How are you? I’m cuddled up on a couch right now between two pups, one of which is a new puppy in our family. 

Welcome Mia. We love you.

I’ve written and unwritten this post in my mind a few times. It’s not something I would’ve ever envisioned sharing on this blog, but I’ve been inspired to get vulnerable. Recently, I was reading a post by a blogger I’ve been following for a decade. The thing that attracts me the most to her writing is her honesty. 

I feel like I’m reading her personal journal. It’s so real. I feel like I’m talking to a friend. 

Can you tell I’m stalling? Haha. So many of my blog posts are planned is what I’m trying to say. It’s not that anything I share is artificial, but they are posts that I think about ahead of time. Although it may be the “right“ thing to plan out my content, look at the SEO, and see what it is that I want to say and be ranked for, I’ve grown a bit tired of that game.

As I was reading Andrea’s post, I remembered why I started a blog in the first place. To create connection. To be seen. To give others a space to see themselves. The only way to do that is to be honest.

So here goes nothing…

 

Our Story: Trying To Conceive

 

 

For the last two years my husband and I have wanted a baby. I’ve had a lot of complicated feelings about this. At first, we joked that we were “pulling the goalie.” And so life started with blissfully making love and not being terribly upset if I got my period. Actually, to be totally uncomfortably honest, in those early months, I felt a sense of relief when my period came. 

We had just moved to our little Mountain town, and I didn’t want to miss out on the socializing aspect of making friends (read: discovering the magic of North Carolina craft beer and brewery scene). It’s not that any of our friends would have minded if I wasn’t able to partake, but I would have. I guess I’m still a bit shy and reserved. To be honest, a little bit of social lubricant certainly helps me be more open.

Life went on like this for a while until the baby making completely took a backseat. We were not tracking or thinking about it or dreaming about it at all for months. In fact, for some time I would say I became a bit depressed. Not because of trying to conceive, but because I became overwhelmed by the things going on in our life and the transition of moving from Florida to North Carolina.

We had been undergoing major construction for some time. It was our dream to have accommodations for visiting friends and to eventually rent these suites on Airbnb. A totally new undertaking for either of us.

Anyone that’s taken on any construction project will likely feel me on the fact that this was taking longer and costing more than anticipated. However, it felt like it was more layered for me…

 

Bumps In The Road

 

With every delay, failure to meet a deadline, moment we felt betrayed by the people that we hired, or worse, felt inadequate and under prepared to take on starting a business.… My light dimmed. There were days when I felt so unworthy, I didn’t even care to be social. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to share about what was going on in my life. I wanted to retreat. I thought I would have finished this project with a baby bump… And instead we were always almost there. I felt stuck in “almost there” for a long time. 

I also felt ashamed that something like this could overtake me in that way. Construction seems such an external materialistic thing. I felt my feelings of unworthiness were not valid. Did I really have the right to complain? I was with the love of my life, we were both so lucky to have secure, well-paying jobs working for a company that we like and a vision we believe in, we got to work remotely from the mountains… In fact any time that we wanted some perspective, we could literally climb one. To have felt that upset over construction made my unworthiness compound. It was hard to find my gratitude in those days. 

We live in a small town, so I won’t get into the weeds, but part of what made that time so difficult was learning lessons of trust, who to work with, and how we feel comfortable working with others. As much as I felt betrayed by some of the people we worked with, I felt I betrayed myself the most by choosing to look good and be amiable over being honest. These are really important lessons that could not have been learned any other way…I know that now. But even that knowledge didn’t make the experience easier.

Somehow during that time I managed to finish my first book and have it published. It was a welcome distraction, a project that was happy, a project that was finished. It took me away from feeling like our construction was a never ending money pit, a constant reminder of my failure. It was also a lot of work, so while the baby making may have come back in the peripheral, that is where it stayed. The only thing I was working to birth was my story.

