Dental Floss Pt 2 - Living through Infertility

Infertility - The Reaction

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This is part 2 of my blog series on the road to having our child
Introduction: Right Here
Part 1 can be found: Right Here
Part 2: *YOU ARE HERE*
Part 3 can be found: Right Here
Part 4 can be found: Right Here
Part 5 can be found: Right Here
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    This entry is going to require a pretty strong warning.  This is going to be all about the emotional warfare that will be encountered for anyone living with infertility.  This post will contain the raw, unfiltered feelings felt.  Therefore, examples will be given of things said or done that you very well may have done yourself in talking to us or someone struggling with infertility.  You simply must understand that for actions or things said to make it to the "example" list means you're not the only one so I urge that you do not feel bad or offended in my bringing it up.  Understand that even if it hurt us we realize everything people said to us was always meant with the best of intentions.

Uncomfortable

    If ever there was a word for what it's like living with infertility, it's that.  Uncomfortable.  You know when you've sat in a chair too long and you just can't quite wiggle into the right spot where you can just relax?  Welcome to every day of your life now.  It's purely uncomfortable.  If you're like me it's uncomfortable because every other uncomfortable situation you've encountered in life you've been able to quickly identify the "out", the "end date".  Once identified you can bear the discomfort because you've seen the end.  You know when and where it's coming from.  With infertility you simply don't know.  The doctors can't help with answers and all you have in front of you are a mountain of questions that keep piling higher and higher: How long should we keep trying?  Should we try IVF?  Where will we get the money for IVF?  How long will it take to save the money?  Will it even work?  Can we handle the emotional impact of suffering through the IVF process only to have it fail?  Should we just abandon a pregnancy and move to diving into adoption?  Where should we adopt from?  How long will the adoption process take?  Where will we get money to adopt? I WANT TO BE A PARENT RIGHT NOW!

    It.  Doesn't.  Stop.

Now more than ever is when it is most important to take things one small step at a time.  Feel the progress forward and then turn to something else while you wait to arrive at the next step.  It was in this time that I took an alternative viewpoint and realized we had a chance to make sure we did the things we knew we wouldn't be able to do as easily with a kid around.  We went on date nights, we went on vacations, we sporadically went out with friends on a whim, we sat in quiet and enjoyed a good movie, and it all felt more meaningful.  When you turn your attention from your struggles and focus on what you have now that you won't later and acknowledge that fact, it makes everything more enjoyable.  More limited.  Keep yourself from dwelling on the elephant in room, but keep feeding that elephant when it's time so that you can feel a sense of momentum forward.

    For us we laid out a plan, we decided we would do IUI's for X amount of time, after that we would move towards adoption or IVF but since both required a significant amount of money we built in an acceptable down time of X amount of months to save money and we would start either IVF or adoption at X point in time.  That's the kind of game planning that keeps you from going insane.  If you need time off from trying to get pregnant to save money for the next big decision don't leave it open ended.  Define your plans so it's harder to dwell on the issue because you have plan.

Strange Behavior

    Ok, here's the deal.  The longer infertility lasts the more uncomfortable it becomes for everyone involved.  You start to want to talk about it less and less because there's nothing new to say and that makes you sad.  Your friends and family don't want you to feel like they don't care so they will continually try to sugar coat things to try and make your situation feel less sad.  In the end both parties will be tempted to fall into saying/thinking some things that only build stress.

    Here are some examples of things people say in an effort to make you feel better:

• "Be glad you don't have kids!  Enjoy this time while you can because you can't go back!"  No, as a matter of fact I am quite NOT glad that I don't have kids, so it's really hard to take direction to reverse my feelings because I've decided I am ready and very much want to have a child.  While, there is much truth and genuine value to the statement, the approach is a bit painful.  As I previously mentioned it is very important to enjoy the time and do the things that you can't later but proper delivery of the message is key.
• "Well look at the bright side, at least you can always adopt."  This one is touchy for us on a specific level.  Adoption is something very close to our hearts and we have an incredible niece in our family who was adopted from Ethiopia.  So we have nothing against adoption and we plan to adopt one day regardless of how many biological kids we can/can't have.  The part of this statement that is tough to hear is the part where it sounds like adoption is reserved for people "like us".  As if kids around the world only need to be adopted by people that can't have their own children.  Therefore if someones adopted a child then clearly they've exhausted all other means of trying to have a kid.  That's just not how adoption should be approached or treated.
• "Relax, everything will be fine."  While I appreciate your attempt to instill calm over me and our situation I am disappointed by your lack of creativity.  The problem in this messaging is it walks a fine line between comforting and belittling my problem.  Yes, getting the point across that "everything works out" and all storms weathered yield sunny days is a very important point to get across because it's true.  However, knowing how and when to say it are crucial here.

