National Infertility Awareness Week and The Psychology of Infertility

We are at the end of National Infertility Awareness Week (#NIAW), and a big issue that I've seen a lot of is the psychology of infertility and the toll it takes on us. The theme for this year's NIAW is Listen Up! When talking to people with infertility, all the technical medical stuff is irrelevant. Show some understanding. For some of us, at certain points along the journey, we are almost always hurting, our anxiety is high and depression is very present, and just listening can make a world of difference. When I was a little girl and asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I remember answering, "I want to be a mom." That and possibly also a hair dresser. At the age of 31, I'm not really interested in doing my dolls' hair anymore, but I do know that one of the things that has stuck with me forever is that I want / need to be a mom.

1 in 8 couples experience infertility. This means that you all know at least one person going through it. Friends, family, coworkers. 

Kindness and Gratitude

I want to take this post to be thankful. I’ve talked a lot about people who have said inappropriate things over the years in my effort to improve relationships and create more sensitivity and dialogue. It doesn’t change that what people may have said in my past was hurtful, but I feel like I’ve come out the other side to a place where I realize that most everything is said with good intentions. I feel much calmer now and I can recognize where the other side is coming from - something that even a year ago was still difficult for me. On the other hand, I have been the recipient of so much kindness, especially over the past 6 months since opening up about our infertility on facebook and especially recently after starting a blog.

I have learned that the more vulnerable we make ourselves, the more open we are to receiving love, support, and kindness. I used to believe otherwise. Two of the reasons I didn’t open up earlier was because of fear of receiving criticism and unsolicited advice, and that I didn’t want people to pity me. Pity and sensitivity are 2 different things - I wanted others to be sensitive to my situation, but not to pity me. We all get dealt different cards in life, and everyone is dealing with something with various levels of challenge, and I have no interest in receiving pity from others.

Starting Over (again and again and again...)

There’s been a lot on my mind the past few days. I guess it started a couple months ago when my mom ran into a woman she knew with her daughter who was born through surrogacy. They got to talking and my issues came up and she highly recommended this doctor that she went to in the States. Turns out he’s one of the leaders in the field, so we finally had a chat with him on Thursday. Now, by this point in my IVF experience, after being a lab-rat for so long, I feel like quite the professional - I know the protocols inside and out, have done “everything”, and have a pretty good idea of what my problems and issues are. Well, it turns out that there is probably a better protocol and, in my words, we’ve been doing it wrong. Now, all my years of treatments have provided quite a lot of information that we didn’t have. But I’m now all confused again and I’m not sure if I can just start over. When you keep doing the same thing with the same [bad] result over and over that is pretty insane. But starting over takes a lot of work, I’ve done it so many times already, and honestly, I’m pretty fed up with it.

Infertility is not like a video game where you get a “few lives” before it’s game over and you have to start from the beginning. You can never go back to a certain point that was working, and pick it up from there. Failed embryo transfer - game over. Cancelled cycle because there’s no response to the drugs - game over. Get a yeast infection from the drugs - game over. Miscarriage - game over. No embryos that make it to Day 5 (blastocyst) - game over (even if 20 of them got fertilized like in our last cycle but didn’t make it).

Finding Ways to Deal with our Surroundings

In my last post, I talked about how our environment, or the people around us, often make infertiles feel bad by using conventional methods of support. Today I'd like to talk about how we can work on ourselves, because who are we kidding, it's hard to change everyone.

To be honest, I wish I was better at dealing with all the mean and inappropriate things people have said to me over the years. I know that most of the time, comments come from a good place, from those with good intentions, who are simply trying to be helpful. And I do appreciate the efforts. I used to get really hurt and angry at friends, family, coworkers, and complete strangers for making comments, but the truth is, that we never told them anything, so how could I blame them for being hurtful.

Offering Support to Infertiles

There are a number of reasons why we were so quiet for so long about our infertility situation. One was that we were hopeful. We kept thinking, why tell everyone if it’s going to work this month? It was also just a painful topic to talk about and we didn’t want any unsolicited advice from people who really aren’t familiar with the process. Once we did start telling people who were close (immediate family and one or two of my close friends), the type of support is very conventional (I’ll explain what I mean by this very soon) and usually not helpful. In fact, it often makes the feelings worse and would just make me angry. I would remind myself that it’s coming from a good place, etc etc, they love me etc, but would mostly just piss me off.

I think back to early situations of offering support to friends. When I was a kid and a friend would fall, we would say something like “Don’t cry. It’s just a scrape. Let’s get it cleaned up and we’ll put a bandaid on it and everything will be okay.” Most support ends with “and everything will be okay”. Later in life it was “my boyfriend broke up with me” and the response is along the lines of “you were too good for him. He doesn’t deserve someone as amazing as you. You’ll find someone better. Time will heal and everything will be okay.” Seeing the pattern?