Faces of infertility: a (humorous?) look

Have you ever seen those sweet, touching videos/galleries with pictures of individuals and couples going through infertility? I’m not being a smartass here, I really think they ARE touching. For mainstream fertile society, it can be hard to understand that infertility is not an abstract thing; it is a very real and solid part of the lives of the people who suffer with it. To see the actual faces and lives of infertile people is very moving, because it puts individual human faces to what can sometimes seem like a distant problem. Those going through primary or secondary infertility are friends, siblings, aunts and uncles, co-workers, celebrities… sometimes even parents.

That being said, I have decided to do my own tribute to “faces of infertility” type galleries. Nothing major, just a nice picture or two .

I wrote this because I was sick off my ass last night from the IF meds I am on, and I needed a good laugh or two. (Note: It is from a solely female perspective since that’s what I am. I haven’t forgotten about the infertile hopeful-daddies out there or those of you struggling with male factor IF. I just left it out because I have no experience with it so I have no idea how to joke about it!)

Here then is my own personal take on the Faces of Infertility. Enjoy!

********************************************

For today, we are going to look at infertility medications and treatments, key figures in a woman’s infertility battle, and various feelings associated with infertility. I am going to try to give you an image in your mind of what each aspect is like using only pictures.

Figure 1: Metformin, feelings caused by:

Figure 2: Clomid, feelings caused by:

Figure 3a: Injectibles:

Figure 3b: Injectibles:

Figure 4: Acupuncture (as a method of natural IF treament):

Figure 5: IVF:

Figure 6: General representations of how a person feels (and quite possibly acts) while undergoing infertility treatments:

Figure 7: Various images of average infertility doctors:

Figure 8: Infertility treatments that are federally mandated by the US government to be covered by insurance. Since infertility is a serious medical condition, not a cosmetic problem, and therefore everyone who suffers from it deserves equal treatment:

…
…
…

Figure 9: Ha ha, whoops! There’s no such thing as what ought to be pictured at Figure 8. My bad. Let’s try that again, shall we folks? Okay: The modern, useful, effective, and totally wonderful! infertility treatments that are likely to be approved and covered by one’s insurance:

Well, that concludes today’s tour through my take on the Faces of Infertility. I hope you found it humorous, and enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoy putting it together. And to all my fellow infertile women and men out there: keep on keepin’ on

Will it ever end? A rant by yours truly :)

Ugh. So I log into my Myspace account, looking to see if one of my cousins has returned my message yet (she hasn’t). And there, glaring at me was a message entitled:

 I’M A PROUD MOMMY!!!!

 with hearts and stars around it, looking like it was written by a third-grade girl with ADD.

I told myself not to click on it, but I did anyway- it could have been an important message or something, right? But it wasn’t >_> It was sent by one of the girls on my friends list, and featured tons of questions-and-answers about her kids and her childbirth experiences. Stuff that no one else honestly wants to know (unless that person happens to be an expectant parent at this moment, maybe. Which I AM GODDAMN NOT!!!).

Seriously. Amie, you are my pal, but at this moment I do not want to know how long you “pushed” for. I don’t care if you had an epidural or some other kind of pain meds (interestingly enough, there was no option on the quiz for “neither, I had a natural childbirth”. What’s up with that?) I do not want to know who drove you to the hospital or what you packed in your overnight bag, for crying out loud. Seriously bud, save it for the baby books. UGH!

Geez, I guess I’m overreacting a bit. And I am kind of tired of being so sensitive about encountering things like this, and getting emotional when I have to hear about other people’s pregnancies and children. But at the same time, I feel a little belligerant… like I have every damn right to be irritated by it! Does that make sense? He he… maybe I’m just being childish, I don’t know.

Anyway, it did annoy me, mainly for this reason: I met Amie in an infertility group (she considered herself infertile after being diagnosed with PCOS, but had her first baby after seven months of trying- and her next baby WITHOUT trying! So I’m not sure how “infertile” that really makes her. I personally think she either A) has very mild PCOS, B) is one of those lucky women who has PCOS but happens to ovulate with decent regularity, or C) the doctor misdiagnosed her? I mean, I’m not judging anyone else but IMO seven months is not long at all, especially since she was not even tracking or charting!!!)

Anyway, from the time she spent in the IF group, she REALLY ought to have learned better than to send that kind of thing to any of us. I mean c’mon. I’m assuming she sent it to her other buddies too… which is kinda cringeworthy because there are a ton of infertile people on her friends list, and some of the ladies have been trying for like ten or more years. Yikes, Amie. Just yikes. I mean, I can understand being proud of your kids… but sometimes it’s just not the time or place.