    Those are some examples of genuine attempts at comfort that usually come across the wrong way.  Was all of that meant to be an attack on good people trying to be supportive?  Absolutely not.  You should always continue to pour your support upon loved ones in bad times because the knowledge that someone is thinking about you and cares for your situation always outweighs their tact of delivery.  The point is that the situation is what it is and this is how certain statements are received after awhile.

    This idea of poor form is not a one-way street.  As a couple struggling with infertility there will be a large number of thoughts/actions that you'll fall subject to.  For example:

• By far and away the #1 thing you will be tempted to do is judge other peoples parenting.  This is disastrous.  Sure, there's that segment of society who's parenting we all question, but as striving parents you become more acute, you pay closer attention to things, and you try to compare what you'd do.  This can be an OK thing at times because we all do it in things far beyond just parenting.  It becomes not OK when you start to take the comparisons far enough to think things like "if they can have a kid and be that kind of parent why is it so hard for me to be a parent?!  Just give me a kid and I'll show you how it's done!" right there you've crossed a dangerous line that will be a feeding ground for more negative thoughts to grow regarding your situation and the domino's will fall.
• Another thought that will be all too enticing: "They just don't understand what I am going through, this is so hard, everyone else has it so easy!"  There's a lot to be learned by a lot of people across a lot of different situations here.  Just because someone has what you want does not equate to "having it easy".  This was a huge struggling point for both of us in the first year or so of trying to get pregnant.  Babies were everywhere!  It seemed every new announcement of a pregnancy slowly kept getting closer and closer to home.  It started with distant acquaintances  then it became distant friends, then it became closer friends, etc.  With every new announcement it felt like life was pushing a new knife deeper and deeper into our hearts.  I believe I counted somewhere around 28 pregnancies (thanks to Facebook of course :-)).  It wasn't until we saw more of other peoples stories that we began to see that everyone struggles.  The extremely painful number of miscarriages endured to get to that pregnancy, or the emergency birth and subsequent hospitalization of that baby, the relationship or financial stress brought on by having a kid, and the birth of one baby only to have a last minute discovery send the child into emergency, life threatening, open heart surgery and a subsequent 5+ months of hospitalization with pure uncertainty of survival followed by a year of very specific special in home care.  No one has it "easy".  We all have it "different".

    From this point the days dragged on, the months stacked up and hope began to fade as we approached the end of our IUI plans and proceeded forward to taking a break from pregnancy attempts and save money for IVF or adoption.  These months were far and away the hardest yet.  It was hard enough to have to start writing a whole new sub-chapter of our new life's chapter of becoming parents but then to have to actually accept that we were already at the close of that sub-chapter and needed to move to the next.  It's just an incredible weight placed on your back.  There have been a handful of moments through this process that have made me sick to my stomach to see,  Pushing through this unknown, watching my wife struggle with all of this, placing blame on herself in ways I could rarely relieve was the first of these moments.  Where the discomfort of the situation was magnified by the fact that all courses of action to help her, aside from holding her tight, were stripped from my hands.

    It was somewhere around this point that I decidedly started to hate the fact that I had associated the Mega Floss spool with this whole situation, as the spool was now around halfway gone and nothing but lots of time lay before us.  Plenty of time to polish that floss off revealing another overzealous prediction of what seemed like a sure-fire bet at the time it was made.

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This is part 2 of my blog series on the road to having our child
Introduction: Right Here
Part 1 can be found: Right Here
Part 2: *YOU ARE HERE*
Part 3 can be found: Right Here
Part 4 can be found: Right Here
Part 5 can be found: Right Here
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