#MumStory: Secondary Infertility Made Her Guilty About Being Sad
"I felt guilty about feeling sad because there were ladies around me trying for their first child while we were trying for our third."
By Terri Kue -
#MumStory is a series by The Singapore Women’s Weekly to uncover the underrated and underreported moments in motherhood and parenting — because we believe every mum has a story worth telling. Got a story to share? Email us at sww@sph.com.sg or slide into our DMs on Instagram.
When we talk about assisted reproduction, such as IVF, the norm is to think of couples who are trying for their first child. However, there's a group that's often forgotten about: those who already have children, and are trying for another.
Kimberly Unwin was a mother of two boys (currently 10 and eight years old) when she started trying to conceive a third time. Eventually, she started her IUI and IVF journey due to her low AMH (anti-Müllerian hormone) levels. This refers to the number of eggs a woman has in her ovaries; a high AMH level means she has more eggs available.
This came after the founder of Sparkle and Sprinkle (an online platform selling personalised gifts) tried to conceive naturally for five years, and suffered a miscarriage. Whilst going through IVF, endometrial-like tissue had grown all over her uterus and other organs, which interfered with the process. After four transfers and two rounds of IVF, she gave birth to a baby girl in June 2023. That came after seven years of trying.
Throughout her journey, Kimberly grappled with not only sadness from failed transfers but looking after her kids as a self-employed stay-at-home-mum. But the worst part was the feeling of guilt for trying to conceive her third when other mothers were trying for their first.
Read on for her #MumStory.
My mum's family was very big; I grew up with many cousins and loved the idea of big families with kids growing up together. So from young, I've always wanted three kids. When I met my husband on our first date, I asked if he liked kids. He said yes, and that he would like three. So, that became our aim right from the start.
What would you say is the hardest part of being a mum?
I think the hardest part of being a mum in this day and age is teaching them right from wrong, as well as kindness. With social media, kids have access to adult content so easily. Even though I make a big effort to keep my boys away from such content with the use of kids' locks and control, many of their classmates and schoolmates who have access to it make fun of them that they don't. This makes it hard for me to explain why they are not allowed such content when others can access it so readily.
Verbal bullying in schools these days is also more rampant and has become a norm. It's hard to protect them from these, so the only way for me to help is to guide them when they share their problems with me. All I want to do is to knock some sense into these other kids (but I, unfortunately, can't). Therefore, I'm only able to figure out how to teach my own kids to be good. When they ask me why other kids are bad, I can't give them a good answer.
Do you ever feel mum guilt? How do you deal with it?
Definitely. I don't think there is a mum out there who doesn't feel mum guilt. When I was going through the endless emotions that the hormone treatments for IVF brought with it, I felt a lot of guilt towards my boys because I wasn't fully present for them mentally.
There was one instance when my older son was having a lot of trouble in school with other kids verbally abusing him. I only found out when he accidentally blurted it out to someone else. He said he didn't tell me because he knew I was busy with doctor appointments and treatments. I felt so bad.
My boys are also dyslexic, so they need a lot more attention and effort with their emotions and school work. Being the primary caregiver, I am the only one able to give them that. It breaks my heart when they get bullied in school and I'm unable to be there to protect them fully. All I can try to do is to have one-on-one time with each of them, and talk and listen to them whenever I can so that they know I'm there for them. I also try to teach them how to protect themselves and understand other people's actions better, and how to deal with these situations on their own.
It's actually quite a lonely and sad journey. Apart from the physical aspects of infertility and treatments, it really takes its toll emotionally. And the biggest feeling is guilt. I felt guilty about feeling sad because there were ladies around me trying for their first child while we were trying for our third.
Secondary infertility puts you in this unique position, in the sense that you feel you don’t truly qualify to grieve about not being able to have another baby, yet you are still experiencing all those same emotions and difficulties that couples trying for their first are going through.
At the start, because I had a lot of time on my hands to feel the sadness, it slowly ate at me. No one around me was going through what I was going through. I tried to speak to certain friends and family members, but they couldn't understand. Their responses were: "But you already have two kids.", and, "Do you think it may be God's way of telling you that you shouldn't have another child?".
It really broke my heart, but I couldn't show it. I just kept quiet and closed myself off, not talking about my fertility journey to them anymore.
It was only then that I met a few ladies who were going through or had gone through infertility. Finally, there were people who understood what I was feeling. We came together and co-founded Fertility Support SG. It became an outlet for me to forget about my own guilt and problems, and help other ladies through their journey instead. All I want to do is to make their journey easier than mine in any small way I can.
What kept you trying for a kid despite facing difficulties conceiving?
At the start, it was the thought that success was easy to attain through the IUIs, and then IVF. Many couples go into fertility treatments blind without researching beforehand. We went into them with a common perception that fertility treatments equate to automatic success. The thought process is: since you have spent the money and time on it, surely it is a straightforward way to get pregnant.
It was only through failure after failure that we decided: maybe it was time to do a bit more research. And then we realised that success rates through fertility treatments are not that high. After each failure, I started to become numb to it and no longer expected success.
Towards the end, the reason we didn't give up was due to the stubbornness of knowing we had spent so much time, effort and money on this journey. We felt we couldn't give up without getting the results we wanted.
It got to a stage where everything reached the breaking point with the toll of the daily injections and medications, the endless doctor appointments and scans, the daily torture of the two-week wait, and finally, the numbness of each failed attempt. It got to a point where I knew I couldn't do it anymore, and we decided that the last transfer we did would be our last, regardless of the results.
I had to go through the challenges of two extreme ends. On one side, I had to manage the demand of my kids going through school, having to take extra dyslexia classes, and caring for their emotional needs. On the other end, I had to manage my doctor appointments, injections, and the extreme ups and downs of my own feelings with the failures of our fertility treatments.
Honestly, I can't tell you for sure how I managed to balance everything. I just did. I truly believe that women are such tough creatures -- we learn to manage and balance everything in life, no matter the situation.
The last few years have honestly been a blur. It seems to have gone by so fast, but I still remember all the feelings and emotions I went through, the laughter and the tears by myself, with my husband, and with the kids.
You had your third child after seven years of trying. Do your older kids know that your third child was conceived via IVF?
Yes, they do. They saw me through my miscarriage (my older son cried along with me), and my daily injections. They asked a lot of questions such as why I had to get injections and what they were for. We explained things along the way so they would understand.
With every transfer, they hoped (with me) that it would be a success, and got upset when it wasn't. All in all, it was special to be able to share the journey with them through the highs and lows. It made the success so much more special, to be able to share it with them.
What do you wish you knew before becoming a mum?
I always thought that I would be able to use one parenting method to parent all my kids. Little did I know each child is so very different in terms of personality and temperament. Sometimes, I wish they came with their own instruction manual.
I also used to tell myself that when I became a mother, I would do things differently from how my mum did. Yet, I realise that it's not that easy. I look back at the times when I disagreed with my mum, and now feel like I understand her so much better.