I am an infertile woman. While my experience of infertility does not define me, it informs and impacts every aspect of my life and my relationships. Much like a cancer survivor who is forever changed in the fight for her life, I too have been changed in the desperate fight for life: that of my children.
I grew up in a close-knit community in South Holland, IL where our lives and activities revolved around family and faith. The birth of a new cousin was a time of great joy for me as a child. I would patiently wait my turn to hold this new baby, longing to feel his body mold into my own. Pulling him close, his baby smell filling my nostrils, I was already dreaming of the glorious day when I would hold my own child.
With time, this growing maternal identity was joined by an awakening to the life-giving energy I derived from relationship, from real connection with others. It was my soul's awareness of other souls: their vulnerabilities, their dreams, their searching for protection, and their hungering for nurturance. In short, this combination of inclinations, gifts, and yearnings were the foundations of my callings to be both a mother and a therapist. With increased focus, life experience, and education, these realities have molded me into a psychotherapist specializing in the emotional and relational issues of infertility.
Not long after beginning my career as a Pastoral Counselor, a new and totally different stage of my education began. I joined my life with the man I love, Bob Stewart, and his four children. These children were unexpected gifts who, with time, love, and patience, allowed me to be their mother. They are the children of my heart.
My husband and I spent the next six years engaged in the battle against infertility with all of its testing, diagnoses, uncertainties, procedures, and heartbreak after heartbreak. And yet, in the darkness and despair, I once again found comfort and healing in relationship. There were a special few people who had the courage to walk beside me in my pain. One such person is my dearest friend, Julia, who co-authors this book with me.
In 1998, I finally held my baby boy with wonder, joy and disbelief. In 2003, I was blessed to cradle my second infant son. Now, a decade later, in the stillness of the night, I take one last peek into the bedrooms of the children I feared would never be my own. I find comfort in the rhythm of their breathing. It is with profound gratitude that I pull up the kicked-off covers of my sleeping boys.
Shari DeGraff Stewart
Bachelor of Arts • Belmont University
Master of Divinity, Pastoral Care and Counseling • Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
I had my first child when I was thirty-six years old, unaware I was beating the odds. My fertility, which statistically peaked at age twenty seven, was rapidly declining in my thirties. I became friends with Shari when we were in our late twenties. Having both finished graduate school, we were busy growing careers, buying our first houses, and dating our share of frogs and princes. We both assumed marriage and children were in our future.
Our lives, which seemed to have run in parallel, diverged and perhaps could have become permanently split when Shari found out she was infertile. I have learned, through Shari, that infertility is a crisis which presents both risk and opportunity. There is the likelihood of growing apart and equally there is opportunity to forge the kind of relationship that only comes with having endured together. We have a reliance and trust with each other that doesn't develop when only easy times are experienced. I should make clear that the love and support has not been one-sided. I loved and listened to Shari through years of infertility. She, in her amazingly wise and steady way, loved and supported me through many real and imagined crises!
My best friend made the ultimate sacrifice in that she sent me to live a thousand miles away! She decided that one of her husband's best friends would be perfect for me — and she was right! Eventually I moved from Louisville, Kentucky to (as I put it at the time) "somewhere near the Canadian border!" to marry John Krahm. I live in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts with my husband, son, daughter, and dog! Shari and I are grateful for unlimited phone plans and we take full advantage of them!
Julia Fichtner Krahm
Bachelor of Arts • Furman University
Master of Science • University of Louisville
What could have driven us apart has brought us closer than ever.
The most important relationships in my life have been changed forever by my years of infertility. Infertility has been a furnace of pain and grief that has strengthened some relationships and burnt away others—or parts of others. Of course, I still see and often love the individuals in this latter category, but there are limits: we have changed, or at least, I have changed. There are places of vulnerability I will not go with them. There are areas of my life I keep separate. I love them, but I cannot trust them with my deepest longings and joys.
As irony would have it, my best friend for many years, Julia, is the most fertile woman I know. Somehow her love for me reached across the chasm separating her experience from mine. She listened; she held me when I cried. She gave me the opportunity to choose whether I wanted to talk about my pain and she let me decide when I did want to hear about her own pregnancy and ultrasound results. Somehow, she "got it." She understood my infertility as I have seldom seen from a woman who hasn't experienced it. I call her the most "infertile" fertile woman I know.
The gift of Julia's commitment has now led us to a whole new creation as we have become writing and business partners. In a very real way, out of that time of darkness, new life has emerged. My friend, who understood me through so many years, now offers the gift of her writing. We talk and process a topic or idea for hours, and she is the one who translates the work I do onto the written page. She is close enough to understand what I am explaining, that she writes with integrity about infertility, and she offers insight into the experience of the one who loves an infertile woman.
Infertility was a crisis for me and for my relationships. Like any crisis, it tested the strength of each bond: some held firm and others bent or twisted—all of them were transformed.
I asked her to teach me.
To hear Shari tell it, I did everything right when she went through the greatest pain I have ever seen her experience. Thankfully, her memories are edited by love, because many times I was inept and sadly, thoughtless. I actually fear that Shari set the bar pretty low: as long as I didn't ignore her primordial keening with, "enough about you...let me tell you about my stretch marks," she seemed to think I was great. Here is the reality from my perspective. I did just a few things right, and our love and friendship stretched over my inadequacies. First, I asked her to teach me. I became the master of prefaces: "Do you want to talk? How would you feel if I...?" Secondly, when I made mistakes, I learned from them and tried to make it right. "I realize I just spent twenty minutes discussing diaper rash. Is that what you need to talk about?"
I will say I had an advantage I didn't recognize as such at the time. Prior to meeting Shari, I experienced a painful betrayal from which I spent several years gradually recovering. I realized during that time how maddening I found banal platitudes like, "It was just meant to be," or "it's the Lord's will." I remember how I disliked phrases about the listener that seemed to put pressure on me to comfort them, "I wish I knew how to help you.... I wish I knew what to say..." I am so grateful for the few people who sat near me, not fixing, or running away, or filling the emptiness. A simple, "I am so sorry" was a place of brief respite where I could take a deeper breath. These friends' acknowledgement of my loss helped me accept what was happening, and in the acceptance I felt an inkling of hope. I wasn't running from or distracting myself from my sadness; I was facing it and I was surviving.
It is the rare adult who hasn't experienced grief or pain in some form. We who have never been infertile cannot fully comprehend the fear and grief of infertility. We can touch our own pain in a way that allows us to reach out to and love this woman in what is likely her time of greatest need and pain.