When we begin imagining our future family, we probably don’t envisage fertility challenges. We don’t factor years of limbo into our plans. We don’t anticipate the heartbreak ahead.
And yet, here we are.
As a baby, our daughter was colicky and difficult to settle. Even a brief separation for me to take the bin out would send her into a spin. So I stopped. I took the path of least resistance and started putting her nappies in the kitchen bin.
I reasoned that we’d buy a new one when we were finished with the nappy phase of life.
Not long after she was toilet trained, we fell pregnant with Tommy. It didn’t make sense to buy a new bin yet. We’d wait until he was toilet trained too.
But Tommy died.
I read blogs written by women who fell pregnant quickly after stillbirth. Their stories promised a path back to something of the life we should have been living: a family with two children and a relatively close age gap. I had no reason to think this wouldn’t be possible. Our previous conceptions had been quick and uncomplicated.
But their promises were empty.
What followed was years of trying, waiting and wanting. Something deep had broken.
The months blurred into a haze of desperation, hope and despair. Every attempt felt like the beginning of a new timeline, only for it to be ripped away a few weeks later.
And yet, that timeline felt real.
I couldn’t possibly book that holiday, look for a new job, commit to that show or buy a new bin. In nine months, I’d have a newborn baby.
My life was on pause.
Those who had walked the path of infertility before me offered advice: keep moving. Don’t let life stand still. Remember to live.
In hindsight, this is solid advice. But when you’re in the trenches, knowing what might help and being able to do it are two very different things.
Life becomes measured in two-week intervals. The hope phase. The waiting phase. The despair that somehow, impossibly, evolves back into a desperate kind of hope. For me, it was almost impossible to think beyond the next two weeks. How could I plan a life when I was constantly waiting to find out what that might look like?
Those who have read our story know that we eventually welcomed new life into our family. I don’t take that for granted. It is not lost on me how fortunate we were to close our chapter with love, and how unlucky we have been in our loss.
Recently, my mum asked where to put a nappy. I told her to put it in the kitchen bin. She joked about it being the nappy bin, and I paused.
Here I am, seven years later, with the same stinky bin I intended to replace a lifetime ago.
It has become an artefact of our journey with loss. A family relic. A reminder of all the time I spent waiting for a life I thought was just around the corner.
Perhaps it’s time to let it go.
I’m not here to tell you how to navigate your own journey. It’s easy to offer advice from the other side: book that holiday, look for another job, buy tickets to the show, replace your bin.
And it’s true that there is life beyond infertility, whether a baby eventually finds their way into your arms or not. Seasons change. Chapters close. Life keeps unfolding, sometimes in ways we never imagined.
But when you’re in the trenches, this advice can feel impossible to follow. At worst, it can feel deeply invalidating. Like you are failing yet again: this time at living.
Perhaps all you can manage today is getting out of bed, having a shower, eating something and finding a little sunlight.
And that is OK.
I’m not going to tell you to stay hopeful. I’m not going to promise that it will all work out. I know that sometimes, even hope is exhausting.
I’m here to say that this season is shit, and I wish it were different for you.
And amongst all of this, you are not alone.
Me and my stinky bin, and the millions of others who have walked, are walking and will walk this path, are beside you.
Tommy’s Mum x
