Mary G Bruno

A Strange Kind of Purgatory

There’s something about being unable to co-create new life inside of a body it was designed to grow within that just hits differently. It doesn’t matter your age, race, religious background, or personal history – struggling with infertility brings on its own form of confusing hell. And, to a certain extent, it should! Growing a family is a wonderful gift from God; our chance to taste a glorious snippet of heaven on earth. Regardless of what a person has experienced before the barrage of negative pregnancy tests, she needs to be able to feel the pain of her loss. And she needs others to hold space for her as she grieves and longs for that taste of heaven, whether it will be the first time she will experience it or not, and whether it takes six years or one.

But not every woman in this situation feels the freedom to fully express what she is going through. Women who experience secondary infertility often find themselves in a strange kind of purgatory, having been able to grasp the beauty and struggles of pregnancy at least once, but unable to receive that miracle again and wondering if it will ever happen. Not only that, but they aren’t really sure where they stand or what they have “permission” to feel and express since their infertility isn’t primary.

But the reality is that their pain and confusion matters just as much as mine does. This is something my good friend and FAbM Base business partner, Emily Frase, and I realized years ago when she found herself struggling to conceive after two surprise pregnancies. We were both shocked by her predicament and certainly stumbled through a few awkward conversations only to realize that our suffering, no matter the source(s), brings us to a common place: the cross of Jesus Christ. This is something we can all relate to.  

Recognizing this awkward position that many women with secondary infertility find themselves in during National Infertility Awareness Week 2024, I reached out to Emily in hopes that I could provide her with some space of her own to be free to explore and process some of her unique feelings on this topic and so open the conversation to other women like her.

Emily Frase is a south Louisiana native living in northern Virginia with her husband and three children. She founded Total Whine, a blog, popular Instagram page and podcast, where she shares her Catholic faith in a joyful and honest way, especially the areas of NFP, sex and motherhood. In 2020, Emily launched her coaching service to help women navigate the often overwhelming reality of fertility awareness and family planning. She is the co-founder and president of the nonprofit organization FAbM Base, which aims to make fertility awareness education accessible and authentic. You can find her at totalwhine.com and fabmbase.org.

Mary: How did you feel as you began to try for your third pregnancy? 

Emily: Totally optimistic. As you mentioned, our first two were surprises, conceived when we unknowingly broke the rules of two different methods, so I figured this would be easy. The day my husband and I had a conversation to start trying again, I Googled which OBGYN offices were closest to me who supported VBACs. I was certain I’d need to schedule an appointment after our first cycle trying.

Mary: Wow! I remember feeling that way after our honeymoon. At what point did panic start to creep in? What were some of your thoughts and emotions as you started to realize that pregnancy may not come easily this time? 

Emily: It wasn’t panic I felt, but cynicism. When I took a pregnancy test that first cycle in June 2020 and saw it was negative, I just laughed. Of course God would deny me the result I wanted to see again, just in the opposite way. I felt so jaded, and all that pain from my previous two pregnancies rose up. I had prayed that my third pregnancy would be a healing one, and healing to me meant a pregnancy and birth that would be so amazing that it would replace and erase the pain I had experienced in the past. 

After another negative pregnancy test in my sixth cycle, I started to consider that maybe I was dealing with infertility, but it was a private pondering. I knew CDC criteria defines infertility as trying for 12 months without conceiving, but Creighton and Napro start seriously looking into issues after six cycles of timed intercourse, sometimes three. Working in fertility awareness is both a blessing and curse. I know so much! 

I posted a question box one day on Instagram, probably 8 months into trying, and mentioned that I was having trouble conceiving in response to one question. A nurse from a Napro surgeon’s office slipped into my DMs and asked me if I had ever heard of an isthmocele. I had not. She explained that it was caused by poorly executed C section sutures, and when untreated, resulted in miscarriage and infertility. All I felt was rage, and I knew that wasn’t a normal response. It was the trigger I needed to finally get into therapy, which I did shortly thereafter. 

About 8 months into therapy, I realized that I had processed both of my first two C section births and my second pregnancy as traumatic. That’s when the healing I had prayed for began. It was so painful, but the process of naming the harm that was done to me and being witnessed and validated while doing so was the balm I needed. I know now that if I had gotten pregnant again before this, I would have probably ended up with a third traumatic pregnancy and C section. 

