I Just Found out I Can’t Conceive Children Naturally and I’m Not Going To Be Quiet About It
Even though I’m supposed to
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She looked like an old customer of mine, the girl sat with her partner in the fertility clinic waiting room waiting to be called.
What was she here for, I wondered? Consultations? Results? For that special brand of invasive procedures that come with fertility treatments?
As a surprise to me, I felt that tell-tale prickle behind my eyes. I wanted to cry, so I did a little bit. I wasn’t crying for me, I was crying for that couple. For everyone who comes through the door of this clinic. For their feelings.
Because infertility is like a sledgehammer to the life you thought you were going to have. Regardless of your feelings on having or not having children, no one can deny that infertility hurts, in many more ways than one.
Yeah. That’s how this story was supposed to go.
That’s what I typed out in the fertility clinic waiting room yesterday as I diligently waited my turn. I wanted to write a cathartic, quiet, mature piece about infertility. At the hurt it causes other people.
I didn’t want to make it about me, I wanted to make it about them. Hopefully with some powerful, uplifting message at the end about how life can be great without children (I’ve managed 38 years without them and most of them were brilliant. I’m confident I can manage another 40+).
I didn’t give this story permission to go another way.
But it did.
What really happened is that when it was my turn to go into that consultation room, they stuck an ultrasound stick stuck up my hoo-ha, and told me:
Your egg reserve is very low for your age. Your only option is IVF. And even that is going to be difficult.
I did NOT squeeze out a single tear. I did NOT take it stoically.
I cried a big, extremely ugly cry with huge gulps. I cried for an embarrassingly long time in that doctor’s office. I cried selfish, indulgent tears (because I fully believe that, the world being in the state that it is, having children is a wholly selfish endeavor).
I wasn’t thinking about the couples outside the door anymore, I was thinking about me. About my husband. About the life I want versus the reality I’m now faced with.
Whatever comes next — IVF, adoption, or no children at all — is not the life I signed up for.
And I’m not going to be stoic or cathartic about it.
Even if that’s exactly how we expect infertile women to be.
When it comes to infertility, everyone likes a nice, clean narrative. One that is easy to stomach like:
I didn’t meet my partner until I was older.
Or
My infertility was because of a genetic disorder. There is no way I could have foreseen it.
We certainly don’t like the narrative of:
I could have had them earlier, I just didn’t want them until I was older.
Or
I loved my life and my career too much to introduce children into the mix.
Society is still biased in favor of women becoming mothers. Anything that rejects that bias is uncomfortable.
We also want the couple — especially the woman in my experience — to be stoic about their infertility. The story goes that child-free women must make something more of their lives and the ones that want but can’t have them must “make peace” with that.
Quickly.
This makes wading through the quagmire of infertility rather difficult because not all narratives are cut and dry. I, for instance, met my partner at 19. We could have had kids many years ago but chose not to because we didn’t want them.
So now, I’m in a position where my story fits into the most awful of phrases:
You’ll change your mind when you’re older.
I can’t tell you how angry I am that I fit into that fucking miserable narrative. It’s everything I don’t stand for and everything I would never want a woman to hear because it’s cruel and doesn’t make any room for people to, y’know, change their mind.
Especially if that change comes too late, which it looks like it has for me. Apparently, all I deserve now is a bunch of I told you so.
And do I feel at peace with my infertility? No. I don’t like that I’m supposed to. I literally received this news this week and I’m a human being that needs to process.
The problem is that this processing is often done behind closed doors. Infertility is still taboo. We’re expected to suffer in silence and then emerge from our pain as a rounded, humbled human who says things like it just wasn’t meant to be.
What people don’t see is the hard work people have to put in in order to get to that stage. The hard work I’m now about to do.
Even that hard work has its own narrative. It has to be linear. I have to improve little by little, bit by bit. Which, as anyone who has been through any kind of grief, trauma, or therapy knows is completely unrealistic.
Society can be so ruthless.
I think all of us who have gone through infertility woes want the same thing (aside from a baby).
We don’t want to be pitied. We don’t want someone to say I told you so.
I’ve been on the sticky end of both. And I’m sure for some women, it’s why they choose to suffer in silence because they don’t want to have to explain themselves. To put themselves through society’s dumbass way of dealing with infertility.
When I began “trying for a baby” (urgh, that phrase), I made the decision to tell a lot of people about it both in real life and online. I treated this as an experiment, to do something few women do because I believe we should talk about it more.
I don’t regret that decision. I’ve had countless comments and emails from (mainly) women saying how pleased they are someone is actually talking about this.
You don’t move the needle through silence.
But because I chose to tell people, my life is on display. I have to put up with more than my fair share of those crappy societal norms about what it means to be infertile.
I get why people want to be quiet. Because once you put your life out there, it’s an invite for comment and criticism, apparently.
When it should be simply something that happens to some people. Everyone seems to know someone who has struggled with conception — sometimes multiple people.
If it’s so common (around 1 in 6 people), then why is society so cruel about it? (See also: racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, lookism, fatphobia)
As for me, I’m going to do what I do best in tough situations. Write about it and curl under a blanket to watch TV.
I won’t be quiet. And I certainly won’t be stoic.
Not yet.
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I am so sorry you're going through this. Thank you for not being quiet about it. It hurts, and you have a right to holler.