Infertility and the Holidays

Christmas is this week and, while that can often be a joyous time of year, it can also be very painful when you are dealing with infertility. Every message you see on both social and traditional media seems tailored to the family with such an emphasis on children. Here in Dubai you hardly see a Christmas brunch advertisement that doesn’t seem to shout about a visit from Santa for the little ones. When you are struggling to conceive it can be so very difficult. Perhaps you are remembering magical Christmas traditions from your childhood and you can’t escape how you have fantasized about carrying them on with your own children, or maybe you cringe at reading yet another Facebook post about someone complaining about how they have to come up with another “Elf on the Shelf” scenario for their kids and would do anything for a problem like that. The holiday season can be so triggering.

I can remember one Christmas when my husband and I were at the beginning of our infertility journey. My parents had come to stay with us in San Francisco and we were right in the middle of a Clomid cycle. I hadn’t told my mom and dad that we were doing fertility treatments. On Christmas morning, as we were opening presents, I had such a massive hot flash from the hormones that I was dripping with sweat and had to open a window. My parents were so confused about why I was hot on such a cold Christmas morning and I had to make up some excuse and pretend that I wasn’t as miserably uncomfortable as I was. On Boxing Day my husband and I had to sneak out of the house so we could go do an IUI and I felt so duplicitous. It was awful going through something so isolating during Christmas. I didn’t get to see my parents very often but I wanted to do our cycle privately so it made that Christmas feel very odd.

A few Christmases later I was recovering from a miscarriage and I was a new expat in Abu Dhabi. I remember walking through Waitrose and the song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” came on. The melancholy tune and lyrics brought tears to my eyes and I thought about the baby I should still have been pregnant with. It was the loneliest feeling.

As you go through the world and everything you see shouts at you that you are supposed to be a parent it can be so hard to find hope and joy. Christmas often plays such a big part of how we imagine parenthood will be. We may try to strategize about how we will handle the holiday season and it is important to remember that you may be experiencing genuine grief as you face it without the child you have been dreaming of. There is no right or wrong way to navigate that.

This year things may be both easier and harder. As we face our second Covid Christmas and the new variant makes things feel uncomfortably like they did at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people are canceling plans and reconsidering things like parties and other events with lots of other people around. This may make it easier for you to avoid gathering where you know you may be triggered by seeing children and babies. And since we don’t tend to get lots of physical mail here you may not have to see as many images of happy families flooding your mailbox with their picture-perfect holiday cards.

Social media, however, is a bit trickier to avoid without logging off entirely. You may want to consider taking a break from these accounts during the next few weeks. If you do log on, be sure you are aware of your emotional bandwidth and be gentle with yourself if you decide that you cannot engage with it for a while. People will either understand or not even notice.

Consider creating your own new traditions that don’t include children. Perhaps you and your husband go out for a fancy steak dinner just before Christmas, or you make some hot chocolate and popcorn to sit together and watch a beloved film. The key is finding some joy in the holidays and not just focusing on your family being incomplete.

As Christmas is also at the very end of the year it can also act as a marker of time. Perhaps you had started the year hoping that you would either have a baby or be pregnant by the end of it. Not achieving something like that is bitterly disappointing. You are allowed to feel sadness and anger about that. As the year winds down in a flurry of Christmas lights, music, and festivities, please know that it is normal to feel emotional. It can be disorienting to see the festive light and joy of the holidays on the outside when you feel darkness and fear on the inside. The grief of infertility is universal and you are not alone. So many of us can relate to the suffering of not having the baby we are longing for. May the holidays be a reminder that there is joy in the world and that you are a part of it, despite things not being as you want them to be this year.