I know the pain of infertility – and talking about it helps
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Version 0 of 1. Infertility. Even the word isn’t straightforward. It does not quite mean what it seems to mean. It is not the same as a medically proven inability to conceive. Infertility is not so much a diagnosis as a retrospective description of circumstance. It is often not attributed to any cause, and its symptoms are the lack of something, a failure of the past to have provided something for the future.And the grief associated with it is just as complicated.I have known grief before: I have lost dear family members, and I have experienced gut-hollowing relationship-breakdowns. Those losses have been terrible events, points of excruciating pain which must be endured and assimiliated over time. But unless something goes wrong in that process, that grief can progress: it is, in many ways, clear and uncomplicated. But this grief, this other grief, has no event and no end. This grief has me crying strange unpredictable tears that seem almost physiological. This is the pain of infertility.In Australia, heterosexual couples are diagnosed as infertile if they haven’t conceived after one year of trying, and that diagnosis-period is reduced to six months if the woman is over 35. It is a useful marker for medical professionals: it allows categorisation, it triggers progression through the system, and it dictates best practice for different stages of treatment. But it is a situation-based diagnosis: despite trying to conceive I have no baby, and therefore I am infertile. However, as normal couples only have a 15-25% chance of conceiving on any given cycle, there is often the chance that an "infertile" couple has just so far been unlucky. Rather than being a positive, this is actually a complicating factor; my husband and I are still tied to hope by the possibility that we could get pregnant at any moment. But we don’t. Again and again. And we grieve the loss. But the loss of what? There is no pregnancy, no child, and therefore no real grief. But when there is no single cathartic moment which allows one to whole-heartedly give in to that grief, no way to point directly to something and say "that, that is what I’ve lost", then there is no means to assimilate grief. And when there is no publicly known event to create the expectation in others that we might be grieving, it becomes a private pain, and therefore somehow questionable, invalid: the grief can seem to be over nothing more than a cycle of trying and hoping and trying and hoping – and to grieve that seems faintly ridiculous.And yet, research shows that women dealing with infertility experience as much stress as women dealing with cancer. And anecdotal indication from some women who have experienced both cancer and infertility is that they find the infertility harder to deal with. Perhaps because they can can talk about the cancer. Perhaps because the stress and grief of cancer is about a recognised terrible "thing" rather than a "lack".We expect understanding of our stress and grief over a death or a divorce or the diagnosis of an illness. We just have to reveal the situation in a single sentence, and all empathy and understanding are afforded us. It is hard to use the same few words of explanation and have people understand of the real stress of infertility. It is difficult to truly convey the way infertile people are landed in a quagmire of unpredictable triggers, are let loose into a dangerous maze of emotional sinkholes, have fear and panicinserted into their very beings in a way that can’t easily be dislodged. The experience of infertility is not easily expressed as a single thing, no few words encapsulate the way it interferes with almost every aspect of our lives and relationships: home, marriage, sex, food, future, friends, family, parents, in-laws. A person can't just say one word, as they can with illness or bereavement, and have the scale of it be understood. The attempts I’ve made to talk about it with friends and family have often left me gawping like a fish, unable to find a starting point: there are too many facets, too many factors that run into and around one another. Because infertility is huge, and then it is also nothing at all, life is no different than it was yesterday. One just cooks some dinner and does the dishes and it’s a night like any other night.I have been in two minds whether to write about this. I’ve hidden the worst of it even from my nearest and dearest. But after two years, I’ve weakened behind the mask. I feel like the experience is changing who I am, and not for the better. I feel embarrassed to be in so much pain about it. I’m afraid to speak about it, in case the pain shows through. I hate being weak in this world that is allergic to vulnerability. And I'm not immune to the taboo. My infertility feels shameful. I feel gauche writing about it. And given the stereotypes surrounding childless women, I’m discovering first hand how confronting writing about it is, and how much courage it takes.Type the words "coping with infertility" into your internet search engine, and you will conjure thousands upon thousands of personal stories of complicated grief and heartbreak. One in six couples experience infertility. It is not uncommon. We should hear so much more about the experience in the mainstream. But we don’t. Perhaps that is why so many people seek company and solace in the relative anonymity of the internet.Infertile couples are left in a difficult double-bind. Silence is a problem. Silence compounds complicated grief. Silence keeps ignorant those who don’t understand from experience, it leaves them unable to predict the world of pain that might be invoked by that seemingly harmless question of asking a childless couple if they are going to have kids. Silence leaves those people who are coping with infertility unsupported by their communities. And the silence also keeps the experience mysterious, and therefore, pitiable and dangerous, something to be feared. So while I feel embarrassed even to be talking about it, I think an ashamed silence is the greater evil. Beginning to talk about this multi-faceted pain might be the first step towards diminishing its isolating impact on those one in six of us who are confronted with it: those friends of yours, your neighbours, your family members who are going through a life-altering grief without you even knowing it. |