About being in-between

As I write this blog, I am in-between.

It’s been exactly three years now, since my last pregnancy and miscarriage. And although for a long time after it happened, I still felt so sure we’d fall pregnant again, we simply haven’t been able to.

Both my husband and I are over 40 now, and we evidently’aged out’ of the fertile years somewhere in the span of time between the pandemic starting and services being reopened to offer us further investigation & treatment. One day we could still get pregnant, then suddenly it was like we just hit a wall.

And as a woman who’s motherhood journey has veered so far off course from what I’d planned, I am simply left asking ‘So, what now?’

How do you draw a line and really move on? I mean, I know ‘how’ to do this in the practical sense of the word. Of course, I know how this part looks.

It looks like quitting the obsessive monitoring of conception apps which track cycles, or buying digital ovulation predictor kits and pregnancy tests. It means stopping the daily intake of high dose folic acid, hormone supplements, and constantly worrying about what I eat and drink (a said a particularly fond farewell to the twice daily progesterone suppositories I had to insert during luteal phase!). And it means no more planning my every social move around keeping the next ovulation window free.

But that’s the easy part, really. That’s all stuff I quit well over a year ago now. The harder question - and the lion’s share of the work - is learning how to move on mentally and emotionally.

How do you let go of hoping for something, when that hope is the very thing has kept you anchored and afloat for so long?

How do you learn to enjoy your life as it is, rather than how you wanted it to or thought it would turn out, eventually?

How do you make peace with your ageing body as a woman, when it’s the vessel that has repeatedly let you down and failed to do what it should?

And how do you find joy in growing older, when the ageing process is the very reason that doors have closed on you too soon?

These are the questions that I am mostly wrestling with now, post-40, post-pandemic, and post this season of unresolved loss and infertility.

And honestly, I still don’t fully have the answers, but I’m holding space for them to come…

Neither here or there?

For a long time, living with infertility felt like being suspended in a permanent limbo space; which can leave you feeling a bit weird and lost at sea.

In trying to conceive through infertility, I found myself continually facing the reality of my present here and now state (not yet pregnant), but also constantly living with one eye on a much hoped for future state (being pregnant).

And to add further complexity, for part of every month I had to live in the possibility that I might actually be pregnant but not know it yet, by taking hormone supplements (prescribed by my consultant) that actually assumed I was (just in case).

A kind of liminal space. Neither fully here, nor there.

Pregnancy loss is also a sort of liminal space too; one moment you’re carrying a new life in your body, or at very least the potential for a life. Then suddenly one day, you’re not. Instead you’re carrying around a death in utero, and your body is the grave.

You were preparing to become a mother, but it’s a fleeting experience, and one that everyone else soon forgets.

Another liminal space. A neither fully here nor there.

So in one sense, I felt a great relief in gaining some closure on this chapter of my life, at least initially, even if it was not the ending I wanted.

After all, I’m no longer trapped in that endless monthly cycle of hope & disappointment, nor forced to continually think, talk and plan in increments of ‘if’, ‘buts’ or ‘maybes’ anymore.

But as it turns out, even the aftermath of loss and infertility is just another sort of liminal space too. An end point doesn’t instantly restore all balance, as most of the hard questions still remain: ‘Why this?’ ‘Why us?’ ‘Why not?’ And perhaps the biggest one of all - ‘So, what now?’

Pushing doors

So even though I’m over the moment of crisis (can five years of my life be called ‘a moment?’), I’m still not yet sure exactly what will emerge from the rubble yet…

I’m not yet sure how to move forwards with intention, or quite able to see exactly what’s ahead for me and my family.

And even though at certain moments in our fertility journey, it’s felt like there’s been some progress; glimmers of hope, small steps forwards in discovery, and signs along the path to guide our way - in the end, all the roads that we travelled still led us into dead ends ultimately.

We’ve prayed prayers that haven’t been answered. We’ve pushed doors that haven’t been opened. We’ve stood on hopes that didn’t materialise. We’ve held promises that weren’t fulfilled. And sought a clarity that simply hasn’t come.

By the time fertility services reopened after lockdown, treatments like clomid failed to help us ever achieve another pregnancy, so at the end of 2020 we figured it was time to try pushing some different doors.

At first we explored fertility tests and talked to specialists about potential treatment such as IVF, but it was all bit of a non-starter for us. All our fertility tests and screenings came back clear, but being told you are still pretty fertile ‘for your age’ doesn’t help you get pregnant. And as a couple experiencing unexplained recurrent miscarriage, ivf was simply not going to offer us a likely fix either.