 

 

Trying Again

 

It was after the book was published, and all of that buzz subsided, that we once again turned our attention back to trying to conceive. TTC as I now understand it is known around the web by other women (and couples) going through the same journey. I was finally ready to take it seriously. For a time, my mornings were spent peeing on a stick and waiting for a series of faces to meet me on the other side of my first morning tinkle. I was looking for a blinking smiley face 😊

We became more intentional and excited during this time. And then… We weren’t. It felt like too much pressure to time sex. In fact, sex began to feel rather unsexy. I believe that sex is mental for both men and women. Between my feelings of unworthiness and my husband’s feelings of stress, it felt like we never found a time to feel desirable. I cannot stress to you how much anxiety this gave me. It was like having the air sucked out of a room while desperately trying to take a breath. We had bigger conversations to get through about passion, specifically why it felt so difficult for us to feel it for each other. It was like the baby making brought up deeper issues of how both of us had not felt good in our own skin for a very long time.

Although that basically put the baby making on pause again, and things were difficult if not sad for a while, something really beautiful came out of that time of introspection. I grew closer to my husband in a way I didn’t think was possible. We each figured out something that was going on in our own souls, a light that had been dim for a while because we were not focusing on ourselves. 

 

 

Since we moved into our new house in the mountains (2 years at this time), much of our effort had been focused on the external. We’ve worked on building relationships, discovering our surroundings, making our house our home, adopting a dog, providing the most value possible for our jobs to warrant this opportunity and keep it… Working on ourselves and having passion in our lives and desire had not made that list. And now we were dealing with the consequences.

After that period of intense learning and connecting, something amazing happened. We were joyful, we were passionate and sex was fun. We were ready to focus on making a baby… again.

 

 

The Worst Advice You’ll Hear When Trying To Conceive

 

This time, I knew better. I realized that on top of the fact that our “trying” never felt focused or 100% committed, I had also been listening to one terrible piece of advice (or at least terrible for me). Don’t focus on it and don’t think about it and don’t try at all… I’m sure you’ve heard that one before from the most well-meaning friends and family. Unfortunately, this does not work for me. When I’m excited about some thing, when I have a vision in my heart that I want to see come true, learning about it and being engaged with it supports me in bringing that to life.

Plus… telling someone that feels like they have a hole in their heart to not focus on the one thing they want most is futile. It’s dumb. I’m sure I’ve probably given this advice myself before (it’s very common to tell people this when they feel stuck)… and it may work for some people. I want to make a distinction: There is immense value in letting go of something, especially if your mental health is suffering from constantly focusing on what you don’t have. But trying to pretend not to want something and not taking legitimate steps to help achieve that goal… is just bad advice. There is a harmony in letting go of the result and still believing in your dream. For me, that balance was research. No more blind trying without knowledge or tests.

So I bought a book and began to immerse myself in the truly fascinating world that is trying to conceive. Life is honestly a miracle. Do you know this? I did not fully understand that on a purely technical level. I won’t bore you with statistics, but I will share a quote a dear friend shared with me when I opened up about this journey to her:

“Thermodynamic miracles… events with odds against [them] so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter..Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.” ― Alan Moore in Watchmen

Eventually, this approach made me feel empowered in my journey. Trying to conceive “blindly” doesn’t work for everyone. Like I said, remaining relaxed and stress-free is super important. And for me, not knowing gave me more stress. I felt confident with more knowledge and that was my first big win to help me relax and trust. I got so much peace from knowing I’d done and checked all I could, and now… it really was up to a higher power.

 

Where We Are Now: Trying To Conceive With Positive Intention And Trust

 

And that brings me to now. How do I feel? It depends on the day. Some days, I feel really low. I feel angry and frustrated that I couldn’t be one of those women who got pregnant by accident. I really hoped that would be my story for a while. Other days I feel very activated by our vision and desire to create a family. I feel so fortunate that I have a partner willing to always search for the deeper connection with me and do the work. Plus, someone who I really want to create a baby with 😉

At times, the thought that there is something wrong with my body has crossed my mind. Those are some of the worst days. A lot of the time, I feel isolated. I feel like I can’t talk to many people about this. I hate to think of people feeling sorry for me, or worse, knowing my deepest saddest secret. I also don’t wanna get mad at people for saying something that upsets me when they’re really trying their best. I guess what I’m trying to say is there really is nothing anyone could say to make me feel better. I know the answer deep down, we always do.

