Ruining Relationships

My life over the last 10 years have taken some unexpected turns.  Once I realized that infertility was a part of my life, I knew that it could easily dominate my daily thought.  I could also have predicted my willingness to sink thousands of dollars into testing and procedures as well as my husbands more hesitant approach.

One thing I could not have predicted was how many relationships I would let infertility ruin.  I acknowledge that many of the relationships have fallen by the wayside because of my feelings and unwillingness or inability to be happy for people without riders attached.

As part of a variety of infertility support groups, one thing remains constant and clear: We have all allowed infertility to ruin relationships.

The concept that families consist of a parent(s) and children is something we are taught from a very early age. The Standards of Learning for Family Life in my awesome Commonwealth of Virginia for the kindergarten level states:

The student will recognize that everyone is a member of a family and that families come in many forms. 

Descriptive Statement: This includes a variety of family forms: traditional or two-parent families-mother, father, and children; extended families-relatives other than the immediate family living in the home; single-parent families; adoptive families; foster families; families with stepparents; and other blended families.

Even in school at the tender age of 5 children are taught that families include children so it's no wonder that as adults, if we want children and can't have them, we feel like a complete failure.

I feel daily that my body is broken, so when I see women around me who appear to have perfectly functioning reproductive systems, I'm envious of them and there's no way around that for me.  The exception are women who I know have been struggled with infertility as well.

For them I can cheer loud and proud.

For everyone else, it hurts to hear about pregnancy after pregnancy.  In some cases, the recipient of my relationship-ruining isn't even a woman of child-bearing years or even a woman at all.

The story I'm about to share, though true and personal, is only a sample of what women fighting infertility become a part of.

Someone I grew up with always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and have 6-8 children.  She "struggled" to conceive her first, according to her, because it took 9 months.  Six years later, when her fourth child has turned 2, she whines in tears about how she's had three miscarriages (all before 8 weeks gestation) in the past year to me--a woman who has fought true infertility for a decade and had just lost a baby at 12 weeks.

A few weeks later this same woman announced she is 12 weeks pregnant.  Doing a touch of math leads to the obvious conclusion that she was pregnant during her whine fest and knew about it.

Logically I know I should be happy that this woman I've known and loved for most of my life, and who knows what it's like to lose a baby (although I can attest to the fact that losing at 12 weeks is *much* harder than losing at 6-7 weeks), is getting her dream, even if it's not quite as fast or efficient as she'd hoped.

But I can't.  I just can't.  I feel like she lied to me and it hurts that she got pregnant four times in 8 months and still had her take home baby while it takes me anywhere from 13-18 months just to get pregnant and even then I have a confirmed 67% rate of loss.

Our first children were three months apart.  I have 2, she has 5.  I can't even read emails about her and deleted the birth pics without even looking at them because it's too painful.

I remember when she announced her first pregnancy.  I'd already been actively trying for over a year and had been moderately trying for 18 months before that.  I sat in a dressing room at Kohl's and sobbed.  My soul was wracked with torment.  I felt shattered and betrayed.  And with each of her subsequent pregnancy announcements, I've had to relive the shattered feeling.

Have I ruined relationships?  Yes.  But I've done it because when it comes to infertility, ruining the relationship is safer than exposing myself to unnecessary pain.

I Should Have Walked Out

One of the very real side effects of infertility is dealing with people who have large numbers of children.  I am a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon church.

Within many religious cultures, large families are quite normal and the LDS church is no exception.  My own brother has 5 children and my sister has 5 and intends to have several more.

Today during Sacrament meeting (this would be the main meeting within the 3 hours of church we attend each week) a mother was asked to talk about families.

You see, within the LDS church, we don't have paid clergy.  All positions are filled by the members of the church.  The sermons are given by members of the congregation, frequently one or two speakers are between the ages of 12-18 years and the remaining 2-3 speakers are adults.

Normally, those who speak spend hours preparing their talk (sermon) and will have a couple of weeks' notice as well as a topic to address.  It was clear that today's first adult speaker was talking about families, which in and of itself shouldn't have been a problem for me.

Today that wasn't the case.  She started off with mentioning the names and ages of her 5 children and the entire rest of the talk was about her role as a mother and how hard, yet rewarding, motherhood is.

I am a mother, so why did this bother me?  I've asked myself this over and over and I can't come up with a solid answer.  All I can think is that I have some pent up jealousy.  I would love to have 5 children and I know I am strong enough emotionally and financially to support them.

The other part I think is that this mother clearly couldn't think about family dynamics that were different from hers.  Sitting in that congregation were families that had very different backgrounds.  Divorce, death of a father then subsequent remarriage of the mother, half-siblings, step-siblings, and a childless couple.  There may have been families there dealing with abuse, death of a child, or other situations that didn't model this speaker's Ideal.

I sat there listening and then as the pain set in as she gushed about how wonderful motherhood to five was, I tried my hardest to tune out her words.  I was unsuccessful.  I should have stood up and left the chapel rather than continuing to subject myself to what was tantamount to emotional torture.  Instead, I sat there trying to beat level 350 on Candy Crush and then trying to hold my three year old without crying.

My pain was obvious enough to my little girl that she started to cry.  Great heaping sobs wracked her little body while the rest of the congregation sang a hymn about families.  It took all my effort to comfort her and try to hush her when all I wanted to do was join in.

I should have left, but didn't.

That's a mistake I won't be making again.  I'd rather cry in a deserted classroom or on the front steps than try to keep the tears at bay while I sit there to be polite and subject my child to my pain.