So then we looked into the possibility of fostering or adoption. We weren’t at all sure whether this was right for our little family unit, but we wanted to learn more about it, and for a while we felt quite hopeful it might be a good fit. But then, on the morning of my 41st birthday, we received news from our local adoption agency who didn’t feel we were right to progress.

It wasn’t a hard no, exactly. But it was certainly a ‘not now’. And it was most probably a ‘not any time soon’.

The key sticking point was question marks over our son’s neurodiversity and possible future levels of need for support - questions which continue to remain unanswered still.

So while we thought that 2021 would finally be the year that brought clarity about the future shape of our family, all we were met with were just further uncertainties.

Different doors were pushed to see if they might open, but all of then remained closed.

Still waiting

So here I am. Still waiting, still hoping, still in-between…

Only it’s a different kind of waiting now than it was before.

I’m no longer waiting for a miracle baby, or even still exploring any alternatives. We had to make our peace with being a one-child family some time ago.

So now I am waiting to see what this next phase of life will be about now. Sort of like staring at blank pages in a journal that are still waiting to be written in time.

More writing? More speaking about my experiences?

More partnering with local health services to develop better support for other women ?

More looking after this body, even though it has failed me?

More exploring of old passions neglected, alongside new passions discovered.

More learning how to be present and simply enjoy the life I have got?

Yes, maybe so.

I think a little of all of that. And hopefully lots of other stuff that I have not even imagined just yet too…

Right now, I am simply holding space & trying to be open to it all.

What if the space is the point?

In our culture, we often think of seasons of waiting as detours and delays that get in the way of us reaching our destination…

But what if the waiting times are actually the point?

Maybe its these very pauses in the journey - these inbetween moments - that make us, shape us, change us, and give us what we need to continue on to whatever is next?

I’m not trying to say things that go wrong in our lives happen for a reason, or that traumas and tragedies like miscarriages or infertility are all part of a bigger purpose. I really don’t subscribe to that view.

I don’t believe that these things are ‘meant to be’ or are all part of some great cosmic plan. Crappy things ‘just happen’ in life, and usually to good people too. There’s no gain in trying to explain it all away…

Often we want life to present like a road map from A to B, or a mathematical formula that guarantees us that A + B = C. We want direction, we want clarity, and we want answers when things go wrong.

And understandably. We want to understand the ‘why’ or ‘why not’ of everything, so that we can try to protect ourselves and prevent things from happening again.

But more often than not, we simply don’t get that kind of neat closure. Just like Job at the end of his biblical stand off with God over questions of suffering in his life, we too are left only with unknowns.

The Book of Job is 42 chapters long in total, and God basically remains completely silent until Chapter 38 - and even then, the only answer given in response to all Job’s wrestling with the problem of pain is this:

“You are not God, only I am. You have many questions, but you cannot handle the answers. What I do is far beyond your understanding. Some things are simply not for you to know. Now go on, and live the rest of your life…”

I am massively paraphrasing here of course, but that’s about the gist of the answer given. God doesn’t explain everything (or indeed anything really?).

It’s frustrating for sure. Unsatisfying in no small part. But also, kind of freeing. And I sense echoes of this same sentiment in my own life too.

There’s some things I don’t get to fully know or understand or explain away, much as I might like to.

But I’m still here, still standing, and still facing half a lifetime of new possibilities ahead…

Reframing the question

So lately, I’ve been reframing the question.
I’ve become far less concerned with asking ‘why’, which only leads to further dead ends.

I’ve become much more interested in exploring questions that hold space for the depth and beauty of mystery instead.

These days I’m a bit less driven by needing to know & understand & explain everything away, and much more compelled by needing to move on.

So now, the question I’m asking most is, ‘What’s next, then?’

And as I do, there’s a verse that’s been lighting my way: “Stand at the crossroads and look, follow the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and then walk in it, and find rest for your soul.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

Did you catch that? There is a place of rest that can be experienced - even when we’re still asking, still looking, still searching for a good way forwards.

Even in our un-knowing about the future, that in-between space can be a place of rest for the soul.

We don’t have to know it all or have all the answers figured out. Instead there’s a place, right in the middle of the not knowing, when striving ceases, when wrestling ends, and when the need to know the answer becomes far less important than needing to know peace.

And that moment of letting go of the need to understand, is what finding soul rest mostly looks like for me right now.

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