Tejiendo, recuperando e intercambiando signos culturales (tejedoras)

The loss of the hope to have children, for most of the participants, remains as a form of disenfranchised grief that stays deep inside them for years after trying for a baby.

During their infertility journey, nine out of the eleven participants experienced different types of medical interventions, including in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Memories embedded in participants’ experiences started to emerge during the interviews. The diminishing hope of having one’s own children through the use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) is devastating, because generally people have high expectations for success when using such methods to conceive. In particular, three participants (Heather, Kelly, & Lucy) who had stopped trying for a baby only one to two years before the time of the interviews showed a strong sense of loss. This may not be surprising as their experiences are quite recent. However, their accounts amplify the actual process of how failed IVF has impacted on them emotionally and mentally.

Heather, who went through IVF treatment using donor eggs, describes her experience as ‘an absolute disaster’. The following reveals her emotional destruction:

that was a disaster. An absolute disaster. And in fact…you know…I’ll, you know, I’ll tell you…but I…I…I haven’t told…, I didn’t tell any of my friends really, [ ] erm…they…they all died, all the eggs died. [ ] they all died. And I think…I can’t remember whether, because they’d all died, I think they’d…they [IVF clinic]

phoned me up and they said they’d all died. All the eggs had died so, it wasn’t gonna be possible. (8.46/9.26)

Unsuccessful IVF for Heather possibly remains traumatic. For Heather, ‘the eggs’ are not medical or clinical terms for fertility. She saw them as personated lives. Thus, her perceived sense of loss appears vividly through repeated use of the words ‘all died’.

Sharing such feelings would be difficult unless the person talked to is aware of, or has experienced similar situations. As a result, she ‘didn’t tell any’ of her friends. She also seems to avoid letting her friends know what a ‘disaster’ her experience was like. This indicates a sense of secretly kept shame.

Kelly, who experienced six cycles of failed IVF, including three cycles using donor eggs and three miscarriages, shows her profound feelings towards the deaths:

I think the second time no result…to…then the third time, I was pregnant but them, erm…when we went to have the scan, it was really sad, because that...

erm…the little embryo, the fetus had died… (1.24-27)

At this stage, Kelly was using her own eggs when she conceived. While being interviewed, she talked in a controlled manner, not becoming emotional.

However, this extract shows her hidden sense of the loss that manifests itself with sensitive shifts through her words. Even though she says ‘pregnant’, she did not say

‘miscarried’ to express the state of the loss. Rather, she uses ‘the little embryo’, and then ‘the fetus’ and ‘had died…’. Here her sense towards the personified ‘little embryo’ appears, and it is for Kelly a fragile little person or little baby who ‘died’.

This demonstrates the loss of the imagined child, who was felt and desired.

Lucy, who tried two cycles of IVF, emphasises the physical and emotional difficulties the treatment had on her, and speaks of its psychological impact:

directly after…erm...my second failed IVF…attempt. I just had a bit of

counselling about that…um because it…it did really psychologically affect me...

[ ] erm…you know the fact that you try so hard at something and...and you fail at it and can’t do anything about it, you know, that was such a big thing for me.

(17.32-39)

Failed IVF experiences also impact psychologically as significant life events. In this extract, Lucy seems to feel powerless over the impossibility of having the chance to achieve what she desperately hoped for. Grief over the loss also encompasses psychological strain that, for Lucy, is perceived as ‘a big thing’.

Feelings of sadness are one powerful reaction to grief. Penny, who went through

recurrent miscarriages (three pregnancies that ended in miscarriage), speaks about this:

one of the things that throws me is it feels like the path that...that we’re on, is entirely unpredictable. So I keep the grief pop…jumps out at me...at different times…[ ] I know it sounds kind of a bit crazy, but that’s what behind me, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of successful human reproduction. [ ]…and I suddenly thought and it stops with me. So, it was… so there’s something about some sadness…not I that I feel I’ve got a great biology or genes I wanted to hand on…but actually sadness…[ ] I’m stopping the line.

There’s...there will be no more…and then [ ] what will be my legacy to the world. (13.13-35)

Penny finds herself in a world that she did not choose to be in. She has been thrown into the ‘unpredictable’ world of childlessness where recurrent sadness hits ‘at different times’. Penny’s sadness appears in different levels and dimensions. Sadness over her miscarriages appears as physically felt pain that ‘pop…jumps out’ at her.

