Infertility Poems

If god had truly blessed me, then in my arms tonight
I would rock you gently baby, and hold you oh so tight
If god had truly blessed me he'd send from up above
An angel I could hold so tight, and fill your life with love
If life was oh so easy, and everything went right
I'd love you with all I have, and protect you with my all might
But life is not so easy, at times its oh so hard
I sit upon my bed at night, i've cried baby i've cried

Waiting for the Moon



My friend called today

tears in her voice

Her period started

and her dreams for a new baby are postponed

yet another month.



I hold my infant to my breast

eager mouth tugging and pulling

little hands patting and stroking.

My eyes well up with tears.

How many days turned to months turned to years

did I kneel and weep

pressing my hands to my empty womb

rocking on my heels

pleading with cruel fate

"send me a living child?"

My womb wept bright blood tears

as I felt my youth slip away

moon after moon

cycle after cycle

month after month

year after long year

My grief was indescribable

unendurable

mourning a child not yet conceived

only wished for, dreamed of, prayed for.

And then later, mourning the children conceived

but lost in pain and blood and tears.



Moon months, cycle songs, lovemaking, babylonging.

These are the things that defined my young womanhood.

eight years of eternal emptiness

years defined by the Moon

By blood

By hope and by tears.

II

I have not missed those cycles

the moon rising within

the blood that defined my loss and failure.

My life has now become an hourly measure

and rather than by a lunar month

I am

defined by nursing

by a small demanding mouth

by the fullness of my breast

by rich sweet milk that drips from me

and flows life and love to my child.



I will not (cannot) forget, though,

the years my womb wept blood tears,

the months the shards

of grief began as my period started...

Lactating now, my body moves to another vision

another Time.

The moon tides no longer control me

I am bound to the Earth, to the small body

of another, to a warm mouth in the night that nuzzles

and seeks and heals my tattered soul

and pieces my heart together.

Pergonal and modern medicine gave me a child,

but the child at my breast Healed my infertility.

For Tabitha

by Kathryn Miller Ridiman

summer Solstice l995

first published in Midwifery Today

Infertile Poetry

The Childless Mother’s Lullaby
by Ella Rhoads Higginson, 1925

Oh, many’s the time in the evening
When the light has fled o’er the sea,
That I dream alone in the gloaming
Of the joys that are not for me;
And oft in my sorrowful bosom
Swells up the mother-love flame,
And I clasp with my arms that are trembling
My child that never came. . . .

The hours swim on the midnight,
The moon looks over the hill,
And the u-lu-lu of the night owl
Sinks mournfully and shrill;
The solitude aches with rapture,
And my heart with the mother-love flame
As I sing alone in the gloaming
To the child that never came.

From A BOOK OF LULLABIES (Elva S. Smith ed., 1925).