I dunno, though. Maybe she was trying to be kind, and considered it encouraging. Maybe she thought we’d think of it as a success story. I guess I’ll believe that, since the other options are either that she’s kind of simpleminded, or she’s tactless. And I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.

*sigh*

Man, will it ever end? This being so sensitive to hearing about others’ pregnancies and children?

I honestly wonder… when/if I am lucky enough to physically become a mother, will I stop being infertile? Uh, that sounds dumb; it’s kinda hard to explain what I mean. What I’m trying to ask is… will I stop being so sensitive to such things? Will I still flinch when people talk about wishing they were childless? Will I still identify as “infertile”, and if so, will that upset the infertile women who still don’t have any babies?

On one hand, it’d be nice to be so fecund that getting tired of babies would be an option. But on the other hand… I’m glad that that isn’t my personal life experience. I have nothing against those women who don’t want to get pregnant or who feel they have enough kids; that’s a personal decision and fine with me. But personally, I don’t ever want to forget how I feel right now; even if/when I overcome my infertility, I don’t want to *ever* take one of my pregnancies or babies for granted.

Whether it’s my first or my tenth.

And yes, the hubby and I are insane enough to have ten kids. Hey, it’s only one more than my grandmother had! ^_^

HULK SMASH!!!!

O. M. G.

Have you ever had one of those days where it seems like everyone and everything are out to get you? You know, where NOTHING is going right, and you get frustrated to the point of either A) tearing your hair out, B) smashing your computer, or whatever it is that’s in the general area, or (my favorite) C) throwing yourself on the floor and having a screaming, kicking temper-tantrum, toddler-style???

Of course, I have not done any of those things, but HOLY CRAP do I feel like it.

First of all, I get woken up by my sister’s toddler son screaming his lungs out outside of my bedroom door. I get up, open the door, and find him climbing on the stairs and being teased by one of his older brothers (who is a thirteen-year-old, ridiculously spoiled brat mommy’s pet). After yelling at the older one for tormenting a not-even-two year old, I pick my baby nephew up and go out to the dining room, to discover that is mother is too busy chatting on the computer and talking on the phone to her newest boyfriend to pay any attention to him.

“HEY!” I say. “Are you aware that the baby is climbing on the stairs, and that your middle child is teasing him and calling him names?”

She looks at me in exasperation, shoulders the phone for about two seconds, and says “Was he? No, no stairs!” (that part directed at the baby, who totally ignored her, ha ha.) And she just goes back to her convo like nothing happened. I stand there dumbfounded. “Ummmm, hey,” I say, “did you hear what your other kid was doing? He called the baby a really dirty name.” She asks her boyfriend to hold on a sec and does one of those “psh” noises like she is totally annoyed with me. “Yeah yeah, I already yelled at (middle child) for that.” She says… even though I know she has done no such thing- not only because she never yells at that kid and he does what he wants to do, but also because it just happened. When the hell would she have had time to reprimand him??

Such attentive, effective parenting, eh? That’s my big sister for ya.

So, I decided to stay out in the living room and watch the baby, since it was obvious she was just going to ignore him in favor for her latest flavor-of-the-week guy. (Seriously, she changes them more often than she changes her underwear. Make of that what you will.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my oldest sister. But she is a horrible parent, and a selfish person in general. She’s the kind of person who (literally) cannot be trusted to care for a goldfish, let alone human children. From 1997 to 2005, I took more care of her kids than she did, while she was out going to powwows and visiting her many boyfriends and taking college courses and essentially only taking care of herself. It was actually better that way, because back then the older boys were well-behaved and well cared for. Now that she is home again and with them 24/7, they are poorly behaved, fight with each other all the time, are having trouble at school, and are just generally quite maladjusted. And there is not a thing I can do about it anymore.

It bothers me beyond belief that people like her can have children with no problem, yet stable and decent people like me and my husband just cannot. My sister’s a complete “Fertile Myrtle”, and she takes it for granted. Her kids are just something that get in her way and annoy her.

I don’t understand how anyone can think of a child that way. I don’t get it. I don’t see how a mother can be more interested in some sleazy guy, or in her computer, than in her own flesh-and-blood babies. What the hell is up with that?

Anyway. While I was sitting out in the living room with the baby, I called my husband to see what he was up to (he is usually home by that time on Friday), and I find that he’s having some kind of bad day and attitude problem and is just generally acting like an ass. Fine, whatever, sometimes we all have those days. So I say goodbye and let him go about his business, knowing it’s better to leave him alone when he’s grouchy. I knew he’d get over it by later tonight and be fine… but geez, like I needed another person acting like a jerk to me for no reason.

