The Truth About Secondary Infertility

There’s a very specific kind of heartbreak that comes with wanting another baby when you already have a child.

And it’s confusing, because on one hand, you feel so grateful. You have your child.

But on the other hand…the longing is still there, the heartbreak of things not going to plan is still there.

The frustration of knowing your body already did this once before, so why not now?

And then comes the guilt: “Why am I so upset when I already have a child?”

If this is you, I want you to hear this right away: you are not ungrateful, you are not selfish, you are human.

And this experience has a name: secondary infertility

Today I want to open up this conversation because it’s not spoken about enough. Why it can feel so emotionally complex, what might be happening in your body and most importantly, how you can support yourself through it.

By the time you finish listening you'll find out:

• Why secondary infertility hits harder than we ever expect
• How you can support yourself through it
• How to navigate the emotion toll this journey takes

Join Embrace the Journey at the end of July! This is my FREE immersive 3-day live fertility yoga experience. To get your free ticket, visit https://www.elementpilatesyoga.com/waitlist

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• Cam your nervous system
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There's a very specific kind of heartbreak that comes with wanting a baby when you already have one, but things aren't going as easily as you'd hoped. And it's confusing because on one hand, you feel so grateful you already have a beautiful child. But on the other hand, the longing is still there. The heartbreak of things not going to plan is still there. The frustration of knowing that your body already did this once before, so why not now? Why am I so upset about this when I already have a child? If this is you, I want you to hear this right away. You are not ungrateful, you are not selfish, you are human. And this experience has a name, secondary infertility. And today I want to open up this conversation because it is not something that we talk about enough. I'll discuss why it can feel so emotionally complex, what might be happening in your body, and most importantly, how you can support yourself through it. Welcome to your journey to fertility. This is the podcast that blends science with spirit to give you all the tools you need as you navigate your fertility journey. I'm your host, Jennifer Edmonds, and for the last 15 years I've been helping women on their journeys to motherhood and beyond. I believe that combining the latest scientific research along with the best energetic and mindset practices will help you to avoid putting your life on hold and bring you closer to your baby. Each week you'll learn ways to support your fertility and trust your body so that you can stop stressing that you'll never have your baby and finally walk your path to motherhood. This is the Your Journey to Fertility Podcast. Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me and pressing play today. This episode that we're going to dive into is one of the topics that I realized I hadn't recorded an episode on for a long time. It is something that I make sure I mention and I talk about quite a lot with my students because it is a very isolating and very specific place that a lot of us find us in, and that is the journey of secondary infertility. So whether you already have one child at home, two or three, but you know that your family doesn't feel complete. It is a uniquely complex journey and one that I want to speak about today. But just before we get into it, there is a lot happening over at Element right now. So I want to update you on a couple of things. Next month, we are going to be running through our brand new version of Embrace the Journey. So if you haven't attended my free live fertility yoga training series before, this is the month to do it because we are including a whole bunch of things that we've never done before. If you're unfamiliar with Embrace the Journey, it is an immersive three-day free fertility yoga live training experience. So I get to take you through so many of the practices that I talk about so much on this podcast. And it's a way for you to take them and start incorporating them into your own life and your own journey straight away. So we'll go through fertility yoga practices and poses, breath work, meditations that you can then play and repeat when you need them. And it's a way for you to come and meet me, ask me all of your questions, and be in the energy of some incredible women from all around the world who are on their own journeys as well. So it's completely free. And it's not one of those live training series where you go along and it's just someone talking at you for an hour and they're gatekeeping all of the good stuff until you buy their ridiculously expensive program. It is not like that at all. It is something that I want to give you because I know what an impact it has. You know, I get such incredible feedback about this training series, and so many people tell me it is better than other programs that they have paid to attend in the past. So if you are new to my world, or even if you're not and you want to come back and do it again, please join me. I'm gonna drop a link down in the show notes. That is gonna take place at the end of July. So if you're listening to this in real time, please confirm your spot on the wait list today. And the other thing I want to update you on is that I've been nominated for three awards at the European Fertility Society conference this year. I want to thank you so much for all of your support over the last couple of years. It means the world to me. And I will keep you posted on all of the uh the outcomes of those awards. So, all right, let's get into the episode today. Because we don't talk about secondary infertility enough, I thought about this. I'm like, what where do I want to go with this episode? So we're gonna talk about potentially the reasons why secondary infertility happens, especially if you didn't have trouble conceiving your first baby. But really, my intention for this episode is for you to feel heard and validated about where you are on your own journey. I put up a post on my socials a few weeks ago about secondary infertility, and the response was so