The Sacred Truth
By: Canvas, Camera Diaries, Aditi
Tags: Art, Women, Infertility, Beyourself, Social Change

Back to the preface: The Profane and Sacred Truth of my Womb

Life owes us no closures. Learned it the hard way during the last mile pursuit for the baby. For us lesser mortals, it’s a game of dice that someone up there is playing. When or if or how we will hit home, is beyond our logic or control. But neither can we stop fighting against nor not surrender to the will of fate. That is as much the truth of life, sometimes profane and sometimes sacred.

As a logical and scientific couple, there was trust in medical science. As mortal beings, there was faith in God and our good karma. As go-getters, there was confidence in our sincere and industrious pursuit. But all of these put together too could neither get us pregnant nor explain why in even 5 long and painful years! This set us on a crazy last mile journey for another year, more torturous and isolating than the previous 5yrs, so much so that I was clinically depressed and suicidal! I tried to seek medical, psychological, and spiritual guidance but nothing helped. There would be constant altercating noises in my head and explaining to myself was going beyond reason and logic. I was not sharing my complete mental state with my husband either. One late evening I was sitting alone by a 7th floor window in my office building wanting to jump. I sat there crying for two hours as I let my life rewind in my head before I jumped. Something snapped in me…this was not my first struggle in life, I never gave up even when I was alone…how could I give up now, with a supportive husband and an otherwise beautiful life with him! I picked my pieces and continued, often reluctantly, on this last mile.

Amidst all the chaos and helplessness of the last mile, two tragedies stirred up our lives even further. In April’2018 I lost my mother-like mother-in-law to a freak accident and in July’2018 my best friend to sudden detection of last stage cancer…two of my pillars of strength were gone, very untimely, very suddenly. Flanked by these two deaths, was my sibling’s wedding in June’2018 which my husband and I were organizing entirely, leaving me with little time to attend to my dying friend, a guilt I will take to my death. The following months I were to be on important, longish, and stressful business trips. Life was all over the place. On one hand I was struggling to cope with the loss of my loved ones and on the other, I was recklessly pursuing this unknown and seemingly endless path for a baby with no guiding light. We understood life owed us no answers or closures and wondered what were we busy chasing when we could snap out of life any moment! We were divided and depressed but still decided to continue this last mile effort at least until our last IVF scheduled for the end of the year i.e. December 2018. With an end date in sight, my depression had eased out but soon the agony transformed into another kind of helplessness. Keeping the pursuit on until the last IVF was also getting emotionally stressful… for once in 6+yrs we wanted to give up but this chapter of life wasn’t closing on us. Perhaps because life had other plans for us, and this time because someone up there was to get two sixes for us!

Soon after in August 2018, while on extensive travel for work, what seemed like a stomach upset turned out to be the biggest surprise from life ever. I discovered that I was 7 weeks pregnant! Yesss, a year after the best doctors in India gave up on me, I had naturally and spontaneously conceived amidst immense emotional and work stress, not even remembering the last day of my periods or that rare day of togetherness in months! I had inadvertently played hours of squash, cheated on my fertility diet with lots of alcohol and gluten after almost a year, and was about to leave for a rugged camping and road trip to Namibia to get away from the madness! Yet, 9 months later in March 2019, I delivered a full term, healthy and handsome baby boy!

Cut to December 2020, Arjun is now 21+ months old. Pregnancy was high risk during the first trimester, a breeze during the second and moderately tough during the third. My birthing story with 18hrs of spine labour with ROP ending into caesarean was as dramatic as my conception story. But with Arjun in our lives, it all seems worthwhile now. I wouldn’t have him any other way! After all, he is the child I bore in my mind and heart even before I could bear him in my womb!