Her sense of loss due to childlessness is explicitly presented against the repeated use of

‘thousands’ of successes, directing us to feel her sense of sadness and guilt over the self who failed to be part of and contribute to this ‘human reproduction’. In contrast, her expression ‘some sadness’ depicts her ambivalent sense towards her situation of childlessness. And there is a shift in bringing back her feelings of sadness as she says

‘actually sadness’. What appears here seems to have two implications. First, it is evident that she is grieving the loss of not having her own children. Second, her sadness initially seems to refer to her factual inability to participate in human

reproduction. But she ‘suddenly thought’ about what actually ‘stops with me [her]’.

Her realization seems to point to the end of her own existence, as ‘there will be no more…’ me. This corresponds with her sadness over the loss of her own ‘legacy’. In the above passage, Penny has shown her sense of losses embedded with the physical pain experienced through miscarriages and the emotional pain of sadness. But further, her accounts have exposed a powerful existential concern regarding her own death.

Penny’s grief continues:

I’m going through a, a grieving process [ ] When I saw a pregnant person, I fee…I wou…I used to feel like I’d actually physically been kicked in the

stomach…it was so…pain…it was a such a physical awful gut wrenching pain of of complete…of complete jealousy and sadness and loss. (7.36-40)

The above extract illustrates an association between a grieving process and the loss of pregnant embodiment. She understands that she is ‘going through a grieving process’.

However, everyday social interactions, particularly those where she ‘saw a pregnant person’, bring her back to all the memories and internalised physical sensations attached with her pregnancy. For Penny, this is the pain of ‘complete jealousy and sadness and loss’. This was captured through the use of a common phrase ‘being kicked in the stomach’ – but powerfully. Her use of the word stomach may point towards her own perception of the pregnant body that she once possessed, together with the growing hope and developmental journey of the hoped-for child inside her.

And this was lost as a result of ‘being kicked’ involuntarily by unforeseen forces, or in a metaphorical sense, to use her words, by ‘a pregnant person’.

Complicated and ambiguous feelings towards the loss also appear as ‘gut wrenching pain’. This pain may possibly have connotations with gut feelings, where Penny’s intuitive feeling of anger turns into ‘jealousy’ towards pregnant women. The passage shows a strong embodied grief over the pain and sadness.

Clare is one of two women who has not tried assisted conception (such as IVF), nor has experience of miscarriage. In her case, her religious background seems to have an influence on her perception towards the loss:

When I first discovered that I, we couldn’t have children…erm…I went through so many different emotions, but one of the emotions was, it’s a

punishment…I’d be a bad mother. That’s why I can’t have children. Because I was brought up a catholic and it’s such a guilt culture. (3.11-15)

When Clare found out about her inability to have children, her suffering was accompanied by punishment. Internal pain and guilt over the loss also impacted her self-belief, meaning she appears to have a more complicated grieving process.

In general, grief is seen as a normal reaction to a loss one encounters, and tends to ease over time. However, Renee’s grief is manifested through her sense of an ongoing, unspeakable process over what she ‘hasn’t got’:

I still get upset…[tearful] There are times when…I really think it would’ve been great. Erm…but most of the time it’s OK. yeah…I don’t usually talk about it…[laughs] so…mm…I think part of it or me is that as I’m getting older, a lot of my contemporaries have got kids that are at university or…have even got

grandchildren now…and it’s very hard to…kind of…get away from it all the time…but a lot of the time it seems to be almost cyclical…[ ] Erm…and I think at each stage, you…realise what you haven’t got…and that’s tough… (7.12-32)

Similarly, Emily talks about how being with children triggers pain:

there’s always a moment when…I…I may have spent whole evening or the whole day joining in and played with the kids...and…you know, I’ve just been part of the…of the…erm…goings on. And then, at some point there is a moment when I realise or whether or when it sort of hits me, and then it’s hard. (7.16-21)

Everyday life for these participants is being with unavoidable triggers for pain and sadness, which seems to be ineffable. Sadness over the unspeakable loss of not having children would stay internally for a long time. Maggie describes:

for many years, especially after…er I, I think we often wear a like a shield

[Int: Yes...] Erm and I was wearing that for many years. Ermm keeping my life, my situa…my childlessness inside that shield and not telling people about it.

(16.4-7)

Maggie was emotionally struggling with her life without children. She tried to protect her vulnerability by ‘not telling people’. The word ‘shield’ clearly expresses this. One cannot penetrate a shield, which is protective; Maggie needed this shield ‘for many years’.

The loss of the hope to have one’s own children for these participants is experienced as a painful and deeply-seated loss which is difficult to express openly. Participants also portray the loss as personified; an embodied manifestation of loss. Grief over

childlessness seems to remain silent as people go through different stages in their lives.