Why I Feel Guilty As A New Mom After Infertility & Stillbirth

To say that I wasn’t expecting this sounds trite, but it’s true.

Well, maybe not 100% true. I did expect to experience some sort of guilt as a mom, whether that role came through adoption or eventually getting pregnant after years of infertility. Unfortunately, my personality seems quite susceptible to internal guilt trips and “shoulding” on myself, as I call it.

So I knew it would happen. But I didn’t know it would be like this.

And that is probably in part because I didn’t know what my story would be like.

Whatever I had envisioned, I did not think it would involve an incredibly high-risk pregnancy with identical twin boys that ended in me losing one son (Ian) six months into the pregnancy, almost losing our other son (Nathan), experiencing the miraculous recovery of Nathan after a fetal blood transfusion at Johns Hopkins, waiting weeks to see if Nathan had suffered severe brain damage, carrying Nathan three more months until delivering both of our boys, and then burying Ian less than a week later.

Yeah. It’s been quite a year. A roller coaster of intense emotions, stress, joy and incredibly intense heartbreak.

Not to mention that all of this — the pregnancy, our beautiful boys, everything — happened after struggling with infertility for more than three years.

Some days I feel like I’m still reeling from it all.

I look at Nathan, who is happy, healthy and so alive, and I’m incredibly grateful he survived.

But even in the midst of that gratitude, being a mom to an infant is absolutely the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

And therein lies the problem.

Because on the days — or in the moments — when things are difficult, I hear the accusations:

“This is hard? You should just be glad to have even one son with you. Nathan is alive. He almost died! He doesn’t have brain damage. He’s healthy. Plus, you begged God for a child for years. And now you’re struggling? Now you want to complain? You want to be frustrated? You are so ungrateful! You must not really love your son at all. How would you have ever handled two boys?”

It’s not exactly all of those words each time, but that’s a fair summary of the various accusations jumbling around in my mind that create an intense amount of mom guilt.

I know those words are not from God. God is not an accuser; the enemy is.

And yet still, they smart every time one — or all — of those accusations wiggles into my brain. Am I ungrateful? Do I not love Nathan enough? How would I have done this with two boys?

The hard part is that there is *almost* a kernel of truth in there. I do want to daily remind myself of the miracle that is Nathan being alive and healthy. I do want God to cultivate within me an “attitude of gratitude.” I don’t want to complain all the time, even though it’s absolutely valid to recognize being a mom is tough.

Accusations and mom guilt aren’t the way, though. But they are there. Insidious. Seeking to worm their way into my thoughts, reduce me to tears, and paralyze me with guilt.

I know I’m not the only one. I’ve talked to other moms without my background of infertility and stillbirth, and the guilt is still there. The accusations are present. They’re simply different.

I wish I could understand why this seems to be such a common thread for moms. I wish I knew what to say to fix it, both for my mom friends and for my own mind.

Unfortunately, I don’t.

The best thing I know to do is to cry out to God for protection against these lies which I truly believe are a weapon of the enemy.

And then to bring them into the light by sharing it with my husband, my sister, my mom or a good friend. To have them remind me that two feelings can exist at the same time: gratitude and a sense of frustration or being overwhelmed.

This quote by A.W. Tozer has also been helpful to me over the years, reminding me that God — even before my babies were created — knew how I would struggle, and has always loved me the same.

“To us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us.”

And then to take a deep breath, remind myself this emotion is not forever, and focus on the next task. Sometimes the accusations go away; sometimes they stay. But by God’s grace, they won’t rule my heart or my mind.