The Toll of Infertility and Loss on a Marriage
The Toll of Infertility and Loss on a Marriage
Recently, NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and his wife Samantha opened up about their fertility and marital struggles. Samantha told People, “There have been times through this journey that we both are like, ‘Are we gonna make it? I don’t know if as a couple we’re gonna make it.’”
When my husband and I were going through our own struggles, I had the exact same thought.
Like many women, I had the naïve belief that once I chose to have a child, after years spent preventing such a thing, it would just happen. The bliss of ignorance turned out to be short-lived.
My first pregnancy was ectopic, the embryo stuck in my left fallopian tube.
I was rushed into surgery, and when I awoke, I’d lost my baby, my tube, and my faith in a fair world. With just one tube remaining, I didn’t know if I’d be able to get pregnant again. When I did, I proclaimed myself the One-Tube Wonder. I thought I’d paid my dues with the first “fluke,” so when early blood testing showed the embryo was not viable, I was shocked. I had no signs or symptoms—a missed miscarriage. It took weeks before I bled, before I physically parted ways with this life that almost was.
My husband, Chris, and I went into our third attempt saying, “Third time’s a charm” or “Three strikes and we’re out.” We were trying to be cute, to maintain some sense of humor. Our marriage depended on some levity.
When my third pregnancy went past the first trimester, I thought we were safe. But again, I was fooled. I carried my son, Miles, for seventeen weeks before his heart stopped. We will never know the medical reason why. The “products of conception”—the remains of my son—were lost at the lab. I was given this news over the phone and I did what actors do in dramatic films—I fell to my knees.
It took me months to decide that I did not agree with “Three strikes and you’re out.” I wanted to try again. When my fourth pregnancy turned out to be ectopic—again—my doctor shook his head in disbelief. “This is just terrible luck,” he said. That was all there was to say.
This time around, the out-of-place embryo was not visible on ultrasound, so the doctor gave me a shot of methotrexate that slowly stopped the embryo from growing. It took weeks before my hCG levels were back to zero. Desperate for a bright side, I thought of my spared fallopian tube, the chance to try again.
Chris was ready to give up, throw in the proverbial towel. He said, “Would it be so bad if we didn’t have a child?” and I wanted to slap him. He wanted to be a father, but he was drained by the disappointment, the ongoing grief. In a misguided attempt to cheer me up, he rattled off the pros of not having kids: “We’ll have so much freedom! We’ll have more money! We can get another dog!” He flaunted this ability to flip the switch back to a childless life, and I resented him for it. I found it impossible to flip that switch.
He resented me too. He resented my stubborn resolve. My resolve was putting us through the ringer. But, ultimately, he said, not unkindly, “Well, it’s your body.” It was my body. And I was determined to understand it, to figure out if there was a reason besides “bad luck” to explain my losses.
Opening the door to infertility specialists was overwhelming.
This was a whole new world—with high financial cost, extensive testing, complicated medication regimens, and demoralizing statistics. Chris and I quickly realized that entering this world would require a significant investment from us emotionally, physically, and financially. This is when I started to worry if we were going to make it.
Testing showed that my egg quality and quantity was extremely poor (FSH of 19, AMH of 0.06—that is not a typo). I was given this information via email at the end of a Friday, right when the doctor’s office was closing. I sent a scathing reply along the lines of, “Thank you for giving me this distressing news at a time when I cannot get a hold of you. I appreciate your consideration of my feelings.” That doctor called me over the weekend (I must have really made her feel bad) and agreed to see me the next week. She said, verbatim, “It appears that your embryos are destined to die.”
I consulted with other fertility specialists. One said we would never conceive naturally and that IVF had less than a 5 percent chance of success. Another said, “Well, you keep getting pregnant, so I have hope. You’re like someone with a terrible résumé who keeps getting the job.”
At one point, we considered a donor egg.
I explored databases of women selling their eggs, but I just could not accept that there was something wrong with my eggs. I committed to improving my eggs with the hopes of doing IVF. I took all kinds of supplements—ubiquinol, myo-inositol, L-arginine, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, magnesium, pycnogenol, royal jelly. I gagged on shots of wheat grass every day. I did acupuncture every week for months. Despite all this, my follicle count wasn’t high enough, and my FSH was too high. We were deemed ineligible for IVF, which I didn’t even know was a thing. I’d assumed IVF was an always-available last resort for couples who could afford it. But, no. We were left with no option but to keep trying on our own. Or not.
In her book The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood, Belle Boggs writes, “…Our life was less and less like the lives of our married friends, who had entered a new and somewhat exclusive world of playdates and birthday parties and bedtimes. But our life did not resemble our single or childless friends’ lives either. We lived in a constant state of waiting.”
This limbo, this uncertainty, was hard on us. There were the small things—should we plan that wine country trip this summer or not? And there were bigger things—if our marriage is already straining under the weight of our losses, is becoming parents even a good idea?
This limbo, this uncertainty, is also a kind of grief in itself, separate from the grief of losing the pregnancies. We were grieving our relationship as we’d known it, before this suffocating sadness, this constant anxiety. We were grieving the future we had envisioned, the control we thought we had. Chris and I were both afraid for our marriage. He was afraid that I would never get over our losses. He was afraid that we’d never have a child and I’d be forever changed by that. I was afraid that we no longer wanted the same things, that our paths were diverging, that they would never come together again.
Of her own marital struggles, Samantha Busch told People, “We ended up going to counseling.
We ended up prioritizing each other again. We had to really sit down and say: ‘Okay, we love each other. The way we’re processing a miscarriage and fertility stuff is not lining up and we’re just fighting nonstop. We have to do something about this.’”
Therapy helped Chris and me too. I realized I had to be as determined to improve my marriage as I was to have a baby. Otherwise, we would lose each other. I didn’t want that. We had already lost so much.
We were clumsy in learning how to support each other, but we did learn. Much of that learning was rooted in acceptance. We didn’t grieve the same way—he ran (and biked) away from his sadness; I sank into mine. But that was okay. There wasn’t a right or wrong. This, for us, was a revolutionary concept.
In time, we discovered a resilience we didn’t know we had—as individuals and as a unit. Simultaneously, but in our own ways, we embraced one of life’s hardest truths: there are so many things that aren’t fair; there are so many things that don’t make sense.
Here’s the kicker, something else that makes no sense: Days after the fertility doctor said we were ineligible for IVF, we conceived our daughter. My eggs, as a group, may not have been “good enough,” but one of them was more than good enough to become a healthy baby—a miracle.
Sometimes, the survival of our marriage seems like a miracle too. Sometimes, I look at Chris with our now-3-year-old daughter and think about how improbable it is that I am a wife, a mother. A few years ago, it seemed likely that I would be neither of those things. The moral of the story: You just never know.
-Kim Hooper is the author of five novels—People Who Knew Me (2016), Cherry Blossoms (2018), Tiny (2019), All the Acorns on the Forest Floor (2020), No Hiding in Boise (2021), and one nonfiction book: All the Love, Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss (2021). She lives in Southern California with her husband, daughter, and a collection of pets.
Medical Disclaimer:
The information provided in this blog is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your healthcare provider or qualified medical professional with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this blog.