A pregnancy pact. The new Spears offspring, . The NYT article on infertility where the comments ranged from “you’re selfish not to adopt” to “you’re pathetic for not moving on”. Baby Borrowers. Bad few days for the infertiles.
Even though I’m pregnant right now, I’m still infertile and I always will be.
I know that’s a difficult concept to wrap your mind around if you haven’t been there. It’s like being a survivor of anything traumatic. I’ve heard comparisons to cancer and alcoholism, but those are so much bigger in the grand scheme. But at the same time, when you are in the midst of all the treatments, decisions, disappointments, devistations, losses and hopelessness, it feels like the biggest thing in the world.
The insidious part is that it just never lets up. Every month offers hope of a miracle this time, every month the rug is pulled out from under you. And on the months where hope begins to soar, reality crashes in and the fall is greater and greater. The internal part of you that holds your soul gets chipped away at with each of these disappointments and they roll into each other and grow like a Vegas Jackpot that you never seem to win. The scars don’t make you any stronger, except that they remind you that things heal eventually. Most of the time. And those who think that choosing adoption or a child-free life are easier options are just mistaken. Every path in this journey has it’s own series of pitfalls, falling boulders, chance cards that send you back 5 places. You just don’t realize it until you’re looking down each one of the roads that snake out like Medusa’s hair, wondering which way your path lies.
Seeing all these stories in the news of young’uns taking maternity so lightly just burns me. Jealous? Hell, yeah, I am. I wish that the ease in my life had come attached to my ability to conceive, but it hasn’t. I know I’m lucky in a thousand other ways, but it’s difficult to give those things the weight they deserve in comparison to the 500 lb. hungry, constipated Gorilla of wanting a child and not being able to have one.
We had set our life up as though baby would arrive at any day. We were responsible and old before our time. Our whole life centered on a reality that wasn’t ours, a lie. How we worked through that and came to the decisions we did will be a long post another day. I’m so very thankful for what I have, but the end result is that the resentment never seems to quite go away.
I’ve asked other women who are infertiles with children if it ever does and the answer is an almost unanimous, slightly regretful “No. The resentment never totally goes away.” They still feel the pang, no matter how much they don’t want to and how much they want to deny it and how much they want to choose a different reaction. It’s an imperfect, very human reaction. And it’s ok. It is what it is.