huge. I had so many private messages from women just saying, thank you, you just spoke to everything that I'm feeling that nobody seems to understand. And I get that. Inevitably, when I put up content about secondary infertility, I get a lot of pushback. Yes, from weirdos on the internet, as always, as we always do. But there's it's this thing that people don't get. And I remember looking back at my own journey when I was struggling to have my second baby, and all the people around me, they knew I had struggled to have my first. But still, I would face these comments every step of the way. People would remind me, don't forget, you've already got a beautiful little girl at home. It's like, well, thank you. Yes, I had forgotten about her. But you know, people just don't get it. And when I think about it, if I cast my mind back to when I was going through my first journey of IVF, I remember so clearly one day I was sitting in the waiting room of my IVF clinic, waiting to go in for one of my monitoring scans, and this woman came in and she had a little toddler with her. And I just can picture looking at her, thinking, what are you doing? Why would you put yourself through this? Why would you put yourself through the emotional roller coaster and the stress and the heartbreak that is IVF when you already have a child? I couldn't understand, like, who would do this by choice to have a baby? And then it happened to me. And I completely understood that it doesn't matter if you have one baby, two, three, whatever. If your family doesn't feel complete and you still have that longing in your heart, then it it just doesn't matter that you you have the family that other people think that is complete at home. If that's not what you pictured your life to be and you still have that longing for another child, then that is absolutely okay to feel everything and to do everything in your power to bring that baby home. So let's start with defining secondary infertility. So often we assume that those who struggle to have second babies struggle to have their first, but that's not necessarily true. So secondary infertility can be difficulty conceiving or carrying to term after already having a child. Can also look like taking longer than expected to conceive, experiencing losses after your first baby, or just not being able to conceive again at all. And it's actually a lot more common than people realize and not mutually exclusive. You know, it happens both ways. Those who fell pregnant at the drop of the hat the first time can experience troubles the second time around. And if you know my journey, you'll know that I went through both primary and secondary infertility for many different reasons. About 40% of my students, the women that I work with, are going through secondary infertility. And that's a huge number. You know, you think that that if you've had a baby easily once before, you shouldn't be a problem the next time, but that just isn't the case for so many women. And it's so frustrating. But something important to remind yourself of is that your body is not necessarily the same it was before your first pregnancy. Things may have shifted, obviously, your age, your hormone levels, your energy levels, your lifestyle now that you're looking after a little person, and even your partner's health can shift as well. So this is not a repeat experience necessarily. It is a completely new chapter. But what really makes this journey unique, I think, is the emotional layer that comes with it. The biggest part, I think, is the guilt that sits alongside the gratitude. There's this internal conflict constantly of, well, I should just be grateful. Why do I want more than this perfect little child that I already have? But that word should, it creates so many problems because two things can exist at once. You can feel that deep gratitude for your child, and you are allowed to have that deep longing for another. This journey is very, very isolating. Secondary infertility can feel very invisible. And as I said before, oh my god, the things people used to say to me, at least you already have one. Why are you so worried about getting pregnant again? You've already got a child. Basically, the theme of most people's comments was why are you complaining? And I see that as well with again the weirdos on the internet. The theme always comes back to why are you complaining? You've already got a child. But that completely bypasses your experience. So I find that a lot of women, they just stop talking about it. We hold it in, we minimize it, and we carry it alone. As I mentioned, my second journey of trying to conceive was so much harder than the first. And yes, it was a longer journey, and we had so many more hurdles the second time around that we never saw coming. But what I found the hardest was the mix of emotions that I could not quite reconcile. The shame of wanting more than this perfect little girl that I already had. The shame of not being able to be truly present and focused on her without this constant dialogue running along in the background. I was so worried about all of the times that I was going to have to navigate in the future when she'd ask, why couldn't she have a brother or a sister like most of her friends? And then things like, what do I do with all the baby clothes that I've kept? You know, how long am I allowed to hold on to these in the hope that I'll actually need them again one day. And then you keep coming back to this idea of, well, so many women are still struggling to have their first. So why am I complaining? The comparison used to get me as well. And especially if you didn't have trouble conceiving your first child, and I see this a lot, you probably started your family at the same time a lot of your friends did. And now you're watching them have their second, their third babies easily. And you're just watching this age gap grow wider and wider every month. I always pictured myself as this, you know, mum with two under two, and I'd have lots of little people, and you know, last week I did an episode about grieving the timeline of the life that you wished you'd had that you had. And this sense of, but this is just not how things were supposed to go. It's really, really hard to get your head around. And I want to talk about parenting while you're grieving as well. This part is so incredibly complex because you are holding your child, you are