(I’m thrilled to be guest posting for my friend Elisha Kearns over at Waiting for Baby Bird today. Thank you! If you’re struggling with building your family, I hope you’ll check out all Elisha has to offer. And I hope you’ll check out the full post on her site.)

I haven’t kept track of how many infertility couples I’ve worked with over the years. It’s been thousands. But there are two whose tragedies will always stick with me – and it had nothing to do with whether or not they became pregnant.

Shirley and Jackson had both been busy with their careers for several years. Both had become quite successful, and now they felt the only thing still lacking in their lives was a child. Shirley was approaching 40, which you all know makes achieving pregnancy statistically more challenging. But being take-charge kind of people, once they decided it was time to have a child they jumped in with both feet.

A few months of ovulation inducing medications and IUIs passed quickly, and Shirley was ready to move on to IVF. Jackson came with her to almost every one of her appointments. The embryo transfer seemed to go well and Shirley’s initial pregnancy test was positive. Sadly she lost that pregnancy a couple of weeks later, and we shed some tears together.

But that wasn’t the real tragedy. Shirley came by the office a couple of months later and told me that Jackson had moved out. Their marriage was over. She was devastated.

Melinda always brought her two children with her to her appointments, but her husband was never with them. She had some nearly expired vials of medication she had saved after her last successful infertility treatment, and she wanted to try again. Why now? “My husband is threatening to leave me, but if I have another baby he will stay.” He wasn’t interested in supporting her through treatment, but she was sure he could be counted on for timed intercourse.

I talked with Melinda about how unlikely it would be that having another child would fix her troubled marriage, but she insisted she wanted to try. Melinda did not get pregnant again, and the last time I spoke with her she was still begging her husband not to leave. She daily lived with the fear and dread of being left to raise her two children alone. Another tragedy.

Those stories may not be like yours, but they illustrate something important. Not being able to have a child when you so desperately want one is heartbreaking and stressful. Others who have never struggled with infertility cannot fully understand even if you try your best to explain. It becomes all-consuming to you. And yet there are worse things than infertility. The loss of your marriage would be one of them.

In the full post I share three specific tips to help you preserve your most important human relationship while trying to build your family.

I hope you’ll check out the full post here.

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