One Infertile's Epiphanies

Lots of people think that they understand how you feel, or they think that they can sympathize, but infertility is really a singular experience that cannot be fully understood by anyone unless they have experienced it.  Here are my reasons why it is such a unique experience, as well as some thoughts that have probably never occured to a fertile individual.

1.  At every stage in your life, you had at least a vague idea of what the future held.  We don't.
No matter what I have gone through in my life, there has always been some clarity of what the future held, at least in the short term.  Large and small, I always had some notion or feeling about what would happen.  For the first time in my life, I feel blindsided and completely unaware of what to expect.  I no longer have "a feeling" anymore of what will happen or a vision of what my future and my family will look like.  For me, that was and continues to be a strange revelation.

2.  If we adopt, we will love that child more than anything in this world, but we will still grieve the child we never had.
Long before I knew that I would have fertility problems, I always considered adopting and believed that it was as beautiful and natural a way to build a family as pregnancy.  As reality set in, however, I had to accept that this was not financially feasible for us and that my husband deeply wanted his own biological child.  No matter how realistic you are with yourself while trying to conceive, you cannot help but imagine your life with that child.  As a matter of fact, you might not actually be ready for a baby if you do not constantly consider that baby's life once it arrives.

If you are like me, that child has a name and he/she has outfits, trips to the beach, birthday parties, and red hair with green eyes.  Even though I have never conceived and never miscarried, that baby exists to me and it exists to my husband.  While I truly believe that we can be a happy family through adoption, others need to understand that as much as I may love that child, I did lose a baby in the process.  Part of the whole experience of infertility is to privately grieve a loss that others cannot understand. 

3.  An infertile couple is under the care of doctors and nurses with constant monitoring.  If they can't get me pregnant, your advice certainly will not.
When people with children (and even people without children) offer advice about how to conceive, they almost always just mean to be helpful, hopeful and supportive.  That, however, is not the way that it feels to the recipient of said advice. 

If you tell me that I should have a few martinis and relax, or suggest positions and pomegranite juice, you are not only not making sense, but you are placing the "blame" back on that person.  Many infertile couples may even interpret that as taunting and insensitive because you are explaining how easily it happened for you.  Believe me, advice is not the kind of support that someone in this position needs.

4.  If you tell me that "God has a plan," you may as well brace yourself for a throat punch.
Because you might just get one.  First of all, if you know me and my husband at all, you know that we are not religious.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Newsflash:  we lived together for years before we got married; we dated for eight years before we got married and you're crazy if you think we "waited" for marriage; and my husband plays in a thrash metal band.  Hello? 

Besides the obvious eye roll from both of us, God-fearing or not, this is an incredibly hurtful thing to say.  Basically, you are telling me that God doesn't want us to have children.  If I had any other medical condition, would you tell me then that "God had a plan?"  I don't recall anyone telling my friend with diabetes that "God had a plan," or that "God had a plan" when my aunt became paralyzed.  Unfortunately, religion has become intertwined with fertility treatment, but that doesn't mean it has to be in your conversation with me.

5.  Once we have been deemed infertile, our ability to become parents is largely a financial issue, and that really hurts.
Currently, only 15 states mandate health insurance coverage for infertility treament, and Pennsylvania is not one of them.  Even under the mandated plans, there are usually lifetime caps on the amount of care available, or a prior diagnosis of infertility can be considered a pre-existing condition, thus limiting eligibility. 

Our specific costs will be discussed in a later post, but it is worth noting what the average costs are for family building.  For each IUI, there are at least 2-3 ultrasounds, plus the IUI itself and the costs of medication, totalling well over $1000.  An average IVF cycle is almost $10,000, not including the medications, which could be anywhere from $2500-$9000.  Finally, adoption also runs in the $10,000s, ranging from $10,000 to $40,000, and the process can be filled with as many dead-ends, broken hearts and disappointments as TTC. 

Not only does it break our hearts that we are having so much difficulty having a child, but that we have to take on second jobs, scrimp and save, and finance loans just compounds the issue.  All of this to achieve something that is free to everyone else.  Often, the treatments do not work, yet we are getting monthly bills or replenishing a savings account for the costs. 

6.  We did everything right.
It may not be the most rational thought process in the world, but what sometimes hurts the most about infertility is the stark unfairness of it all.  Everytime we see unwanted pregnancies, unfit parents, and callous parenting, it is like a knife in our hearts.  Sometimes I just sit in the house that I bought for my future children in the amazing school district with the backyard and empty bedrooms and I can't help but feel hurt and resentful.  We planned and saved and worked to build for a family that we cannot have. 

One of the first and most important stages of infertility is learning to accept and live with this great unfairness.  For some, it takes only a few weeks to move on, but for others, it takes many months or years, or maybe even never.