In Advent of 2021, I attended a virtual retreat put on by Springs in the Desert for infertile couples. At that point, we had been trying to conceive for a year and a half. I felt so strange being there, like I didn’t have a right to be in the same (virtual) room as those with primary infertility while I had two precious children. But the people on retreat were incredible, validating what I was going through and affirming that infertility wasn’t a comparative game. All our pain was different and valid. It was there that I finally accepted that I was dealing with secondary infertility. I cried with them, and they with me, and it was such a healing, peaceful experience.  

I contacted a Napro surgeon to get on her schedule for a diagnostic sonogram to rule out an isthmocele. 

Mary: It always amazes me to look back on situations that felt atrocious, but in retrospect, you can see how the healing hand of God was very much present. Sometimes his methods seem cruel, though. He used your waiting through infertility to work on your heart and help you process some very important things. But you also found yourself in a weird category of infertility that made it hard to find support in the meantime. You said you felt like you didn’t have the right to be in the same room as women with primary infertility. Can you expand a little more on that? Were there any other specific thoughts or feelings that you struggled with in regard to trying to get pregnant with two littles at home? 

Emily: I think first I should state that that feeling never came from women struggling with primary infertility. It was entirely internal.

I’m not sure exactly where it came from. Maybe in part it was that thing we all heard as kids that we shouldn’t complain, or if we did, to be reminded that we should think of others who don’t have what we have and be grateful. There’s certainly a strong idea that speaking the truth of our experience is somehow antithetical to practicing authentic Christian charity because someone has it worse than us. But I think that’s a misunderstanding of what happens when we speak the truth. Suffering should be what unites us, not divides us. It’s something we all share in common, even as the specifics vary. 

Once I came to understand and listen to the pain that women and couples experience when they try to have children and are unable to do so, those beliefs and internal scripts that I shouldn’t speak kicked in. I have learned over time that those who befriend the pain in their own stories are capable of holding space for the pain of others without seeing it as a competition or a threat. 

Trying to conceive while having two children was… just strange. The guilt was always there and it often made me afraid to speak. I was angry at God. I once joked to a friend that God heard my prayers when it came to my desires for family planning and just said, No. Except it wasn’t really a joke. A huge part of my healing process was tearing down the cynical walls I had built over the years to put distance between me and my disappointed hopes. 

There was this feeling at times that would crop up that my longing for another child was grasping and ungrateful. There was also a feeling of emptiness, like we were not complete. It was strangely isolating. I often wondered how many people looked at us and thought we had the perfect family, one boy and one girl, so our pain and longing was absolutely unnoticed. How could I want more? Wasn’t what I had enough?

Mary: I can see how that could add even more anger on top of the other valid struggles. Aside from the rage you felt about your unique situation, do you remember how infertility itself felt? How it felt to look at negative pregnancy tests and witness others get pregnant?  

Emily: It really was the strangest thing. Again, I knew so much. I knew repeated negative pregnancy tests were a sign of a deeper issue. I had a pretty good idea of what those issues meant. I knew I needed to look into medical interventions and knew where to go and how to start. I was now in a position that I had helped many other women through, so I knew well the emotional and mental toll it all took. I heard all their frustrations with endless doctors’ visits and unsatisfactory or non-existent answers despite all sorts of testing, supplementing, surgeries and more. It was surreal to think I was headed for the same path, and it was paralyzing. I didn’t want to step into it. 

I remember vividly my first Mother’s Day after we started trying standing in church and not being able to hold back tears. I recalled what I have heard so many infertile women say about Mother’s Day being the worst day of the year, and I felt it. And the guilt I felt for those tears, for all of those feelings! It was so hard to really embrace the validity of that cross and to find space to express the nuance and complexity of the in-between world I found myself in. Again, to outside eyes, we had the perfect family. 

There was also the feeling of obligation to share my experience on Instagram since I had been so open in the past. But I was quite hesitant. I wanted to be very careful how I entered that space, knowing the tenderness of those who had suffered longer than me. Again, the feeling I had no right to speak was strong. Truthfully, I was terrified of triggering someone and hearing about it in a comment section or private messages, something that has happened not infrequently.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Two Balms for the Suffering Soul…