Messy Middles

I try not to talk to much about my own fertility and birth experiences on my professional space. It’s not that these things don’t matter or don’t influence how I do my work as a doula; rather, I want people to know that when you work with me, our work together is about you, not about what I’ve experienced or what I’ve learned. Even if our journeys looked identical on paper, every person’s experience is always different. And your experience is about you. That’s the way it should be.

But it also occurred to me that when you are going through something vulnerable, like a fertility journey, it can be hard to know who to trust. And, unfortunately, in this space, there is a lot of predatory behaviour and marketing. People see that others are struggling and so they offer to step in with magic fixes or too-good-to-be-true solutions for your troubles. Too often, they take your money and you’re no better off than you were. How do you know who is genuinely here to support you and who is only in this space to make money off you? It seems only fair that those of us who are serious about supporting people on this journey should be willing to offer up a little vulnerability ourselves. By sharing a little bit of who we are and why we are here, our motives are a little clearer. So that’s what this blog entry is all about: offering you, reader, a small piece of myself so you know you are not alone.

I was reminded recently by a fellow doula (the incredible Liz Burns of Driftwood Doula) how important it is to talk about being in the messy middle. That’s where I find myself in my own fertility journey these days. Not all that long ago, I was in the thick of my fertility journey with my sights set on achieving a healthy pregnancy no matter what, and my mental health suffered considerably. I reached a point where, even as we were being encouraged to consider IVF, I knew I could not continue to move forward given how I was feeling and other health challenges I was trying to address. So, I quit. At the time, I thought it was forever. I thought I’ll just have to find another way to find joy and love in my life than to share my life with children. And, in truth, the time I spent in pursuit of this goal was good for me. I’m not quite in that place anymore, but I’m not back where I started either. I’m not yet ready to step forward into the next concrete steps on a journey that will hopefully add to our family, and yet I’m not exactly staying still.

I don’t think we talk enough about these moments on our fertility journeys where we aren’t quite sure of our next steps or aren’t able to move forward even if we know the steps we want to take. We’re told that the clock is ticking on us – by the time we even get to the fertility clinic, a year or more has often passed already. We’re told that the older we get, the lower our chances of success, so it’s best not to waste any time. And so many folks feel like they’re going through their fertility journeys on fast-forward, running from one appointment or one treatment to the next as fast as they can manage until they reach the “finish” line. But for anyone who has been on this journey for some time, you know that there is a lot of “hurry up and wait” in this world. We push forward onto the next thing and then have to wait – for testing, for the start of another cycle, for an available appointment with your specialist. And yet even these waiting periods aren’t always enough for our minds and our hearts to catch up with our bodies. Sometimes you have to make a decision about next steps, but you just don’t know what to do. In this time-centric world, it can feel impossible to take a break or a pause to really sit with how you feel and what is coming up for you.

We often paint the fertility journey as a series of linear steps. Not preventing, active trying, timed intercourse, early investigations, later investigations with the fertility clinic, medicated cycles, IUI, IVF… and somewhere along the line, hopefully a baby. But for so many of us, our journeys are anything but linear – two steps forward, one step back, a side quest in a direction you never anticipated taking, a full stop, veering onto a completely different path, maybe circling back around to a path you decided not to take when you crossed it the first time. It’s messy. It’s messy for me. It’s messy for many who find themselves on this journey. And what looks like the right answer for one person won’t make sense for the next. It’s okay.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m not yet sure of the choices I will make, even though I have a direction I’m considering. The choices we are asked to make on this journey aren’t easy ones – they’re often ruthlessly demanding on our hearts, our time, our finances, and our relationships. And rather than wait until my next concrete decision or some sort of tangible outcome that I can share – behold, the completed story of my own fertility journey! – I’m sharing now. Because our messy middles matter too, just as much as our beginnings and the outcomes we’re working toward. Our middles are where we make ourselves, where we change and grow and shift and become something other than what we were. And so, for all of you in your messy middles, I see you. Your mess is welcome here. You’re in good company. Let’s cultivate some self-compassion and curiosity as we witness how our messy middles unfold.