When I entered motherhood again, I thought that postpartum anxiety could only happen if you gave birth. I was wrong.

The moment I held our second son for the first time, I felt a rush of joy, love, gratitude, release, and more. We had been waiting years for this moment, and I couldn’t believe he was finally in my arms. Welcome to motherhood, again – finally.

Luckily, we were at a very surrogacy friendly hospital. This meant that our surrogate recovered in the room that she gave birth in. And we spent the first 24 hours in our own room, so the nurses could monitor the baby.

But I Wanted This Motherhood…

Less than a day later, I have a very vivid memory of feeling extremely overwhelmed, guilty, and anxious. And anger followed that. All I wanted to do was feel happy, and I did. But I also felt all of these other things that I was not expecting to feel.

And that made me angry. This was supposed to be perfect. I was supposed to feel instantly healed. I was ready to move forward and enjoy this family we had fought so hard for.

But that’s not how it works. You don’t just forget the pain and grief of infertility and loss when you have a child.

And I was not completely naive. I never expected a child to “fix” me or “heal” me. I still would never put that on them. But I had focused on HAVING children for so long that I had not given myself time to really process what it would feel like to have them.

Well, that’s not quite right either. I was already a mother, this was our second son. But again, also not quite right. We had four that never made it into our arms.

Motherhood Felt Different This Time…

But I was already a mother. I had a son at home waiting to meet his older brother. But that wasn’t the same. I hadn’t experienced loss when we had him.

When I had my first son, he was born via our very first IVF cycle ever. Everything went perfectly, my pregnancy felt relatively easy, the birth went as well as it could have – it felt simpler. It was simpler. Breastfeeding was absolutely horrifically hard, but that’s a story for another time.

My first conception, pregnancy, and birth experiences had gone smoothly. But our path to our second child was completely different.

I knew it might not be easy, but it was so much harder than I could have ever imagined. Years and years and years. Years of canceled cycles, failed transfers, recurrent pregnancy loss, so much waiting, and more.

And then surrogacy. I am extremely grateful that surrogacy was possible for us and I’m forever in awe that our surrogate helped bring our son into this world. But I never let myself process my grief in real time.

I just kept pushing forward.

The Reality of Motherhood After Infertility

But it caught up with me. And in hindsight, that is not surprising. Motherhood after infertility and loss is extremely confusing.

You don’t know what you’re doing, but you shouldn’t ask for help.
You’re overwhelmed, but you can’t complain.
You’re exhausted, but you asked for this.
You’re anxious, but get over it… your hardship is in the past. You have your baby now!
You’re grateful, and don’t ever forget that!
You’re tired, but weren’t you even more tired before?
You’re scared, but there are people still waiting for their kids!

Can you relate to these internal thoughts? If so, let me let you in on a little secret I’ve learned along the way…

None of this is true! You’re unknowingly lying to yourself and putting pressure on yourself that you don’t deserve.

You Deserve More

You deserve help. Please complain. You don’t need to justify every thought, feeling, action, or inaction. You don’t deserve to speak to yourself this way, and no one else is allowed to either. After years of working on myself, and trying many options, I decided to create my own way to help you. I am extremely proud of the program I have curated, and I would love for you to join me. Let me help you – you deserve it. I promise.

P.S. When I wrote down to write this, I initially put this paragraph at the top of the post:

“I’m going to get very vulnerable here about my experiences with postpartum anxiety after we had my second son via surrogacy. I ask you to bear with me, read it all the way through, and be gentle with me. Remember that I was in a very deep and dark place shortly before we finally had our second son. I am going to take you into the mindset of where I was in these days, but I need to clarify the fact that I love my children very much, and I’m extremely happy that they’re here.”

And then I realized the irony of it. I was proactively making sure that you as the reader know that I’m grateful. As if I cannot just tell the truth without having to justify that. If that’s not motherhood after infertility, I don’t know what is… YOU DESERVE SUPPORT.