This year for National Infertility Awareness Week they are encouraging all us infertiles to help bust an infertility myth. My favorite one that needs to be blown to smithereens –
“It can’t be that bad, it could always be worse.”
Now I don’t know for sure if this qualifies as a myth, but it’s something we do hear and something EXTREMELY painful each time we hear it. It could be worse is opinion, not fact. It is from the eye of the beholder and an infertile has eyes that see the world much differently. After our diagnosis, I felt like I could suddenly see things I never had before. Everything you encounter on a daily basis reminds you of what you may never have – the families, the babies, a song, an invitation, television, advertisements, water cooler chitchat, family gatherings, church – well, basically anything, anytime, anywhere you go.
Women don’t compartmentalize issues like men. Everything we worry about will tend to bleed into our everyday lives. The daily reminders of children never left my thoughts. With every check up, attempt and failure, my thoughts remained focused on this goal whether I was in church or a project meeting. I tried to leave it at home, but I was devastated. And as the depression grew, I would receive this comment. I started thinking, could it?
The answer was no. I wanted to be a mom, to have our child. To wake Randy up one morning with that positive pregnancy test after being a few days late. I was grieving the loss of my dream. The loss of ever having a child naturally, only with painful medical intervention. The loss of my ability as a wife to do something seen as essential to my womanhood. The loss of knowing whether or not it would ever be more than just us two. But this grief had no closure such as when a loved one dies. Each month you hope, you try again (possibly with thousands of dollars and lots of needles) and you wait. When the cycle begins again you cry because the process starts over again. It feels being on a rollercoaster of hope and despair that replays monthly. I remember our first IUI I was so hopeful (and a little naïve) that it would work. I remember sitting with my in-laws in Sunday School and I felt my cycle start. I’ve never been so devastated and fought so hard not to cry (which I don’t think worked well at all!) And all around me are families with beautiful children and events that I’m having to attend trying to be happy for them while devastated for us. Life continued while it felt like we were left behind. I avoided church with a preacher who had 9 children. I avoided events with pregnant women or babies. The one baby shower I worked up all my courage to attend because she was a close friend – I cried for 30 minutes in the bathroom on my husband’s shoulder. And even worse, there are mothers who could not care less about their children while I’m screaming at God “WHY THEM?? And not me?..” And every day, there was no end in sight. How long would this continue? Would we ever heal?
For us, it was 2.5 years before we did get pregnant and I consider that a blessing it didn’t go longer. But that doesn’t change the severity of the time. It will always be one of the most devastating periods in my life and will continue when it’s time for child number 2 – more test, needles, and money while we wait to see if the embryo takes. Remember that “it could always be worse” is a perspective and that no one can relate who hasn’t been through infertility. For a couple who has always wanted and prepared for children – infertility is the worst thing that could happen to them. Remember to not trivialize it.
