Lets talk about it.

Note: To our families, this may be a difficult post to read. I'm warning you now!

Note: I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago, but was trying to find the courage to post it. I also want you all to know that I have A's consent to share these personal details with you.

Infertility, that is.

A couple weeks ago, I posted this to my Facebook page:

Jimmy Fallon had just done an interview with Today, after welcoming a baby girl via surrogate. In the interview, he discussed how difficult it was for him and his wife to conceive and how hard it is to wade through the ocean called infertility. That hashtag, #thanksjimmyfallon, floated around Facebook and Twitter for the next couple of days with messages like mine. A thanks for speaking up about something that people are still so afraid of talking about.

I was puttering around on Facebook today, went to my profile page, and just started scrolling. This status update caught my eye and made me realize that if I am grateful for people who speak up about infertility, why couldn't I be one of them?

So here I am, about to open up about something that I've been terrified to talk about. I'm doing it now because if those of us affected continue to be afraid, then infertility wins. It beats us, and I'm not ready to stop fighting just yet.

The background story: A and I have been trying to conceive for almost nineteen months. In January, I was diagnosed with poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (or PCOS) and put on Metformin (a drug typically used for those with insulin resistance, a symptom of PCOS) in hopes that it would help me ovulate (as I don't on my own). It didn't work, so I was referred to an OB and given a prescription for Clomid, my first fertility treatment. We got pregnant our first cycle on Clomid, but in April it ended as an ectopic pregnancy (I required emergency surgery and lost my left tube). We are on cycle five post loss, and our fourth on Clomid. No additional successes so far.

In February, after going to my first OB appointment, I struggled internally with how I viewed myself and our journey towards having a child. I would ask myself, "Am I infertile?" on a daily basis. For whatever reason, I needed some kind of label but as soon as infertility would cross my mind I'd do a mental head shake and move on.

Infertility was a scary word to me, and sometimes I worry that it's made me a scary person. A lot of the time, I feel like I'm tricking the people around me into thinking I'm happy-go-lucky, positive, optimistic, etc. If only they knew (and I guess they will now) how I'm actually feeling most of the time. 

Most of the time, I'm sad. Sad because I can't have what I desperately want, sad because I can't give A what he desperately wants, sad because I had the chance to be a mother and my body failed me. 

Other times, I feel guilty. It's because of my body that we can't get pregnant. It's because of my body that we lost our baby. "Why can't my body do the one thing a woman's body is suppose to know how to do?" I've asked myself that almost every day since February, after we had been trying for a year. Guilt is probably the hardest emotion for people who haven't been to "this place" to understand. It sounds so silly that I would blame these things on myself, but that is an unfortunate side affect of our journey. Guilt and blame are constants in my mind now.

Sometimes, when I'm in a really dark place, the bitterness and anger appears. I resent those who get pregnant easily while trying, and even more-so, the people who have "oopsie" pregnancies. I question why one person gets to have a child, but I don't. I cringe when hearing pregnancy or birth announcements, because I want one of my own. When I'm in that frame of mind, nothing helps and everything makes it worse. 

The hardest thing about infertility are the words of advice or "support" that people hand out. There are some days that it is extremely difficult for me to remember that people are coming from a place of compassion when they say these things, because normally after I hear them I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. Below I've listed a few different things that you should avoid saying to someone dealing with infertility and/or loss.

• "You're still so young, you have lots of time!"
• "You need to relax. Stressing out isn't helping anything."
• "It could be worse."
• As an aside, I hate this sentence under any circumstance. Just because you, general you, think it could be worse doesn't mean that this isn't the absolute worst scenario for me, general me.
• "If it's meant to be, it will happen."
• "At least you know you can get pregnant." 
• Related to miscarriage and loss. This was something that I heard from a lot of people after our loss, including the operating doctor at the hospital! This is not reassuring. It is not comforting. Knowing I can get pregnant doesn't erase the hurt of knowing that I couldn't keep the baby. Please, if you know of a woman (couple) who has miscarried avoid this cliched line at all costs.

At this point, a lot of people would probably say that infertility doesn't define them. But, I think it does define me (in a small way)... and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is apart of who I am. There are aspects of myself and of my marriage that I don't think I would have discovered had it not been for this journey. Because of infertility, I am a much stronger person. I have proved to myself that I can make it through anything. Sure, there may be some tears and emotional breakdowns along the way, but I will get through it. Mine and A's marriage has also gained strength through infertility. We communicate now more then we ever did, and we are confident that the other person is going to support us 100% - no matter what. If nothing else, those are two extremely important things to come out of our journey so far. 

Infertility may not have been our first choice, or even our last, but it is the path we're on and there's no stopping us now!