Infertility Never Goes Away

I think, somewhere in the dark unreachable recesses of my mind, I thought infertility would go away once I became a mother. Not that I would become fertile, but that the unfairness, the raw emotions of not being able to conceive and bare life, it would somehow lessen when children started calling me Mommy. I see now how hopefully naïve that unconscious thought was because infertility never really goes away. It does lessen with time, the sharp sting of a pregnancy announcement loses its burn after a few minutes or hours, not days or weeks like before. But, the barb is still there, the sting is still felt, even if the recovery happens more rapidly. I was recently reminded the sharp contrast between the fertile and infertile world. I had been referred to the Weight Management clinic by my family doctor and had been attending nutrition classes. As a cap-off to the nutrition classes, I was scheduled to meet with a dietician to talk about my specific nutrition needs. We talked about how hard it is to get in work-out time with little kids and a busy life. At one point, after talking about trying to squeeze in work-out time on the weekends, she mentioned this is just the season of life I am in and soon the little ones would be independent teenagers and I would forget all about life with young children. “It’s like child birth,” she said and I felt just as if the words had slapped me across the face. Of course she thinks my children are my biological children, it is the default assumption. But, having never experienced child birth, I cannot compare anything to it and that realization and recognizing that in conversing about children with strangers I will always have to debate on whether or not to “out” myself or just let them think what they think. In this case, I opened my mouth but then quickly shut it and I didn’t tell her I could not compare anything to child birth, having never experienced it myself. I probably won’t see her again, even if I decide to take the weight loss meds, so she doesn’t need to understand I don’t fit into the default setting of conception, birth, motherhood. Infertility is and always will be a part of my life, I cannot control when or how it will sneak up on me. But, I can control how I react and my hope is I can react like I did this morning; I heard it, the words hit me, but then I shrugged them off because the fertile world does not see the infertile and I don’t have to be their introduction to reality. I can choose to not out myself and just go on with my day. I imagine, if I had been able to have a biological child, I would struggle immensely with not telling everyone the baby was a verifiable miracle because I wasn’t able to have children. Infertility never goes away, you just get wiser in not letting it control your life.

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