Why Am I Still Not Pregnant?

A highly sensitive woman's fertility story with a terrible ending. With personalized help no one provided when it was needed.

My way towards getting pregnant was not straightforward. The simple feeling of wanting to get pregnant was changing during my life, depending very much on the phase of relationship with my partners I was at. I would say it was actually 50/50 whether I would want to have children or not. I was not that type of girl who played mothers since childhood or who liked to take care of younger children from the neighborhood. I was always somehow realistic and practical about this topic, probably due to my upbringing. What I was always curious about was labor. I liked to listen to various stories about this experience from other women. I was not afraid of it myself. I was curious.

When I finally came to a phase of wanting to have children, it was a few years into my healing journey, when some issues in my life were starting to get crystallized and resolved. It came to me almost as a surprise, and it was connected to going to craniosacral biodynamics.

Through the holistic perspective of the craniosacral therapist, further questions about my health and experience of life were opening up. You can read more about my experience with this healing technique here.

One of the themes was the gradual emergence of my feeling that I would like to have a baby. Somehow I felt that something got resolved and that I could finally allow myself to have children in a safe environment. Before, when I had similar feelings, my partners were actually not safe for this kind of adventure, and they did clearly let me know. My current husband, despite being younger than me, was supportive and happy about my decision to have a child. It was almost like my whole life was leading me towards this moment. All the bad, all the waiting, and now it finally clicked and made so much sense!

That is why I was surprised when it did not work. We were trying, we were not successful. I was still not pregnant. And I am definitely not the patient one. I was getting crazy every time my period started. So I did what I knew best at the time: I got into various practices and teachings.

What I Tried

My gynecologist told me that everything was fine and that it just takes time. In my experience, the reasons for difficulty getting pregnant are not always purely physical in ways a gynecologist can detect.

Simply having a conversation with a specialist about a deep unfulfilled desire to become a mother was a great relief for me. The clinic that also works with craniosacral biodynamics offered me this kind of support.

I was going to acupuncture and getting acquainted with traditional Chinese medicine. My overall feeling about acupuncture was fine, but I have to admit that with my high sensitivity some of the needle insertions were quite painful and lying still was not comfortable for me. What was pleasant above all was the acupuncturist herself, with whom it was easy to talk and I felt understanding and hope. So in my case this was an experience of a good therapist and not so effective method. I could hardly confirm any effect on my condition. Nothing breakthrough happened that I could write to you about. Which does not mean that nothing happened in my body and energetically. Perhaps it did.

I also read one incredibly supportive book that changed my perspective on how things come to us in life and what we can do, or rather stop doing, so they can truly find their way to us. It was Superattractor by Gabby Bernstein. Her central idea is that when we chase what we deeply want from a place of fear and lack, we close ourselves off to receiving it. She writes about shifting from desperate wanting into genuine faith, not passive waiting, but an active practice of staying open, trusting, and allowing. One of her practical invitations is to look for signs of faith in the world around you, small daily confirmations that what you long for exists and is possible. Thanks to her I started to perceive all the passing mothers with prams as a sign of faith that I too would get there one day. I started to be more open and to believe that this was waiting for me somewhere in my future. I was making peace with the fact that it might take longer than I expected, but that does not mean it will not come.

During this period I was also going to Pilates, believing that stronger and better equipped muscles can lead me the right way. My overall experience with Pilates is described here.

The Waiting

My emotions were exactly what you might expect from a highly sensitive woman who is struggling to get pregnant. It was terrifyingly difficult. It was a situation I was aware I could try to prepare conditions for, but could not truly resolve on my own. We could not do it as a couple either, and perhaps nobody in the world could.

I simply had to surrender and wait, and at that time that was unimaginably demanding for me.

I had a few people around me with whom I was able to talk about it, including a few girlfriends experiencing similar difficulties. But we were more or less in a similar unknowing, each of us dealing with it the best way we could. And of course all of them got pregnant before me.

The greatest pressure was naturally at home, on my partner. I admire him for enduring it with me, and nothing hard had even happened yet. Everything difficult was still ahead of us. Sometimes I completely lost hope and sank into depressive states. And everywhere around me everyone was pregnant and having children effortlessly.

Pregnancy but… Ectopic

Our effort to get pregnant lasted about a year.

Until it finally worked.

A positive pregnancy test!

At the same time I was also bleeding…

It was enormous fear and uncertainty. I did not know what was happening. While I was still figuring out what was going on, feeling unclear and uncertain, I visited the therapists from the clinic I mentioned. They helped as best they could, and it was they who referred me to the gynecologist for a check. They knew it would not be alright. And it was not.

At the hospital they monitored me for longer. It was not clear-cut after the first examination. I was going there almost every day for about a week for blood tests and ultrasounds, and I was constantly calling for results. They confirmed that it would not be a standard pregnancy and based on the values eventually concluded that it was an ectopic pregnancy.

I have to say that my body held me absolutely amazingly. I felt almost no pain, only standard bleeding and enormous fear. It felt far removed from the reality of actually losing part of my body.

In the end I got to see an older doctor who told me that if I were his family he would advise me to wait and see whether it resolves on its own. But then he acknowledged that I was very frightened and that it would be better if I had the surgery. So I was hospitalized. The surgery followed and the removal of the left fallopian tube.

My chances of natural conception were therefore further reduced, plus I was operated on for the first time in my life, laparoscopically. Specialists who work with scars later explained to me what unpleasant consequences such an incision has on the tissues. The worst part for me was of course emotional.

The Ward

My stay in the hospital fortunately passed without complications and I was discharged after three days. But the experience of being hospitalized on a gynecological ward still haunts me to this day.

I was in a room with a woman on my right who had decided to have an abortion and was in enormous pain, screaming, and had to be taken back into surgery. On the left side was a woman who had just given birth to a stillborn baby. She talked to me about the whole process. Her daughter was waiting for her at home. It was their first separation.

Those situations were heartbreaking. In a strange way, witnessing them made my own situation feel slightly more bearable, and gave me a strong will to leave as soon as possible. (Don’t even get me started on the food.)

Coming Home

Fortunately I had about two weeks after returning home as recovery. It was a very sad time. Because I had got through the hospital, it was only now that what had actually happened really sank in. And how negatively it had affected my further chances of getting pregnant. On one hand I had to wait for my cycle to return, and on the other hand with one fallopian tube I supposedly had a chance only approximately every second ovulation.

In this experience of the ectopic pregnancy I never found, neither at the time nor unfortunately ever since, any deeper meaning.

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Those who know my writing know that the longed-for motherhood eventually came. The next post is the part I have been waiting to write: how it finally happened, what pregnancy felt like for a highly sensitive woman during Covid, and the birth story that was the most beautiful and also the most traumatizing at the same time.

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What I Needed Most

Behind the paywall you will find what no doctor, therapist, or specialist offered me during this time. Because this kind of help rarely exists in any formal space. Help tied to a highly sensitive woman in deep emotional pain. It is a letter I wrote to my past self, written for my own specific experience, not a guide and not advice.

But if you are carrying something similar, it may offer you what I so badly needed then: to feel deeply understood and supported exactly where you are.