A Letter to My Partner as We Say Goodbye to Infertility

On leaving behind the hardest battle we've ever fought, without the results we worked and begged and prayed so hard for. On remembering that shared devastation can sometimes strengthen shared love.

Mar 18, 2025

To my steadfast, strong and overly compassionate husband,

First off, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being my rock, my best friend, and my partner in crime - not just in the eight years that we were diagnosed with, lived through, and struggled with infertility, but truly since the day we met. I can’t imagine having lived any part of this story without you.

And in truth, up until three weeks ago, I also couldn’t imagine writing this letter to you. But so much has changed - for you and for I and for our family and our lives, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I think we will both eventually find some relief in the necessary devastation of letting go of a dream that somehow never stopped remaining just out of reach.

I know for me, the falling short of that goal, the not meeting the finish line, the trying and failing, the delaying, the decision making, the time and the energy and the effort and the shear emotion behind these eight years - it’s almost impossible to think about all at once, and it’s completely devastating to end the story here, now, even though there wasn’t really any other choice.

When I think about now, who we are today, you and I, I see a string of crystal clear, dramatically impactful memories related to infertility. Today, as we say goodbye to infertility as we’ve known it, I am full of thoughts and feelings and emotions and the only way for me to process them is to write. So I’m writing to you in the same way I have for years - full of truth, full of heart, of vulnerability and courage, and on the premise of your true belief that sharing our hardest moments with the world is always okay if it means that someone else finds themselves feeling less alone.

So, here we go.

I spent a long time this morning reflecting on who we were way back in February of 2018 after we’d been told that we likely couldn’t get pregnant without technological intervention. Who we were when we walked into the fertility office for the first time, so naively optimistic, wrapped in the cozy blanket of giddiness and hope, somehow feeling like badasses ready for anything. If only we knew…

I think about all of the failed treatments it took us to get to a live birth. About the way we documented every moment of our journey to parenthood. I remember you being so damn supportive in my wanting to break the stigma and the silence surrounding infertility, and together we thought if our friends and family saw an inside look at what it was like, maybe it wouldn’t feel like we were doing something so taboo. Maybe those people would feel comfortable asking questions, or learn how to best support us, or even find the strength to pursue their own journeys too.

I look back at our first IUI, followed by our second, our third and our fourth. Then our first egg retrieval, and the first embryo transfer where we endured the earliest loss. I think about what it felt like when I finally saw two pink lines and a plus sign on the at home pregnancy tests eight days after our second embryo transfer. I remember crawling back into bed with you at 5:50am on a Friday morning, ten minutes before your alarm was going to go off for us to head to the clinic, and slowly waking you up, not even trying to hide my grin.

We did it. We’d done it.

In that moment, in that chapter of life, thank goodness for the blissful naivety we carried between us. It is absolutely mentally impossible today for me to try to imagine going through an entire pregnancy believing that two pink lines at 3w6d automatically equates to bringing home a live and healthy baby. But then, then I believed it with my whole heart. I knew we were going to have a little girl. And I knew that she would be perfect.

I remember so much of my pregnancy with B, and so much about the early days of parenthood, pre-pandemic, when it was just the three of us. Listening to If You Feel Too Much via audiobook for the first five days postpartum. Rewatching all of Psych and Jane the Virgin while we took three hour rotating shifts sleeping on the couch. I remember having friends bring over preemie clothes and preemie pacifiers because though strong and mighty, our daughter was born a whole month early, and still weighed less than six pounds. And can we talk about how I knew from the moment she arrived, the very first moment you brought her to your chest, that she’d be a daddy’s girl? I couldn’t be more thrilled. You’re the best dad I know. I mean, I picked you to be my husband. Of course she’d pick you to be her rock too.

The way you showed up to support us both in all of our needs during the fourth trimester especially made me feel deeply rooted in knowing I was held and loved just as I was, just as we were.

I wish more than anything we could’ve done it again.

Or that we could repeat the same experience just one more time.

Now, I’ve jumped forward further than I expected. But, I think that’s okay.

Let me pause those blissful memories for a moment.