Anyway, my sister and the kids left to go get dinner, and I was left in the peace and quiet of the house, just me and my kitty cat. Ahhh. There is a new game I’ve been badly wanting, called “Darkness Within” (it’s a scary horror adventure game- try it!), so I figured I’d use my moments of peace to play that and have some enjoyably spooky moments. I went online and bought it from Gamersgate.com (a site where you can pay and download games online so you don’t have to wait days for shipping).

Finally feeling more relaxed, I got my Pepsi and my kettle corn, and with my cat sleeping comfy on my lap, I fired up the game downloader and got ready to enjoy my new thirty-dollar-(wow-that’s-kind-of-a-ripoff-it-better-be-worth-it!)-game…

Eh, what’s this? An error message? An… Unhandled exception has occurred in my application? Oh. No. Oh goddamn HELL NAW!!!

Two and a half hours later, I had done everything from reinstalling the downloader, to restarting my comp, to clearing the goddamned cache and cookies, to repairing my Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework installation, to standing on my head and making burnt sacrifices to the Dark Lord of Planet Epsilon-7. I even sent a somewhat rude email to Gamersgate support (ha ha, I feel kind of bad about that now, oops!). BUT. NONE. OF. IT. WORKED.

Okay, I said to myself. Must be something wrong with my laptop. Let me go try to install it on the desktop computer. It’s not my first choice for a new game since it is not portable, but that’s all right. Any port in a storm, and all that.

I sign on, blah blah blah, and get to the Gamersgate website. Oh, what is this? A 403 error? GODDAMMIT!!!

Okay. Take a deep breath. It must just be not accepting the cookies or activeX or some other nonsense. I go onto the Internet Explorer settings, change all my settings to *ridiculously, dangerously low, and evil people will now destroy your computer*, and with a sigh of relief sign back on to the website to finally get my damn game.

403 error.

ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH! Stupid ^%&*ing god&#@! son-of-a-*^&$%# $%#*&^$%@!*(^&!

So. Here is where we first came in. Picture me standing in the middle of the living room, so frustrated with this day that I feel like exploding. Possibly steam is coming out of my ears.

I mean, DAMN, does everything have to act like an asshole all at once?

Anyway, I DID finally get the stupid downloader to work. I have no idea how… I just uninstalled and reinstalled it AGAIN, and it started working. Go friggin figure! In the next couple of hours I should actually be playing my game, and my husband is home and acting pleasant again. So the day didn’t turn out too bad in the end. But dang, I sure wouldn’t want to live through it again!

You’d never know it from reading this blog, but…

I’m actually a pretty happy person. I’m thankful for what I’ve got, and I know things could be a lot worse and indeed are a lot worse for many people (though I’d never say that to someone else, as I think each person’s problems are hard for them and should be respected, regardless of who has it how much worse).

So yes, I am certainly cheerful most of the time. I love my family and my kitty cat, I like daydreaming about everything, I enjoy writing (I am finally picking up the poetry again, after having no muse for a very very long time). I spend my time playing games, doing crafts, thinking, listening to music, and I am currently using various free internet sites to learn Esperanto (I highly recommend it!).

My sister Bee read this blog and commented that it was sad, so figured I’d update and tell any readers out there that I’m not overly depressed or suicidal or anything. I won’t lie and say that there is not constantly an underlying sadness… but it’s not overwhelming me usually!

Speaking of fun, I am going to borrow Bee’s camera and post some pics from our trip to Salem, MA last weekend. She, my husband, and I went. We had a slammin’ time and I spent way too much money (that she kndly gave me. Bee is my best friend and the greatest sister ever made by God). I even bought some “fertility oil” that I’ve been wearing. I’ll tell more about it when I make my Salem post… I’ve been wanting to make some other mentions of magic stuff and fertility (he he, sounds crazy, you’ll see).

Childless mothers

i’ve used the phrase “childless mother” to describe myself in the past, and it is often met with “huh?”s and “what do you mean?”s. So I thought I’d take the initiative and explain it early on

What is a childless mother? Well, in this case it’s not anything you’d find if you Googled the term (which I just did). I’m not a bereaved mother who had a child(ren) that died. I’m not an incarcerated mother. I’m not a biological mother who gave her child up for adoption. I’m not an adoptive mother whose child was given back to its biological mother. I’m not a woman who has been pregnant and lost her baby to miscarriage or stillbirth.

Simply put, I’m a wanna-be.

I’ve never been pregnant- though not for lack of trying, believe me. I have buckets of baby clothes littering my living space, unused strollers and crib sets stored in boxes, lists of names that my husband and I have gone over and over and over again. I’ve read “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”. I’m a bigger expert on prenatal care, childbirth, and childcare than my sister and cousins who really DO have kids. I even own a single, sad maternity shirt, that I bought at a KMart like six years ago and immediately felt ashamed about.

