An open letter to the people who ask “are you pregnant yet?”

 

Dear friends, family and strangers who always seem to ask “are you pregnant yet?”

Stop. Please, just stop asking.

Ever since I can remember I have dreamed of growing up, getting married, and starting a family. There is literally nothing I want more in life than to be a mom! I dream of the day I can take a pregnancy test and run screaming with joy down the hall to tell my husband the great news! I can’t wait to be pregnant, huge, and probably a little crazy, knowing that my husband and I created the life that will be growing inside of me. I can’t wait to hear our little nugget’s heartbeat, and feel them moving around in there, full of life and endless potential! I can’t wait to decorate a nursery and make the announcement to our families, who I know will be over the moon for us! I can’t wait to leave the hospital with our new little one in our arms and get to walk through the doors of our home for the first time as a family. I even can’t wait for all the restless nights and crying that I know will follow! I am ready for all of it!

My husband and I got married in August of 2016. We got settled in, did some remodeling and finally in January of 2017 we felt prepped and ready, and I stopped taking my birth control pills. We were stoked! The questions about kids had started basically the second we got engaged. I understand that is just something that comes with the turf, but I didn’t realize how rude and ruthless people would be the longer we were married and childless. We told everyone who asked we had full plans to get pregnant just as soon as we were settled in and felt ready. We told everyone how excited we were to start that new chapter of our lives together, and even how many children we wanted. We made it very clear that kids were definitely in our future.

Now here we are almost a year later, still no kids and still not pregnant, with people still constantly questioning “Are you pregnant yet?” “Are you even trying?” “See this? This is what a baby looks like.” If you know that someone is trying or was planning on trying to get pregnant, but they have yet to make any announcements or tell you the ‘great news,’ maybe you should take a step back…maybe there are things going on behind the scenes you don’t know about…

My husband and I have now suffered 2 miscarriages and have yet to experience a full term pregnancy. If you have never experienced something like this, you are truly lucky. It is a feeling too horrid for words.

You spend all month looking at the calendar, figuring out when you are ovulating, what times you should have sex, how many times you should have sex, when you should start your period and then praying that you don’t.

All the while, people are asking, “Are you pregnant yet?” “Geez, do I need to show you how to do it?” “What’s the hold-up? It’s so easy!” “I thought you would have popped one out and had another one on the way by now!”

Finally, after months of crying over having a period and wanting nothing more than to be pregnant, you are late to start! You take the test and it comes back 2 lines! So you take another one, and another one and realize your dreams are coming true! You can’t wait to tell your husband… and everyone, really!  The two of you celebrate and are now closer than ever, knowing you two now have the best-kept secret! You count up your due date and talk about all the ways you could surprise your families with the amazing news! You have never been happier.

You go to the doctor and everything seems fine, “CONGRATS! How exciting! Your husband must be thrilled! I’ll send in your blood work and give you a call when I get the results! ” You get the call a week later ready to hear exactly how far along you are and when you can hear the heartbeat, but instead they say “I’m so sorry, but it looks like this is going to be a miscarriage.”

Your whole world falls apart. There was a life inside of you, a baby, but now it’s gone and there is nothing you can do. You were going to be a mom, you were technically a mom! And just like that, now you are not. You don’t know why it happened or if you could have prevented it. And now, the sweet life inside of you that was quickly becoming your whole world is no longer growing, and it has to come out. You either have to wait for it to come out of you on its own, or you have to go to the doctor and they have to surgically remove it. Either way, both are extremely traumatizing, and depressingly hard, experiences.

All the while people are still asking, “Are you pregnant yet?” “What are you waiting on?” “If we can do it, anyone can do it!” “It’s so easy!” It is truly gut-wrenching to look someone in the face after experiencing this and smile and say,  “Haha yes, so we’ve heard.” “Yes, we are still trying!” “Trust us, we couldn’t be trying any harder.” “You have no idea how bad we want this.”

You have no idea…. And most people never will. This isn’t casual dinner talk, this isn’t something people like to share with the world or even hear about, but did you know that one in four women will have a miscarriage? One in four. Chances are you know someone who has gone through this and you had no idea.

Now imagine going through all of that again, the calendar’s, the trying, the tests, the excitement, the doctor’s appointment, the calculating of your due date, thinking of how you will announce it to your families, all of it, just to lose that baby too. I may have never gotten to meet my baby or hold my baby, but I was still pregnant, I still felt all the love and excitement that comes with a full term pregnancy, but with a hurt like no other hurt I have ever experienced. And I’m just one example. I am still on my journey to fertility and figuring out what is best for my husband and me to start our family, but I know there are other women out there, going through exactly what I am! And I also know there are others going through things much worse, and my heart is with you!

So please, stop asking all of us married woman without children, “Are you pregnant yet?” “Why aren’t you?” You don’t know what kind of obstacles we are dealing with.

Thank you,

And all the other strong woman out there going through similar things.