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:
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.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.
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.