This has also been hard because, well, though I’m in touch with my emotions, I’m very logical. Underneath it all, I consider myself a pragmatic person. In the past, when I’ve turned to someone to share an experience, I want their advice or reaction. Why else would I share if not to gauge that person’s feelings around it? At the very least, if I don’t want advice and someone provided it, I understood that it came from a good place. This is the first time in my life when I don’t feel that way. When I’m not searching for someone to try to make me feel better, or provide a solution. I’ve never understood the desire of simply being acknowledged. But that is exactly what I crave these days… the acknowledgement that this is hard and I’m doing the best I can. That I’m doing a damn good job, actually, would be super nice to hear.

 

Adopting Our Second Pup

 

So let’s talk about this week and my new dog. My sweet Mia who is here to crack open my heart, I’m sure of it. Mia came the week my period did. Which is to say, I was hoping to welcome a positive pregnancy test… Not a new dog. But fate had its own plans.

 

 

The day I got my period, I left to Asheville, the biggest town nearby where I often run errands since I live in a small town and there aren’t many stores here. I was getting my hair done and my hairdresser told one of her clients not to worry for canceling. She shared with me she was pregnant. On another day, I will admit that may have made me feel a bit down about myself. Not because I’d be unhappy for the stranger, but for the reminder that I was not. Instead, I felt at peace. I smiled and took it as a good omen. I am the context for life, I thought.

I stopped by Whole Foods and bought champagne. I told my husband that we’d celebrate because today was a good day. Finally, our construction is nearing its end, and a new journey is on the horizon. No, I didn’t get that positive, but I didn’t take it as a negative… I took it as a not yet. I was starting to get excited even though I wasn’t seeing the results. As I was checking out with my champagne and my new positive outlook, my husband texted me the photo of a puppy.

He called me and told me this sweet girl needed a home. Her owners were searching for a place for her, they could no longer care for her. What can I say? We had already been thinking of having another dog at some point, we live on 2 acres and work from home, it made sense for us to give this dog a home if she was the right fit. When we met her the next day, we found out she was.

 

 

Her first days with us were clunky. She was older than our first pup was when we adopted her, she was not trained, she’s huge haha and she doesn’t know it! I was a bit sad the circumstances around her adoption didn’t feel as joyful as with our first dog. I was still going through complicated feelings of my own, on top of the fact that introducing a new dog into a home with an existing dog is complicated on its own. There’s a lot of adjustment and logistics to work through. And cleaning… lol.

It’s been three days and finally I’ve started to feel the love. It all hit me actually as I was sitting on my couch and Mia jumped up, threw her paws over me and laid her head down on my lap with all the trust of someone she has known for a lifetime. To experience that unconditional love before having earned it made me realize I’ve been desperately missing that: love. It was never more clear that this dog was here to remind me of the power of love.

 

 

Whenever I’m going through the feelings associated with trying to conceive (which come in waves and are by far the most complex set of feelings around one topic I have ever felt in my entire life), she will come up and snuggle me. I’d like to think on some level she can sense it. She feels like an angel who came into my life when I needed to feel loved and could not show myself any. 

As anyone who has a dog knows, the love they will give you without reservation is some of the purest love around.

They say things happen for a reason, I say we are creating it all. And I must say, I really outdid myself on this one. 

If you’re on your own journey trying to conceive, please know you are not alone. So many couples have gone through this and are currently going through it. No matter what your story is, I am sending you all the love in my heart. I know you will have your happy ending.

With all my heart,

Cris

 

Ps. If you liked this post, you may like my memior, Embrace That Girl.

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