loving them so deeply, you are being an amazing parent. But at the same time, you're also holding the grief that your family doesn't feel complete. I know so many women who say, Oh, I know I'm done. This is my last baby. I just I feel like my family's done. Honestly, I never have felt that. And I still don't, actually. That's probably a topic for another day. But I have had to do a lot of healing work around the grief that I would have loved to have had more children, but that's not how things have worked out. And I've never felt that my family was finished. I'd have another 10 babies if I could. So I want you to really be able to honor that. And there is no shame in wanting more. I have women coming into my spaces all the time, and obviously we do all of our work on Zoom. And sometimes when we join a Zoom call, we've got our kids around us. And I can see so often my students who've got, you know, three and four-year-olds that want to hang out with their mum. And, you know, they're they're on these calls with a whole bunch of other women who haven't had their first baby. And I can see they're trying to like, you know, hide their child out of the way. They don't want to be that one who's like showing off their beautiful little person. And oh, it's I I just I hate that we feel that we have to minimize what we're going through just to try and make other people feel comfortable. There is very little space to fully feel all of this because you're still being a mom every single day. You are still doing all of the parent things, and your child is a constant reminder of what you wish you had more than anything, to be able to be pregnant again, to be able to experience birth again, to go through those early newborn stages. Looking at your child is a reminder of everything that you may not get to have again. So, of course, I'm not a doctor, but let's gently touch on the physical side of secondary infertility because I have a lot of students who come to me who fell pregnant really easily the first time, and they assume it's just a matter of time and of waiting until they fall pregnant again. But there are a lot of things that happen after we have a child. So, as we spoke about before, there are age-related changes, hormonal shifts. Postpartum is a hugely depleting time on your physical health. So it depletes a lot of the minerals and the vitamins that you carry within your body. And especially if you're breastfeeding, it sends pretty much everything you've got to your baby, and you kind of get what's left over. It's sort of a like a follow-on from pregnancy. So you need to allow yourself that time to build up all of the things that have been depleted throughout this time. Other things that can develop after your first pregnancy, you know, hormonal disorders, thyroid conditions, there are all sorts of things that come up. So if you are thinking at all that any of these things could have come up, then go and get tested, go and seek out help. It doesn't necessarily have to be a matter of just waiting and waiting for things to happen. But sometimes there is no clear answer, and unexplained secondary infertility comes up a lot, and that can be incredibly frustrating. But I want you to reframe this: it is not your body failing you, it is that your body is now responding to a different season of your life. So this is where I would love to open things up a little wider, because your body isn't just physical. And as you know on this podcast, we love to combine a little bit of the science with the woo-woo. Because your body contains so much of an emotional layer, an energetic layer, and it's deeply responsive to your life experiences so far. So you may have had a wonderful pregnancy and a wonderful birth and postpartum experience, but maybe you didn't. Maybe a lot of what you went through was quite traumatic, and this leaves an imprint. Even if everything was fine on the surface, your body might still be holding on to something. So we always want to come back to regulating our nervous system. And seriously, motherhood is full on. Like it is full on. Often when I'm at a restaurant, I see sometimes families where they've got kids just like sat there doing colouring in and they're all like, you know, quiet and chill. I did not get those kind of children. My children are jumping off things, they are loud, they're excitable, and that's wonderful, but it is full on. So constantly giving to someone else and having very little time to fully receive in your life is very dysregulating. Your nervous system might be sitting in a low level of survival mode, and we might not even really realize this because we do go into parent mode so automatically, and it becomes your whole focus, you know, keeping these little people alive always comes first. But sometimes there's also these quiet fears underneath. This idea of, well, can I handle two? What if something goes wrong this time? And this is not always conscious, but it can be felt in your body. You've been pouring so much, and what your body might be desperately asking for is nourishment, rest, and safety. So reminding yourself that this isn't about something being wrong. This is about your body asking to be supported in a new way. And I want to give you some gentle ways now that you can support yourself. So the emotional side of things, I really would love for you to get out a journal. I'll I'll list out some journaling prompts that you can go through. So if you're driving or out on a walk or something right now, save this, come back to it later. But we need to be able to validate our experiences without feeling guilt and without trying to push them aside. You are allowed to feel everything that is coming up for you right now. So your journaling prompts, this first one, is where am I silencing how I really feel? So are you just trying to pretend everything's fine? You know, are you laughing off comments about when you're gonna have another baby or you know, you don't want to leave it too long? All the all the stupid things people say, you know. Where do you push away what you're really feeling? I want you to ask yourself, what am I grieving right now? Put it into words. Language is so powerful. And as always, when we get something out of our heads and onto paper, it is a really wonderful way to process what we've been feeling, what we've been holding on to. So you're grieving what you thought your your future would look like. You're grieving that your children might not be close in age, you know, you're grieving that you're not going to be as young a parent as you wanted to be. Whatever it might might be coming up for you. Write it all down. And then lastly, here, ask yourself, what expectations am I holding on to? Because we expect that once we have been able to create a life and a baby, that we should be able to do it again. And then it comes back to blame. