When Your Motherhood Dreams Don’t Come True

“No one writes books or movies about the people who try for years and never get pregnant.”

My mother died of cancer in April 2010, less than a month before Mother’s Day. I must have been in a daze, because I don’t remember the holiday at all. I’ve never been someone who is leveled by grief at predictable times, though. That year I sailed through her birthday, but would end up sobbing in the grocery store when one of her favorite songs came on. 

The next few Mother’s Days weren’t as lonely as I expected, either. Both my mother and my father married women, so I had two stepmothers to celebrate. I was, however, grappling with the compounding grief of something else. I was trying to get pregnant and each year that passed without a child felt more and more like a punch in the face. But when Mother’s Day came around in 2015, I finally lost it.   

My mom had been dead for five years and I had recently been told that barring a miracle I would never have a baby. It felt like being double-teamed by grief and mourning, which is not a fun way to be double-teamed.

Lying in bed that morning, I tried to picture my future, and was terrified. After years of fertility treatments, which took up all of my time and energy, I found a startling truth: Not one single part of my future—my job, my relationship, nothing—was in clear focus with children removed from the equation. 

I had built everything around the understanding that I would eventually become a mother. Now that I knew I wouldn’t be, I was full of regret over the choices I had made. The constant rewinding of the tape and second guessing myself was debilitating.

I had spent most of my 20s with a man who could not have been more wrong for me. So, of course, I married him. When we divorced, I found myself single and alone in a new city at 32 years old. I met my partner Byron shortly thereafter but he wasn’t anywhere near ready for children. I stayed with him because I knew he would, eventually, make a fantastic father.

After five years, I threw down the gauntlet. I had been experiencing terrible periods for years and knew in my gut that getting pregnant wouldn’t be simple. As Carrie Bradshaw once said, 38 was my scary number; I knew it was time to get down to business.

We tried naturally for a year before it became clear that we needed some professional help. The doctor said everything looked great, so we felt positive. We started with IUIs and then did a “mini-IVF” cycle. When those interventions didn’t work, we did two rounds of IVF. At the end of the process, we had four embryos. We did a fresh transfer with two that failed, then did a frozen transfer with the remaining two. This was our last chance.

After the flurry of doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds and injections leading up to the transfer, the lack of activity during those two weeks of waiting was maddening. I spent the time talking to my embryos in my head, coaching them through the implantation process. Just grab a hold of the uterine lining, kids! Nestle in! You can do it!

I looked at their photos—two blobs of cells magnified and presented in a greeting card by the nurse at the fertility clinic—every day. I walked around my apartment, giving them a tour in my head. This is the kitchen. This is Mommy and Daddy’s room. That is where your cribs will go. In my imagination, I was the mother of twins already.

I was standing on the corner at a bus stop when I got the call from my doctor. It was 4 p.m. and I knew from previous experience that the bad news always came at the end of the day. 

He ran through my options—trying IVF again, using a donor egg, adoption—but I knew we were done. We had borrowed money from friends and family to pursue the treatments and were already in over our heads.

I found out almost a decade later that I had a terrible case of undiagnosed endometriosis, which in hindsight was probably why I couldn’t conceive. But back then, on Mother’s Day in 2015, I still didn’t have any answers. I was stripped down to the bone emotionally, bereft of any idea of how to move forward. I just wanted my mom.

The feeling was similar to one I’d had during a visit to Ground Zero when construction of the new building had just started and all that was there was a big hole. It was hard to imagine that one day something new would stand in it. Even though I had seen the renderings, I couldn’t imagine it ever materializing.

Standing there, the impossibility of it all struck me. As a native New Yorker, I had spent my whole life seeing those buildings and never questioned their permanence. And then—poof!—they were gone. It’s a weird feeling to mourn people you’ve never met.

We collectively stared into that hole for years because no one knew how to rebuild. What can you put on top of that kind of devastation? What could fill a hole that size? Could it ever be beautiful again?

But someone figured it out. They knew it couldn’t just sit that way, reminding us day after day of the devastation. We all had to heal and a new space, one that balanced beauty with remembrance, would help. They didn’t try to make it the same. The architects knew it had to be different and stronger in its new iteration.  

Eventually, I was able to take a lesson from that. I stared into my own abyss for a long time. I felt blown apart by my grief. But eventually, I knew I needed to rebuild. I couldn’t waste my one precious life grieving babies that never existed. 

Sadness, after all, isn’t hallowed ground. It can feel precious and sacred and, weirdly, like something to protect. Moving on can feel like a betrayal of the loss. But sitting in it for too long is a betrayal of your life. So, with the help of my sister, who moved across the country to be close to me as I got back on my feet, I slowly started to fill the hole. 

I’ve accepted that it isn’t something that I’ll ever get over, but I have learned to live with it. My female friendships help a lot. So does spoiling the hell out of my niece. Somewhat predictably, I got a dog for whom no amount of attention is too much. I’ve done hundreds of hours of therapy, both alone and with Byron.

I have also read a lot about infertility and mourning and learned that grief has no timeline. It just takes as long as it takes.  

That was critical because, for a while, I felt like a freak who couldn’t move on. I didn’t know anyone who had been through my same experience and examples weren’t easy to find. No one writes books or movies about the people who try for years and never get pregnant. Those of us who come up empty handed mostly have to get through this on our own. 

I still have the photos of my embryos—I just can’t throw them away. I don’t look at them anymore but I know where they are, tucked into the side of the drawer where I keep my jewelry. Sometimes when I open that drawer I touch the envelopes and think about how my life almost was.

But ten years out, I can now also see the upsides of childlessness. I don’t have to get up early on weekends to sit in the rain at a kid’s soccer game. Blessedly, I didn’t have to homeschool anyone during the pandemic. And when there is a screaming meltdown in a restaurant, it’s never my problem. Unless, of course, it’s me who is having the meltdown.

At 52, Byron and I are starting to think about where we will retire someday. We’ve talked about renting apartments in different parts of the country for a few years until we decide where we want to settle. We’ve considered living in a little cabin out on our land in Oregon for part of the year and spending the rest in Mexico or Portugal or Vietnam. Without children or grandchildren to consider, the options are limitless. To be honest, it’s kind of exciting. 

Now, as I approach another Mother’s Day, I’m prepared. I know it may make some uncomfortable questions float to the surface. What will the end of my life look like without children? Who will take care of me when I’m sick or too old to live alone? I still don’t have the answers to those questions but I also know that I don’t have to figure it all out right now.

This Sunday, I will take care of myself by drinking coffee in bed with my little family—Byron and my dog—and by staying off social media. I’ll call my lovely stepmothers and thank them for parenting me all these years. I will take a quiet moment to think of my own mom and the time we had together.