That Sneaky Shred of Hope

The one that you try desperately to ignore because you know you can't have the only thing you've ever really wanted, no matter how hard you try.

[Trigger Warnings: Infertility, miscarriage, first trimester birth, neonatal loss, ectopic pregnancy, hysterectomy]

Hi. I’m Amanda. & Today, I am knee deep in feelings that I can’t change and am choosing to explore.

To make an extremely long story short, my infertility and loss journey has now spanned officially 8 years - and in that time, I’ve tracked my ovulation and tried to get pregnant spontaneously, endured 4 failed IUI procedures, experienced nearly 1,000 injections for IVF, underwent 4 egg retrieval procedures and 5 embryo transfers, experienced 3 early miscarriages, a first trimester birth coupled with neonatal death, an ectopic pregnancy coupled with a ruptured fallopian tube, and the singular live birth of my living daughter who is now 5 years old.

Across that time, my expectations, goals and dreams have been as high as the sky and as low as the ocean floor. I’ve spent more hours than I’ll ever care to admit lost in this whirlwind of feeling everything so acutely and painfully, it was the only thing I could think about no matter what else was going on around me.

I lost babies.

I lost time with my little girl.

And I lost myself.

Back in November, I came out of one a Ketamine therapy session and the first thing I said was that I saw the babies. All of them. Except, they weren’t babies. They were the ages they should’ve been now. My daughter was 5. The twins were 2.5. And sweet baby Rowan was asleep on my chest as just a premature peanut.

This was the first time I’d been able to think about the babies outside of their moments of delivery and death - and it was a huge F’ing deal.

I desperately wanted my brain to stay in that place. But when the medicine wore off, so did the facade I so desperately wanted to stay. The image of my life, of our family, the way that it should have been. Something I’d never been able to see or even imagine before. It felt like maybe there was a way I could stay connected to the babies I lost without it coming from this deeply painful place of struggle.

Two weeks later, I came out of a Ketamine therapy session and the first thing I said was “I’m not done.” “This family isn’t done. It’s not complete. I need to have another baby.” And I meant that shit with my whole heart.

Except, I also knew that there was a slim to none chance of that dream becoming a reality.

Today, everything feels a little bit different.

Today I realized that although the chances of growing our family have been slim for a while now, they’re actually really probably null at this point in life.

It’s not safe for me to try to carry another baby - my doctors have confirmed that either the baby would die, or I’d die, and that’s not a risk I can afford to take.

I will not leave my living daughter without a mother.

It has been recommended that I undergo a partial hysterectomy as soon as possible - removing my remaining fallopian tube, my uterus and my cervix. This surgery will have many benefits for my body and for my physical health, but I have to admit that when a surgery date got put on the calendar, there was a part of me emotionally that became nearly violently angry.

It turns out, in the way that sometimes our subconscious minds overwrite our conscious brains and all of the systems in their way, that I have apparently been holding on to one tiny shred of hope.

Hope can be beautiful. But hope can also be dangerous.

Especially when you don’t realize how long you’ve been holding onto it, laying awake at night lying to yourself, allowing yourself to believe you can come to peace with the story in front of you and not the one that you once dreamed of.

I always wanted a big family. My husband and I both did.

And yes, we have our miracle girl. And she is the sun and the moon and all the stars and I’ve never been luckier in my life to know someone than I am to know and to love her. She has the most tender soul, is both a pistol and a tiny empath, is way too smart for her own good, and wants to love all of the things that the people around her love too - like Taylor Swift and Wednesday Addams and Wicked - things that she’s had very little exposure to but is obsessed with anyway. And I try to remember that my body grew this baby girl. She came early, 5 weeks early, but she was ready. We were ready. She’ll always be the center of our universe.

We just never intended for her to grow up alone.

We never imagined having an only child.

And we did just about nearly everything in our power mentally, emotionally, physically and financially to change that outcome.

I think thats where the sneaky shred of hope hurts the most. The one I’ve tried desperately to ignore for the last 3.5 years. We can’t seem to have the only thing we’ve ever really wanted, regardless of walking nearly to the end of the earth to obtain it. No matter how hard we tried, we still fell short. And this isn’t something I take lightly.

One month from today, on February 21st, 2025, I will undergo the medically necessary surgery to remove my reproductive organs, and with that I will say goodbye to this chapter of our lives, to this shred of hope which has lived in the back of my mind and my heart since we first met with Reproductive Endocrinologists in 2017.

That’s a long time.

And with that realization, It’s not something I’ll be able to grieve overnight.

It’s not something that will pass eventually.

I know that it will come and go in waves, just like every other iteration of grief I’ve withstood on this wounded road. It will always be a part of me, a part of my heartache and a part of my acceptance.

But - I don’t want to end this right here, because it’s not finished. I’m not finished.

I don’t know what the future holds for us, for our family, and for the feasibility of other options in growing our family. I know that we have genetically tested embryos stored in a cryobank at a hospital in the city, and that we will likely spend the rest of our life paying to keep them there - just. in. case.

Just in case surrogacy becomes somehow affordable or a uterus is just so kindly offered to us. Just in case there’s a new way, in maybe in 3-5 years, which could grow a baby ex-vivo (outside of the body).

I know these things are hard reaches, and highly unlikely, but I also know that if I don’t turn my sneaky shred of hope into something, it might just eat me alive both before and after I go through with surgery.

When I think about family, I think about this quote:

“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.” - Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

Sure - it doesn’t exactly have to do with having another baby, or undergoing a hysterectomy, but it’s the most accurate way to capture our feelings as we move through these next few steps.

This quote, this sentiment, it’s an homage to the people who have moved through our lives while all of the above was happening - we thank you with our whole hearts for loving us when we were celebrating and for loving us when we were grieving.

& As for that shred of hope…

it’ll be what it may, but I know this much to be true.

I hope that my that my daughter knows we did everything we could to give her a sibling.

I hope that she continues to love so fiercely on her brothers and sister in heaven, teaching adults a thing or two about emotional intelligence and maturity.

I hope that she knows every minute of every day how much we love her, and how much we’d walk to the ends of the earth to protect her.

How much we did walk to the end of the earth to try to give her the thing we all wanted the most - another baby.

I hope she knows that sometimes, despite doing absolutely everything right, absolutely everything one can, sometimes… sometimes you still don’t reach the result you were hoping for. And it’s going to hurt like hell when she misses the mark. But she’ll never have to miss it alone.

I hope more than anything, that my daughter grows up knowing that her mom was a badass and her dad was the most supportive and together as a team they overcame some of lifes most cruel heartaches - together.

I hope our story helps her to believe in trust, in relationships, in marriage and in partnership.

I hope her story empowers her to understand as much as possible about the miracle of life, and the way it’s much harder than everyone makes it out to be.

And finally, I hope that she carries with her a much bigger, much more pronounced piece of hope for herself as she wanders through each chapter of life, reaching for bigger and better things every day.

I’ll always be a mom - not just to my living daughter, but to my babies in the stars too.

And today, this month, this year, that’s gotta be enough to get me through to the other side.

Here’s to hoping that once this procedure passes and this door officially closes for good, my heart and my hope will let me rise up and move forward again, empowered, emboldened, and open to new possibilities.