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my body? I want you to let yourself be honest, completely honest, without filtering. Remember, no one needs to read this. So spending some time to really allow everything that's coming up just to be there, to feel it all fully. And then some of the most wonderful practices that I love teaching are these somatic practices. So anytime we we mention somatics, it's just meaning about the body. So really coming back to your body, asking yourself, what do you really need? Have we been running on survival mode? You know, we're we're so busy making sure everyone has clean clothes and that the house is tidy and that the toys are put away at the end of the day and there's enough milk, and it's really hard. It's really hard. So just giving yourself space to find what your body needs. Fertility yoga, getting in sync with your cycle again, breath work, slow intentional movement, meditation, not to fix anything, but to create space. And creating space creates that sense of safety. You know that saying nature abores a vacuum, which means that anytime we create spaciousness in our life, the universe likes to go and fill it with something. So if there's no space in your life for welcoming another baby right now, create it in any way that you can. And then find support. I think this is really underestimated. Find spaces where this is understood. And I, because I talk about this so much about secondary infertility, I think I attract people into my space, even if they're only on their first primary infertility journeys. I think that I attract people who are understanding that it doesn't matter if you've already got one, two, three kids at home, you are able to hold that space for someone else's grief, even if that's not where you're on on your own journey. So find yourself a space where you are hurt. And it is important that, you know, I speak about this a lot. Your husband or your partner, if you have one, doesn't necessarily need to be your partner and support person and best friend and counselor, you know, sometimes you need more than that. And sitting in the energy of women who understand what you're going through is invaluable. And speak it out loud instead of holding it in, you know, being able to just finally have someone go, I feel like this too, is so, so healing. And then this mindset work that we talk about a lot here as well. I want you to really practice holding these two truths at once. You have that feeling of gratitude. For your child. Yes, but you feel that grief for what you long for. And both are okay. It's not one or the other. You are allowed to feel both. This idea of joy and grief staying in the one place is possible. Release this idea of the perfect timeline. My children are not as close in age as I had pictured. But in hindsight, it doesn't matter. I look at them now, and just like any other bunch of siblings that you might see or come across, sometimes they're besties, sometimes they hate each other. And I don't think that would be different if they were two years apart. So let go of what you thought that your life would look like and open up the possibility that it could actually be a bit better. You know, by the time my son came along, my daughter was able to feed herself, she could dress herself, she could go to the toilet easily. It was so much easier than having two babies, you know, or a very young toddler and a newborn. And I think that made my life a hell of a lot easier. And looking back now, it just gave me more time and space to spend with my son when he was a newborn. So if it is taking longer than you hoped and longer than you'd expected, perhaps it is giving you something more than perhaps you can sit in. And just let your journey unfold differently. Let it unfold. See where it goes. So a little daily mini practice that you can do to kind of tie all of this together is to place a hand on your heart and the other hand over your womb, over your lower belly. Take a deep breath in. And as you slowly exhale, whisper to yourself, I am allowed to want more. And repeat that a few times over every day. And just feel it in your body. You are allowed to want everything that you dream of. So I want to end this episode with this more grounded sense of possibility. So just remember, like I said, this journey is unfolding in its own beautiful way. There is still so much to come. If this is your experience, know that you are not alone. Please disregard. I know it's easier said than done, but put aside the ridiculous comments that people make and know in your heart you are not ungrateful. Your longing is valid. And what would it look like if you were to honor both your gratitude and your grief? Stop minimizing your experience and start supporting yourself through it instead. And always, if you want support, if you want deeper practices, if you want to do this together, come and join me inside in your element because we are a group of women waiting to hold your hand throughout this whole process as well. So I hope you have found this episode helpful. Honestly, this is such a challenging topic to speak about in depth. So I really hope that it's been able to validate how you feel. And if so, I would love it if you reached out to me. You know, you can send me an email or a DM anytime. And it would mean the world to me if you could take 30 seconds to write a quick written review or just leave a comment. Um, depending on where you are listening to this, that would be absolutely amazing. So we have a bonus episode dropping this week. On Friday, you can catch my interview with Lisa from IVF Manifesting a Miracle, and we go into all of the wonderful and woo woo ways that you can support yourself if you're trying to conceive, and especially if you're going through the IVF process. So I hope to see you back here for the next episode. But until then, I am sending you all of my wishes as you continue your own journey to fertility.