Festive Reflections
Infertile but not dreading Christmas: what's going on?
For the first time in a few years, I’m enjoying the run-up to Christmas. Last week, travelling to the South East via London, I walked around St Pancras and felt like I was in a Richard Curtis film. There were decorations everywhere - all holly and ivy and red and gold. There were people wrapped up in big scarves, and the smell of cinnamon hung in the air. I know Christmas these days is essentially a big marketing campaign, but there’s something about it that still felt good. Add that to the fact that fairy lights, fires, and hot drinks are some of my favourite things, it’s safe to say that this is one of my favourite times of the year.
It has not been so in recent years. The festive season is notoriously tough for those on the trying-to-conceive hamster wheel, for all the obvious reasons. There is a huge emphasis on time with family, and children are naturally the focus: from out-of-tune singing at the nativity play, to visiting Santa’s grotto, and setting out the carrot and mince pie for the big man on Christmas Eve. The pressure to show festive cheer, and the merry-go-round of social occasions, craft fairs and family get-togethers can be hell: especially for introverts, or for anyone going through a difficult time, infertility or not. Christmas also represents an invisible line in the sand for those who want to, but who haven’t yet welcomed a baby into the world. It’s a marker of time passing; another year over, another year older (hello my old friend, the ticking clock), another year without a child. For some, it can be a brutal reminder of what is missing and what has been lost.
This Christmas will be the fifth since we took the decision to have a baby. The first coincided with our move back from Detroit to the UK. We flew into Heathrow on Christmas Eve after finishing at our jobs and moving out of our house a mere 2 days before. There was so much going on at that time - so much emotion around the move and the end of that particular era - that I don’t remember really being conscious of the absence of a baby. And besides, it had only been a year. Back then, we’d started to feel a little anxious that it hadn’t happened, but there was still hope. We were both convinced that once we were home in England, and settled and less stressed out by work, that Ham-Mid junior would arrive.
The second year was tougher. Only two months had passed since the out-of-body experience with the haughty fertility consultant at the local hospital. All of a sudden, after previous tests had showed no issues with our fertility, we’d been told IVF was our only option. We were also in the middle of a pandemic. That year we were supposed to spend Christmas with Karl’s parents, but the last-minute lockdown stopped that plan in its tracks, and we spent our last Christmas with Karl’s mum Sally (who had cancer) on Zoom. Only a couple of days later, her health went into rapid decline, and we spent the start of 2021 living between Sussex and Surrey, with our first IVF cycle postponed until after her funeral.
The third Christmas was a crushing low. Our first Christmas without Sally, for whom Christmas was made. She always loved the festivities. Karl and I spent the day with his dad, feeling her absence keenly. We were shell-shocked; bruised from how tough 2021 had been: Sally’s death, a failed IVF cycle, followed by a successful one, only to find out at our 8-week scan that the pregnancy hadn’t progressed. The week after my positive pregnancy test, one of my oldest friends died suddenly. Her death knocked me sideways. After the scan, it took a further 8 weeks for the missed miscarriage to resolve, involving a traumatic experience in hospital, and then surgery. And as a final insult, I caught covid in hospital, and Karl and I were both laid up in bed for 2 weeks.
That year, I remember feeling so weighed down by it all. I was acutely conscious of everyone around me: all my friends who had children, who were enjoying their days together. And also of my friends who didn’t have children - who had chosen not to - having special days of their own, or on holiday in tropical locations. I was simplifying and romanticising, sure, but it felt real. I missed Sally terribly. I felt the heaviness of it all: how unfair it seemed. How I had imagined the day unfolding earlier in the year - the joy at us finally achieving the longed-for goal. I should have been 5 months pregnant.
And then last year: a bittersweet improvement. In 2022, after a surprise positive pregnancy test in April, we had been hoping to welcome a baby at Christmas. The due date had been 27th December. With our first pregnancy, we’d referred to the baby as Agamemnon, a throwback to years previously, where Karl would wind me up by telling me that he wanted his firstborn to be named after the Trojan hero of Greek mythology. This time around, for those few magic weeks when everything seemed possible again, the baby had been affectionately referred to as Jesus, in reference to its predicted due date.