When I think about who we are today, I can’t help but think about who we were back in September of 2020, when the pandemic restrictions lifted ever so slightly and we returned to IVF treatments for the first time since having our daughter. That’s honestly the last time I remember feeling like myself. Feeling like us. It was before all of the trauma. Before most of the losses. It was before our world shattered right in front of our eyes. We were so hopeful. We had two male, genetically normal embryos, and we’d already named them both, daydreaming about our life with one girl and two boys since they’d been frozen in the summer of 2018.

I remember creating this letter board photo before we met with our doctor:

We’d brought our then 16 month old IVF miracle baby with us to the clinic so the doctors and nurses that made her life possible could meet and celebrate her.

I remember turning to you and saying “IVF and a toddler. How will we do it?”

And I remember you telling me that we were in this together. No matter what. That we’d find a way to make it all work.

I remember going home and setting up the medication supplies and an injection station on the counter in our downstairs bathroom, thinking each of those shots was going to get us one tiny step closer to meeting our first son, B’s little brother. I knew if the pregnancy took, if our embryo implanted and began growing into a baby, we’d have approximately 118 injections to go to sustain the baby through week 9 of pregnancy, when we’d graduate from the Reproductive Endocrinologist and transition to the Maternal Fetal Medicine high risk pregnancy team. My eyes were on the prize, and I was willing to do literally anything to get there.

That first loss after B was heartbreaking. The one that we didn’t think would happen to us. And I remember your holding me when I felt like my heart had shattered. This is where I note that my heartache had no idea what was coming next. That loss hurt, but not in the irreparable ways that our subsequent losses changed me, lost me, changed us, lost us, and nearly burnt this whole thing down.

I wish so much that I’d known then what I know now.

I’m choosing here not to detail the rest, the story in its entirety from our third embryo transfer in October 2020 though my hysterectomy in February 2025, but you and I both know that for all of that time, I did and felt and saw and heard and navigated a thousand things, the hardest, most gut wrenching being the consequences of infertility. Another early miscarriage, a delivery of twins at 12 weeks gestation, grueling IVF procedures and testing, and ultimately a spontaneous, “natural” ectopic pregnancy which ruptured my fallopian tube and nearly took my life along with the babys’.

Here’s what I do want to say.

When I was pregnant with B, when I was in the fourth trimester with her, I wish that I’d have been able to take more of it in.

That I’d have been kinder to myself.

That I could’ve recognized in that season, none of the decisions we were making for our newborn daughter were life or death - they were just ways to get from point A to point B.

I know that now.

Now that she’s nearly 6.

But I wish I’d known it then.

I wish I had a chance at redemption for my motherhood.

For my sense of self. My development as a new person. As a mom.

I know you know this too. I know you can feel the ache in my heart when it comes to never having another chance, to never carrying another baby, to never giving B a living sibling.

But I’ll also be somewhat secretly grateful that you stood firm, and flat out told me that you refused to lose me again, even though that meant never ‘finishing’ our family.

Today I feel…

Full of love for you, and empty in my heart where the holes will never heal.

Exhausted and pained by the journey that robbed us six ways to Sunday, and silently hopeful that by removing the possibility of us traveling this path again, in any part, we will be able to rebuild and strengthen me, and you, and us.

Overwhelmingly grateful for our kindergartener, and completely devastated she is growing up without the twins, who should be three now, and without R, who’d just be starting to wriggle around.

Heartbroken for the lack of siblings and support and community, for the loss of intimacy and joyful connection, and for the times in which you lost me completely along the way; and yet still so grateful for you and for us, for love that prevailed through loss and through death and through so much more than anyone will ever know. Eternally thankful for your never hesitating to stand beside me and hold my hand during every aspect of this mind numbingly challenging journey containing the highest highs (welcome, B!) and lowest lows (we’ll forever carry you, N, V & R) with me.

It’s time to say goodbye

Although my uterus left my body 3.5 weeks ago, we intellectually ‘closed the door’ to the idea of my carrying another baby immediately after the ectopic pregnancy last year that nearly took my life.