To the average person, I am no kind of mother. There is no real word for what I am in the English language. Supposedly, I’m an “infertile woman”… but there is so much more to the experience as a person who wants children and can’t have them than plain old infertility. “Infertile” doesn’t begin to cover it! There is no word for that feeling that “I AM a mother, dammit, the kids just aren’t here yet!”.

In short, I’m one of the never-beens, the ones who “don’t really understand”, who “should feel lucky (we’ve) never had one”, or who “should feel lucky (we’ve) never had one and lost it” (I suppose the latter could be true, depending on who you ask and how you look at it). To the world outside of those experiencing infertility, we’re like little girls playing house, and they treat us accordingly.

I cannot entirely blame them, though. I guess it does sound a little strange to try to explain that sometimes your body and brain and soul don’t sync up, and you can feel like a parent without ever making a child or signing a paper to take custody of one.

So. I hereby declare that you ignore all the other uses of this term- “childless mothers”- for I am stealing it to exclusively describe ladies like me. It’s now for the women who’ve wanted yet never had so much as a false positive, or a blip on the pregnancy test. For those of us who have never spent even one wonderful, happy day wondering in whispers “am I? Could I be???”. For any woman who has cried hugging a babydoll, or literally felt like running away from your cousin and her toddlers, or who had to sit through one more relative’s baby shower and couldn’t explain that she was happy and sad and jealous all at once, or who had to suffer through yet another friend or family member’s well-meaning-yet-heart-ripping “enjoy your freedom!” speech. All the while feeling tortured by that weird maternal feeling that shouldn’t even be there. She feels so, so ready for it all- everything in her life is lined up and waiting with baited breath for those children. She already FEELS like a mother- she is a mother in her soul. And yet the children never come.

That’s what a childless mother is. If you meet one, be nice to her. And be nice to the childless fathers out there, too- they do exist.

Now we just need a secret handshake!

You who never arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me– the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house–, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,–
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, seperate, in the evening…

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I have loved this poem for about eight years now. I first read it when I bought a poetry compilation book called “Art and Love”. It seems like such a long time ago… back then, I had not even met my now-husband, my darling cat wasn’t born into this lifetime yet, and I was madly in love with a short green-eyed dentist who didn’t know I was alive (the latter seems quite funny now that I’m over it, but it totally wasn’t at the time!).

The first time I read this poem I was absolutely stricken by its beauty and the imagery within it. I could see the mark of a truly good poem and poet- that feeling that the writer has written your feelings better than you could’ve written them yourself. Even now when I read it I can feel its vastness; that aching kind of emotional swelling that you get when a sorrow encompasses everything, that quiet (and even sometimes sharply pleasant, before it turns for the worst) sadness that comes with having to accept that a dream just might not ever come true.

At the time I discovered it- and for a long time after that- I thought of “You who never arrived” as a love poem. Now that I am older (and wiser? ha ha, probably not), it seems to apply to so many other areas of life. It applies to my relationship with my friend Steve (long story),  and it certainly applies to my childlessness.

There comes a point in infertility when you see your “non-existent” children everywhere. You catch glimpses of their reflections when you pass by a mirror, you smell them in the rain and the cold nighttime air of winter and in your husband’s skin. You hear their voices in the static on the radio and in the noise of crowds. Everything you look at and experience has a funny, distant, poignant feeling to it, like you are watching a movie of someone else’s kinda sad life.

Despite what other people may think, this does not mean that the infertile person experiencing this is “crazy” or “weird”. It’s just a form of grief and loss- albeit one that many fertile people can’t understand. It’s kind of like… like the way after someone you love dies, or a romantic relationship ends, it is all that is in your mind. Everything else fades to the background and becomes unimportant. You think about it when you wake up in the morning and you are still thinking about it as you lie in bed and try to fall asleep. But in this case you’re mourning something that never was instead of something that was and is no longer.

I find that this is the part of infertility grief that a lot of people have trouble with… including the person experiencing it. To me, it is one of the toughtest parts of being a childless mother: getting people to understand that the grief and pain are real… getting them to see that while I physically have no children, the desire for those children is so strong that they have become something nearly physical in my life.

So yes, “you who never arrived” now means different things to me. But in a way it is still a love poem, only now it’s a love poem to the babies that only exist in my mind and heart, and have not yet found a way to this world through me.

“Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, seperate, in the evening…”

There is hope yet, and I need to keep remembering that. There is hope and time yet.