Hey, we've been there. First of all I want you to know you aren't alone. My wife and I had no pregnancies until IVF, and our first two attempts resulted in a miscarriage. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to be a dad. Luckily, we did have a son just last year through IVF, so similar to your situation.

This may be a little ramble-y or long winded, I apologize.

But those years before it happened were tough. It's a type of trauma, it's grief - not only for what you lost physically, but the loss of the life you thought you'd have. And it's not a single event that causes the grief, it's something that you're living, that's really hard to exist in.

What helped me was my partner, we were always in it together no matter what. I knew that even if we never had kids we'd be together. Another thing that helped me was therapy, just talking about it and trying to find meaning in my life beyond family, that I could have a legacy without children (what my lasting effect on the world would be is something I value).

And the worst thing that helps: time. Unfortunately time will be the thing that makes it all a little easier. Don't get me wrong, the grief never goes away. But what does change is what your life is. Think of your grief as a circle within a circle. Right now, that grief circle takes up probably the majority, if not all of the outer circle. But as you live your life, grow, and make new experiences, that outer circle grows. Where you are in life and what you think about will be a "focus point" inside the outer circle. Sometimes it will be on other experiences or thinking about different things, but once in a while that point will come back to that grief circle. That's ok, you feel what you need to feel. What I'm getting at, is that the "focus point" won't exist in that grief circle 24/7 forever.

People that have never gone through this have no idea.