Emotionally, you know I’d be lying if I told you I accepted the resolution then. In fact, I was still desperately hoping for a Hail Mary in the 4th quarter just two weeks before my hysterectomy. I thought…. what if…?

I’m sorry.

I just couldn’t let go.

I just didn’t want to be forced to let go.

I just haven’t yet come to terms with letting go.

So, let’s do this. Let’s say what we came here to say…

Goodbye, infertility.

You challenged us from the very beginning. You made sure nothing was straightforward. Nothing was easy. Nothing happened on the first try.

You made sure the needles were as long as possible, the injections challenging to kneed into the skin, the schedule rigorous, and the results unpredictable. Before you, I’ve never previously existed in a space where trying so damn hard, following all the rules, and accelerating in every other aspect can still lead to failure.

You taught me that doing everything right might not matter.

That even once you think you’re in the clear, you’re not.

Infertility, you changed me dramatically. You made me need to see and hear every possible approach before making a decision. You made me question my decisions, nearly every single one. You forced me to experience heartache and then heartbreak in a way that I didn’t even know was possible - I had no idea I could emotionally hurt so deeply that I’d want to die rather than continue to face the pain of loss.

You made me feel inadequate and insecure, yet sometimes fierce and badass. You toyed with my emotions on a daily basis, usually starting at 6:30am in the RE’s office, long before my workday began. You sure never stopped keeping me on my toes - you took all of my money, all of my strength and all of my focus - but I persevered. I have to admit, it wasn’t always because I wanted to.

It was because I didn’t believe there was any other choice not to.

Our family wasn’t done.

I wasn’t done.

But there you were, the only thing standing in our way.

Walking away from you, without feeling like my family is complete, its the single most gut wrenching thing I’ve ever had to do.

And for that, I’ll always hate you. I’ll always feel my heart caught in my throat when you come up in conversation, when I think back over the last 8 years, or when I hear or see that someone I know has entered your forcefield.

Yesterday I went through my old notes. I counted up all the quantifiable things we endured during our years with you. And at some point, I’ll share it - the number of procedures, of injections, of appointments, of ultrasounds I put my body through. The numbers of pills taken, of quiet car rides before the sun came up, the plans we had to cancel or decline because your needs came first, foremost and always. You were so selfish. You were so self-centered. You took without giving, and it always felt like we were being mocked in the process.

I constantly worry that you’ll take from others what you took from me too.

And now, today, in retrospect, I feel like my entire outlook on our struggles with infertility is both exactly the same and completely different than the version of me that wrote this letter to my husband 4.5 years ago.

And Finally, I Thank You

To my husband, as we say goodbye to infertility,

I have to have you know the depth of my appreciation towards you - for celebrating our successes, no matter how small, and for shouldering and sharing our grief at every point in time, no matter how big, how impossible, how overwhelming it felt.

Thank you for doing that without ever being asked, or told.

Thank you for just knowing.

Thank you for fervently believing in me to survive.

Thank you for making sure I did survive.

Thank you for bringing me back to life.

Thank you for holding everything together while I was gone - mentally, physically and/or emotionally.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for shouldering the main parts of parenting, home owning and relationship maintaining during our battles with infertility, our seasons of loss, my crippling devastation (and the other physical illnesses & injuries I sustained over the same period of time). We, us three, are still here because of you.

Thank you, for letting me share with the world the hard and intimate details of our marriage, our relationship, and the things that we’ve experienced. I know other people will feel brave enough to discuss their hard things, to maybe call a therapist, to potentially try medication, or even open up about their struggles because of the honesty we’ve put forth publicly.

I also know that honesty keeps us accountable to working our way back to each other.

This is the part I’m most looking forward to without infertility ever joining the conversation again.

Ultimately, I must thank you with my entire heart for your unequivocal and unending love, encouragement, strength and persistence. Without you… well. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

This life wouldn’t be real.

My life probably wouldn’t exist.

And neither would our miracle girl’s either.

& In the spirit of this seasons writing, may I leave you with this - which uses much less words but perhaps conveys more adequately my feelings…