What a Woman Going Through Infertility Feels Like vs. Who She Is
A woman going through infertility feels:
ANGRY/FRUSTRATED: I combined these two because they go hand in hand. You start to question certain life choices, thinking, Well, maybe if I had partied less in my 20s… or Maybe if we had started trying sooner… Everyone makes the choices that are right for them at the time, and I would say that most folks in their early to mid-20s are not concerned about their fertility. This is evidenced by the fact that in recent years, many have been putting off marriage and children until they’ve established their careers and have done all of the traveling and the other “bucket list” items they had in mind.
I often wished that my husband and I had started trying sooner, but the reality was, when I was in my early 30s, I just wasn’t ready. I wanted to do more traveling and exploring before going all in on having a child. So as much as I beat myself up for it, I had done what I wanted to do and had had a great time in the process. Brendan and I were fortunate enough to have traveled wherever and whenever we wanted; we enjoyed great meals out on weekends and were generally having a blast. Who would be in a rush to walk away from all of that?
There’s also the classic question of “Why us?” This is something I often pondered. My husband and I are in great shape, we eat healthy, we exercise regularly, and we generally try our best to be good people. So why were we having this issue when so many people who are in no position to have a family are out there having kids without any problems? It is truly unfair and a cruel irony—we had spent the early part of our reproductive years avoiding pregnancy at all costs, and then when we actually wanted to get pregnant, we couldn’t.
The most frustrating part of infertility is that it produces a feeling of being stuck in quicksand as you watch your friends and family have children and move forward with their lives. Being very competitive by nature, this was by far the hardest mental component for me to handle. IVF places the patient in a constant holding pattern of waiting for a test result or for your period to start or finish, making you feel like you’re constantly in limbo. This is very hard to handle when all you want is to be done with all of the treatments and move forward with your life.
ASHAMED: This was a big one for me. I have always prided myself on working hard for what I wanted. Whether it was getting good grades in school, excelling at sports, or keeping myself in good shape, my ambition had never failed me. I didn’t think that infertility could happen to a couple who’s healthy and hardworking—I naïvely saw it as something that only impacted folks with underlying health issues.
Every time I walked into the infertility clinic, I felt completely ashamed because I was having to go through so much to get something that people often effortlessly achieve. The daily wandings of IVF were particularly dehumanizing, as those impersonal encounters with doctors made me feel like a car that was in the repair shop. I often felt ashamed at family gatherings where lots of children were present with parents our age. I felt the ever-present elephant-in-the-room thought of Hey, so when are Jade and Brendan going to have a kid?
ISOLATED: Infertility is a secretive community. It’s a hard topic to discuss—because many people don’t know what to say, they often either clam up completely or potentially make one of the awful comments mentioned in the last chapter. In order to alleviate the awkwardness, the person experiencing infertility often stops saying anything about how they’re feeling to anyone. That’s very isolating, lonely, and dangerous, and it often leads to depression. If you haven’t experienced infertility firsthand, it’s nearly impossible to fully grasp what people are going through, and although people may mean well with their advice and comments, they often do more harm than good. It is my sincerest hope that through this book, you have met someone who understands exactly how you feel and that as a result you feel less misunderstood. Because as infertiles, we are misunderstood.
INADEQUATE/LIKE A FAILURE/OUT OF CONTROL: No one wants to feel inadequate or like a failure, but unfortunately, infertility is really good at making you feel that way. Each pregnancy announcement, pregnant person sighting, or seeing someone with a stroller highlights everything you can’t have at this time. You wonder, Will I ever get to experience any of those things? Then that thought leads to self-loathing thoughts like Maybe if I were five or ten years younger or If my/his/her [fill in the blank] weren’t messed up, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
For me, walking into the infertility clinic made me feel inadequate, broken, and like the lowest failure there ever was. The worst part of it all was that the problems were out of my husband’s and my control seeing as we hadn’t caused them. But those problems weren’t easily fixable, either, so once again, we felt like were stuck in a black hole we couldn’t escape. Everyone seeks control of their life, and the fact that so much of the IVF process is out of our control no matter how hard we try to make it successful makes the process infinitely more stressful.
IN REALITY, a woman going through infertility is:
BADASS: You are a straight-up badass for going through any assisted reproduction procedure. You will endure wandings by multiple doctors, countless hormonal injections, surgeries, and blood draws that are sometimes performed so savagely that you wonder if some phlebotomists moonlight as butchers. If that isn’t badass, I don’t know what is.
RESILIENT: Lots of people need more than one round of IUI or IVF to be successful. It’s really easy to give up after the first one because of how grueling the process is. Hell, I was ready to run out of the clinic and call it a career after that first night with Dr. Douchebag! Staying with the process and enduring the triumphant successes and devastating failures is the very definition of resilience. It’s easy to walk away, but to stay the course and stick with it until you have either truly had enough or had success is beyond admirable.
DETERMINED: Assisted reproductive success does not happen without fierce determination. You want this baby more than anyone who has ever given birth before, and you are going to great lengths to make it happen.
COURAGEOUS: Taking the first step of walking into a clinic to meet with a doctor is a true act of courage. It’s easy to keep believing “It’ll happen eventually,” but acknowledging the fact that there might be a medical issue standing between you and parenthood takes balls. To take daily needles, wandings, and blood draws and to have surgery for a process that may or may not be successful is nothing less than heroic. Don’t sell yourself short!
MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY STRONG: If you have done IUI or IVF, you’re familiar with being “hormoned up.” These procedures require the patient to take oral and injectable drugs that can make you feel—shall we say—not like yourself. I experienced extreme mood swings, headaches, and depression while taking some of these medications, and I was constantly fearful that I might lose my shit at work or in another public venue because of how much the medications impacted my mental state. It takes a lot of effort to remind yourself that while you’re on this medication, this is not who you really are. You really need to be mindful of your words and actions because this too shall pass.
And let’s not underestimate the physical strength shown by women who undergo assisted reproduction. You effectively become a human pincushion from the moment the IVF cycle begins until the day of the egg retrieval. As I got closer to my egg retrievals, I was taking one injection in my stomach in the morning, getting blood drawn at the clinic shortly thereafter, and then taking two more injections at night. For everyone counting at home, that’s four needles in one day for about five days in addition to the injections that had taken place over the previous seven days. On top of that, you are also required to report to the clinic each day at an ungodly early hour for your wanding and blood draw and then go about your normal business during the day as if everything were fine.
YOU ARE STRONG AS FUCK AND DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE.