Knowing that this date was coming, for the first time in the 17 years of our relationship, we spent Christmas day alone. I knew that we needed the space. We made a concerted effort to fill the day with our favourite things. We walked for 3 hours. We jumped in the icy sea at Cuckmere Haven. We sat in our big claw foot bath and drank Baileys and listened to music. We ate a baked Camembert and watched Die Hard. It was a really lovely day.
But it was also hard. It was, what Brené Brown calls, an FFT (fucking first time), which meant it was unknown territory, and unknown territory often involves awkwardness and vulnerability and difficulty. Of course, we were in our own house; in our home town, doing lots of things that we often do for pleasure. But it was also Christmas Day, and it was the first time we’d been UK-based and not spent the day with family. And beneath all that, was the knowledge that the reason we had taken that decision was because we had lost another pregnancy. Because we’d imagined a Christmas Day when I was about to give birth to this longed for child. We got through the festive week, but I was pleased to see the back of 2022.
This year feels different. We are visiting family as we’ve done on so many other years, but this time around, we also have a couple of brief interludes planned with friends. And because we can’t leave our cats for too long, we’ll soon be back up to Wales, doing Christmas our own way in our new home, and maybe weaving some of the things we did for the first time last Christmas into our days. After another chaotic year, I’m finally starting to settle. The turmoil of the move is subsiding, and, in the last few weeks, I’ve had glimpses of real peace for the first time in aeons. In the past year, we’ve let go of a lot of the baggage that we’ve been carrying around our desire to be parents. The pain of those losses won’t ever fully go away, but it’s receded enough that I feel a shimmer of excitement for Christmas in a way that I’ve not done for a few years.
We were talking to some friends the other day - friends who have chosen not to have kids. My wise friend reminded me that while Christmas is obviously a special time for children, it can be a special time for adults too. That we can make meaning out of what we choose to. That we can honour our sadness while making our own traditions and memories. On reflection, I think that’s what we were trying to do last year, but on that first ‘due date’ anniversary, everything still felt raw. And we were also in the middle of a transition - our house sale was still going through - and so everything felt uncertain and wobbly. Yet it was a great day too, and it showed me - children or no children - how it’s possible to do Christmas on our own terms; to not always be swept up in the mass of obligation and commitments that this season often demands.
Now we’ve finally moved, I often need to pinch myself; to remind myself that I don’t always need to be thinking ahead. I don’t need to waste lots of mental energy wondering what might happen next. As I wrote about in my first Substack post, when you’ve been on any sort of fertility journey, the feeling of longing becomes magnified and the action of ‘looking ahead’ feels almost automatic: every month, the wondering, the question: is this the month that our lives are going to change forever? For every period that arrives late, there’s 24 or 48 hours in which the possibility is amplified, and in these moments, the mind kicks into overdrive, calculating, predicting, planning: where will we be 9 months from now? It’s exhausting, and even when a decision is taken to stop, the brain does not let go so easily. Those neural pathways run deep and take significant intention to reprogramme. I’m getting there.
While we’re undecided about our next steps, the sense of urgency about the future that I’ve carried for the past ten years is definitely starting to dissipate. Just being in Wales, remembering we have an acre of land that’s ours, to do what we want with; remembering that we don’t have to work all the hours of the week just to pay the bills, that I have time to write - sometimes I can’t believe we’ve done it. And most days, just knowing this is enough for things to feel as though they are shifting.
And it just so happens that the timing of this shift has coincided with the ‘most wonderful time of the year.’ I don’t like the way that Christmas has become so idealised, and the pressure we all feel to have a perfect day: one where everything is harmonious and nothing goes wrong and no-one is annoying. But it’s also nice to feel as though I can enter into the collective madness with a more inner calm and stability than I have in recent years.
I’m looking forward to foraging for festive foliage, spending time with people I love, and eating ALL the food. And honouring our babies that didn’t make it, and reflecting on where we want to go next. Whether you’re dealing with infertility or not, I wish you a peaceful Christmas.
