Finding Compassion in my Journey of Infertility: How Judaism Guided me Through Secondary Infertility
by Maggie Neal Doherty
Maggie Neal Doherty writes the Facing Main column for the Flathead Beacon and is the president of the Glacier Jewish Community B’nai Shalom. Along with her husband, she is the founding owner of Kalispell Brewing Company. She lives in northwest Montana with her family and when her nose isn’t stuck in a book, you can find her exploring the mountains.
It happened at a café and it happened with my rabbi. And it wasn’t what I’d expected, either.
The word expected, and its opposite, unexpected, and their pregnant meanings suffused my life for the three year period between having my son and the long, unknown journey of secondary infertility. Rabbi Francine and I met over coffee and pastries to discuss congregational matters and to catch up.
I didn’t imagine that my rabbi would change my perspective on Judaism and fertility treatments, especially not over coffee.
Rabbi Francine and I first met in 2015 when I was in my third trimester when my husband and I joined the newly formed synagogue-without-walls in our rural mountain community. We were becoming parents for the first time, and as the High Holidays and my due date approached my body was doing what it was expected to do, completing gestation and delivering a healthy baby.
Then the unexpected happened: I couldn’t get pregnant again.
With the din of the café swirling around us, I told Rabbi Francine that our doctors diagnosed us with unexplained secondary infertility—despite the exhaustive testing, they didn’t know why we weren’t able to conceive again. After years of trying on our own, we decided to see if IUI would work. Round after round after round, it didn’t. The next step, I confessed, would be IVF. I confided that I wasn’t too keen on the idea or that I wasn’t meant to have another child.
Maybe God doesn’t want me to have another baby, I whispered. Despite closeness of our relationship, I still struggled to voice the heaviness of infertility, still felt afraid to talk about it, even with the noise of the restaurant humming around us. Unexplained secondary infertility was isolating, and I often felt confused, constantly searching what seemed like a black sky for a glimmer of light. Inadequacy steeped my being, constricting my perspective as each month slogged by without a positive test, with each doctor visit without an answer.
Rabbi Francine blinked away tears and said, no, no, no. Then, she said something that forever changed how I thought about reproductive technology and the Divine. I had felt that fertility assistance and God were at odds with each other, believing that medical interventions were wholly appropriate and necessary for other diseases, injuries, or traumas.
“She shared her belief that God wants us to be fruitful and multiply and the doctors and researchers who specialized in infertility and fertility treatment is an expression of the God’s gift to promote life. IVF, in her mind, is another divine gift to create healing solutions.”
Her thoughts shattered my previous notions about IVF and spirituality, long thinking of their incompatibility. It was a powerful idea that I’d never considered and with it, I felt a wave of compassion wash over me. Instead of darkness, a flicker of light illuminated my consciousness. Where I had once felt trapped in the details of a body not doing what was expected, fretting over numbers, counts, and levels this revelation allowed me to return to my whole self, connecting my spiritual needs to what was happening in my body.
In vocalizing my spiritual concerns and my longing for another child and in allowing myself to be open to new approaches and ways of thinking, I discovered more places where Judaism offered a safe landing place for fertility challenges including insightful prayer and healing guides on infertility. I realized that what I, and my husband were going through, was nothing new to Judaism—see Sarah and Abraham, for one.
While these ancient stories didn’t absolve us of worry, it gave us grounding.
My husband and I decided to pursue IVF and although we knew we’d venture into even more unknown and uncertain territory, we no longer felt desperate. I used the prayer guides with each injection, and found prayers that gave me courage during the egg retrieval and embryo implantation procedures.
Three years after I felt lost in the wilds of unexplained secondary infertility, I gave birth to a daughter, whose Hebrew name is Dodi. She is a beloved gift, a long waited one but she arrived in quite a hurry on a snowy night in December. After my parents received the joyful news, I made sure Rabbi Francine know about our miracle and acknowledged her role in sparking our change of heart, and setting us alight upon this journey.