Today I am thrilled to be interviewing Tertia Loebenberg Albertyn on my blog. She is a huge inspiration to me. I read her book “So Close” while going through infertility. Although this blog is less about infertility and more about widowhood now, there’s a common thread here: how do you get through the hard times?
- My first question is: I know you have been through hell and back with infertility, what is it that has kept you going through the hard times?
Prozac!! On a serious note – Prozac did actually help As did therapy. There were other things that helped too.
People will sometimes remark that I was brave to carry on trying after each heartache, but sometimes I think what kept me going wasn’t that I was brave. It was partly because I was too terrified not to carry on trying (more about that later), also because I was too damn stubborn to stop trying.
One of the toughest thing someone once said to me was “maybe God doesn’t want you to be a mother”. That was like a knife in the heart. I was already filled with so much self-doubt (and self-loathing, if I am honest, I felt like a broken woman). The last thing I needed to hear was that God/fate/nature/the universe didn’t want me to be a mother. And right there I thought to myself – I will show you. No one gets to decide what I am or what I am not. *I* will decide my own fate and destiny. I might not have children through the usual way, but if I wanted to be a mother then I would be a mother. That was the stubborn/determined side.
The other side was pure terror. I had seen some women who stopped trying before they were ready to stop trying (either because they didn’t have the resources or because their partner didn’t want to carry on trying) and their permanent state of sadness and sense of loss terrified me. I didn’t want to feel sad or empty for the rest of my life. For some people, stopping the journey is the right thing to do, for them. For me, it wasn’t. I needed to carry on for as long as I possibly could.
One thing that kept me going was having a Plan B in place. Or a Plan C when B didn’t work. And a Plan D, E and F when the previous plans failed. It helped me enormously knowing that the end of the road wasn’t looming. I would do anything and everything I could to become a mother.
- What did people say to you that was really helpful when you were going through those times?
The best thing that anyone could say is “I am really sorry for what you are going through. I might not understand exactly how you feel, but I can see it is really tough for you. You have my support”. That, and “I understand if you can’t / don’t want to attend the baby shower / braai / kiddies party / xmas party etc. You don’t need to be there if it is too hard for you”. That one is HUGE. Those occasions are damn tough when you have just failed your 5th IVF.
- What do you remember that was very unhelpful that people said when you were going through infertility?
How much time do you have???? As I said above, the absolute WORST was “maybe God doesn’t want you to be a mother”. That left scars that will never go away. Others include “Just relax and it will happen” (insert several F words here). “I just look at my husband and I get pregnant”. (vomit). “Here, take my kids” accompanied by an exasperated sigh and an eye roll. “I know exactly how you feel. We tried for 6 months before we conceived little Johnny”.
- How has infertility affected your parenting?
It’s affected my parenting in both a good way and a bad way.
The good part is that I am so grateful and I feel so lucky to be a mother. I revel in the ordinary moments, like losing the first tooth, the first day of school etc, because I feared I would never get the opportunity to celebrate all those ‘ordinary’ moments. Every now and then (admittedly less often than the first 10 years of being a mother) something very ordinary and random will happen that will remind me that I am a mother, and the relief, wonder and gratitude that floods over me leaves me feeling quite week at the knees. For example, when the children were little, I would be scratching in my handbag for my car keys and I would stumble across a forgotten dummy in the bottom of my handbag, and the feeling of amazement and gratitude would take my breath away. There is a dummy!! In MY handbag! That belongs to MY child! I have a child! I am a mother!! Simple things: The other day I was grumbling under my breath about my children who left their school shoes lying all over the lounge, so I picked them up (while grumbling because even ex-infertility patients are allowed to grumble about their children) and lined them up on the staircase to be taken upstairs by the next person to go upstairs (which would probably be me). I walked past the lined up school shoes a few minutes later and it hit me again: Three pairs of school shoes!! I have THREE healthy children who do ordinary things like go to school. I have THREE children! I am a mother!! I haven’t forgotten what it was like to long to be a mother, even 14 years later I am still grateful I got the opportunity to experience motherhood.
The not so good effect infertility has on my parenting is that I can get a little paranoid, although I am better than I was when the kids were little. When they were sick, I didn’t think “my babies are sick, I will take them to the doctor and they will get medicine and they will get better”. I did all of that, but I secretly terrorised myself with thoughts like “my babies are sick, WHAT IF THEY DIE!!!”. I’ve already had a baby die (my first son conceived on my 8th IVF was born prematurely and died when he was 10 days old). It nearly broke me. It took a long while to get to the stage where I managed to convince myself that hopefully these babies wouldn’t die too.
- If you could go back in time to yourself during those tough times, what would you say?
It’s probably a hard thing for people who are still in the trenches to hear, but I would tell myself to take a deep breath and slow down. Breathe out. Breathe out the fear, the terror, the anger, the bitterness. Infertility is a devastating disease, but if you are open to other routes to parenthood (like donor egg, surrogacy, adoption, fostering etc), then you can and will be a parent, IF you have the resources and emotional capacity to carry on trying. And that’s a big IF because it’s a v v v expensive process. I was so intense during that time, doing IVF was all I thought about all the time. I just wanted to do the next one and the next and the next one. I never gave myself time off just to breathe. Of course, having said that, I was very aware of my biological alarm clock screeching in the background. It’s hard to take deep breaths and slow down when the alarm is screeching.
- How have the hard times shaped who you are?
Absolutely. I am a much much better person for what I have gone through. I wish with all my heart that the ‘lessons’ didn’t cost me the life of my first born son, and all the babies I lost over the years, but I recognize that the hard times have made me a much better, richer person, albeit at a huge cost. Bad things happen to ordinary people all the time. I am not so special to be exempt from those hardships, however I get to choose what to do with the tough experiences. I either live with regret and bitterness, or I turn my experience into something good for others. Which is what I did. I started my business Nurture to make sure that anyone who was walking my path would get the opportunity to be a mother. Every baby that is born through Nurture (and there are well over 1000) is a celebration of my first son Ben’s short life. And that makes me feel humbled and blessed to do what I do. I am a very lucky lady.
Tertia has her own fantastic blog (www.tertia.org) where she has chronicled her incredible journey as a recovering infertile. Tertia has also written an amazing book call “So Close” and, on top of these impressive accolades, has also won several blog awards, been featured on Carte Blanche, in various magazines and radio stations and is now co-founder, along with Melany Bartok, of the wonderful egg donation agency Nurture.
Nurture helps people wanting to create a family by finding and matching egg donors. These awe-inspiring women donate their eggs as an anonymous gift to families who, for various reasons, are not able to use their own eggs to fall pregnant.
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