Asking Why

I have never felt compelled to join other bloggers in writing about infertility to acknowledge National Infertility Awareness Week #NIAW. The theme this year is #StartAsking and for some reason, that resonated with me. Well, to be exact, it terrified me. I have spent the past 6 ½ years hoping no one would ask me. Hoping no one would ask me when I was having a baby or why I didn’t have a baby. Hoping no one would ask me why we didn’t try a particular technique or doctor. Hoping no one would ask me why I felt like I was dying inside because my body didn’t work like a proper woman’s body. Hoping no one would ask me why we stopped pursuing a biological child and started classes to adopt. Infertility, to me, was a dark and scary secret. I didn’t breathe a word to anyone about our difficulties until we were half way through our second year of trying to conceive. Prior to then I would grin and bear any questions regarding procreation and then sob in private afterwards. The pain of infertility pushed me away from others, it held me hostage in a dark world of lost hope and broken dreams. Infertility invaded every aspect of my life and sucked out all the color and joy in my world until I was a mere shell of my former self. Infertility gutted me to the very morrow of my bones as cycle after cycle repeated the same highs of hope and lows of reality. We pursued infertility treatments and were all but promised a healthy infant, for a price. A price too steep and so our journey to a biological child came to a heart wrenching end. My insurance did not cover any infertility treatments. The only way I could get the initial work-up covered was because it was billed not as infertility, but as a medical problem due to my fluctuating cycles. Even my insurance company wanted to hide my infertility. Eventually, I lost everything as my marriage could not withstand infertility and adoption and I was left in the loneliest and darkest emotional place I have ever been. Those months are a blur, something my mind has blocked out to protect me from the insurmountable pain. Infertility had taken everything from me and I felt I had nothing left to give.

 

Over the years I have asked why more times than I care to count. Why God why? Why me? Why can’t I have a baby? Why didn’t this treatment work? Why can’t this cycle be the one? Why must I endure these invasive procedures to do something my body is supposed to do all on its own? Why must I have PCOS? Why? All of these questions drove me to an ugly place, an emotional pit where there was nothing but the pain of infertility. I fought my way out and I now am a mother to my teenage son who I adopted from the foster care system. I’m a mother-to-be for the two little children who are currently placed with me as a foster placement. I was incredibly lucky to have the baby placed with me at three days old and I have so enjoyed caring for him as he grows. But, as I didn’t realize, adoption is not a cure for infertility. I am still infertile and I still struggle with the ramifications of having PCOS. So, now, instead of asking why me, I want to ask different questions.

 

• Why are infertility treatments not covered by insurance?
• Why is infertility still taboo?
• Why are there no run/walk/golf for the cure campaigns for infertility research?
• Why is infertility not discussed in sex ed classes?
• Why are 1 in 8 couples struggling with infertility and yet it still isn’t seen in the mainstream media?

 

I don’t have answers to these questions any more than I had answers to my initial set of questions. My hope is that Resolve will have a positive impact to help educate non-sufferers about the complexities of infertility and to remove the stigma that pushes so many to hide their struggles. For more information about this campaign, please visit the Resolve.org website