To My Husband,
This week we are celebrating 4 years of marriage. Back on our wedding day, we both envisioned taking a year or so to enjoy time as newlyweds. We wanted to travel and buy a house in preparation for the 2 kids we figured would be coming soon (and the fur babies!). Our life was going to be textbook perfect with no deviations from the plan...or at least that’s what we thought.
On our wedding day, we recited these vows to each other “I vow to help you love life and to have the patience that love demands. I vow to always be there for you when you need help and to turn to you when I am in need. I take you for your strengths and your perfect imperfections. I promise to never forget that this is a once in a lifetime love. I vow to love and serve you as long as we both shall live.”
On that day I don’t think we would have ever thought to include things like:
I vow to stand beside you as we learn that fertility treatments are the only way for us to try and conceive a child
I vow to mix your fertility medicine and hold the gauze while you inject yourself multiple times a day
I vow to still think you are beautiful when the fertility medicine has you bloated and gaining weight
I vow to not run away when the fertility medicine makes you extremely hormonal (and scary at times)
The fact is, you and I could have never imagined that we would be struggling with infertility and going on 2.5 years of trying to conceive and fertility treatments. Yet here we are...celebrating our 4th anniversary and poppin’ estrogen to get my uterus ready for the biopsy to try and figure out why the heck we can’t get/stay pregnant. Pretty sure we should be poppin’ bottles of champagne instead!
As the woman, I have to carry the physical burden of infertility. My body is the one being impacted by medicine, the daily injections and procedures. I am the one that felt all of the symptoms when we were pregnant and all of the physical pain when we were miscarrying. But you have had to do so much too. You have to watch the woman you married endure so much heartbreak and physical side effects, and yet try to stay strong for the both of us. You have had to take and figure out all of the financial stress of our daily lives plus fertility treatments. You have probably had to hold back tears at many points, not wanting things to upset me more than I was.
I honestly don’t know how I could have gotten through these last 2.5 years without you. You were the strength that held us up when all I wanted to do was collapse. You reassured me when I thought all hope was lost. You cried with me as we lost our first baby and let me cry anytime I needed to even sometimes for no reason at all. The amount of appreciation I have for everything you have always done for me, and especially during our infertility journey, can never fully be put into words.
We still have a long road ahead of us in growing our family, but the one thing I do know is that you and I babe, we are going to be okay.
I love you babe!
Love, Wife
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