emotional
frustration simply by venting it on paper.
Write about why a
particular event is making you grieve anew your lack of children. Did the
snowfall that blanketed your home on Christmas Eve make you think about
how incredible it would have been to share that moment with your children,
watching the flakes through a foggy window? Write about how you wanted to
share that moment with your children, snuggled up in bulky sweaters and
warm socks.
Those from-the-gut
scribbles will be powerful to you in the years to come. They are a record
of who you are at this moment in time, of where you were in your struggle
with infertility, of what you were working for and dreaming about. And one
day, you can show your child how much they were hoped for, prayed for, and
thought of, even though they were unborn.
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Other topics covered
more fully in this chapter:
Be a little vicarious
When the family reunion finds you trying to avoid getting drawn into
another endless conversation, the old folks’ game of dominoes isn’t up
your alley, and the dessert table would mean death to your waist, find
where the youngest children are hiding out. There’s nothing wrong with
living out a little of your parental dreams by loving another person’s
child. You’ve got a lot of love in your heart for children, so give some
of it away a little at a time. |
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Christmas
Christmas is one of the
toughest of all holidays for infertile couples. Our culture epitomizes
Christmas as a holiday where children’s fanciful dreams come to life. Our
churches center observances around the birth of baby Jesus to young,
fertile Mary. Our families delight as the youngest in the clan crawls
through discarded wrapping paper, boxes, and bows.
Meanwhile, your soul
feels like it’s caving in because it’s yet another Christmas that a
child’s laughter (specifically, your child’s laughter) won’t
reverberate off the walls.
Survival tips
1. Focus on the spiritual meaning of Christmas.
2. Begin writing down your childhood Christmas memories.
3. Give a part of yourself to others at Christmas.
4. Help an unfortunate child have a better Christmas
5. Create memories with a special child in your life.
6. Limit your social engagements.
Mother’s Day and Father’s
Day
If Christmas is hard because
of its obvious family overtones, then these two holidays are like bombs
being dropped on your life. While everyone is celebrating the women who
are mothers and the men who are fathers, you and your spouse feel severely
cheated…again.
Survival tips
1. Turn your focus to your parents and others.
2. Avoid the pre-fab greeting cards.
3. Don’t give up on church altogether.
Birthdays and
anniversaries
Birthdays are your personal milestones in life. As each one passes,
you realize it’s another milestone you’re not sharing with your child.
Will your child even know you as a young person? Your wedding
anniversary is another doozy. Even though you know you should celebrate
your union, you can’t get away from the fact that the union can’t seem to
produce a child.
Survival tips
1. Recognize the good things you’ve done in your life.
2. Be nice to yourselves.
3. Find one new thing to do together.
Halloween and fall
festivals
At its best, Halloween and fall festival events give families a chance to
let children dress-up and create fun memories. The popularity of safe
events like church-sponsored festivals and community fairs affirm and
undergird the “family-ness” of late October. And when you’re beating the
bushes trying to start a family, you realize not a season passes where you
don’t feel the empty places in your heart.
Survival tips
1. Get to know your neighbors.
2. Carry on some of your childhood traditions.
3. Focus on your friends.
Baby Showers
Pure torture, don’t you agree? Baby showers hit us where it hurts
the most. One woman said that by attending a two-hour baby shower,
she could completely unravel all the emotional balance God had helped her
achieve in a month.
Survival tips
1. Send a gift.
2. Don’t host a shower for a while.
3. Decide how to cope if you must attend.
Other holidays and
annual events
Our calendars are sprinkled with annual events that are meaningful
to us in varying degrees—New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of
July, family reunions, Thanksgiving, the beginning and ending of school.
The tendency is to look at any holiday and say, “Here’s another
_________ and still I have no children to share it with. This time last
year, I thought for sure we’d be parents by the time the holiday rolled
around again.” The key is to find a way to experience these holidays
without making it center around how infertility is ruining it for you.
Survival tips
1. Make it special for someone.
2. Volunteer for those who help the needy.
Until you have children, you can’t live as a hermit and avoid all
potential pain from social events. And, of course, you wouldn’t want to.
God has given you the gift of life—your life.
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