Wednesday, December 19, 2007

quick comment about the previous post

In seeing some of the first comments, I wanted to note that I'm not really talking about the "title" of infertility. I'm not talking about when someone goes for treatment or when someone admits to themselves they may be the horrible "I" word.

As I said in one of the comments, I have just read a few blogs of late where the author discusses the trials and tribulations of living with infertility - when they've only begun trying! Now, I can totally understand blogs complaining about how shitty it feels to get a BFN. And how much it sucks to be on "C6" or whatever. How crappy it feels to see preggos all around you. But to say they are "dealing with infertility" at that point? No way! Not when they haven't even been trying for a whole year. Not when they have no known issues. Not when they may get the BFP the very next cycle.

These people may actually end up being infertile. And I think infertility, once proven, is part of your being. Part of who you are. It doesn't "start" at some 12 month mark. It doesn't "start" when you find out both your tubes are sealed shut. If you end up finding you are infertile, you had been infertile from the beginning. But to make a fist and shout out to the world how unfair it is to be infertile when you are on your 4th cycle of trying? Um, yeah. Listen closely and you can probably hear my eyes rolling.

Having troubles ttc? Sing it sister! Pour your heart out. It sucks to fail at this. It sucks on C1. It sucks on C7. It SUCKS. But save the infertility song until you have a real reason. Wait until you've been trying for over a year. Wait until you find out there is something really wrong. Wait until you budget your yearly vacation fund for your upcoming IVF treatments. Just wait on the "I" word, because believe me, you don't want to become part of it's definition.

5 comments:

Chastity said...

I must agree with you on this one. Yes, it sucks to get a BFN, even after the first month of trying, when everyone else is walking around getting pregnant while on birth control....but that doesn't make you infertile. I get a lot of emails from friends wanting me to share their sorrows after trying for a month or two...I guess b/c they know what I've gone through. I just can't listen to it after month one or two...or three or four...not when I've been to month 12, 24, 36, etc...then to IVF...then to FET1, FET2..etc. Grr.

Anonymous said...

I didn't have a chance to respond to the first, but I'll respond to this.

Pain is pain. It always sucks to not get what you want. But there is something different about the hopelessness that comes after you are legit infertile.

There is a grieving process, there is adjusting your definitions of who you are and what it means to be a woman, there is anger and so much more...and quite frankly, I don't think you can really even TOUCH on those things until you've been slogging through the shit for at least a year. It takes time to work up to that kind of dispair and weariness.

On a side note...What bugs me most are women who claim infertility, but don't actually know how the whole conception thing works. Ugh.

Anonymous said...

I think another good point is that it takes the average healthy couple up to 1 year to conceive. So until you have been trying for that long, you can't call yourself 'infertile'. There may be nothing truly wrong - it's just the law of averages.

Anonymous said...

I agree with this post and also agree with it being weird that someone would want to be labeled as infertile. I personally would want to stay as far away from it as possible.
Good food for thought!

Anonymous said...

I had a single friend tell me once about how much it sucked to want a (second) baby and not have a donor.

I have to say IME it sucks a hell of a lot more to fail repeatedly for years.

Same person had also previously claimed to know how I felt (hahahaha) because it took 3, yes THREE months to conceive her son. With sex alone.