***April 19-25, 2015 is
National Infertility
Awareness Week and the theme this year is "You Are Not Alone". I am
taking part by sharing stories from women that I personally know who
have experienced infertility first hand. Did you know that 1 in 6
couples experience some form of infertility? Someone you know is
probably struggling with infertility and you may or may not even know,
since it is often a taboo subject. Help break the silence and raise
awareness by sharing these posts on social media or with friends and
family. For more information about NIAW, please click here. This post is the second in my 2015 NIAW "You Are Not Alone" series. To see more stories, scroll to the bottom of this page for
links.***
My daughter is beautiful, but she doesn’t make infertility any less ugly.
If you would like to read more about my journey, please take a look at my blog, Inch by Inch, Row by Row.
“How It Feels To Be
Infertile Me”
Every year, I ask my freshmen to write an essay based on Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It
Feels To Be Colored Me.” The twist, of
course, is that they have to choose an adjective to describe themselves, then
craft their own essay based on personal anecdotes. In five years of assigning
the paper, I’ve never written it myself. Today I am.
“Infertile” is an ugly label. It’s a medical diagnosis that
seeps into your psyche, that chips away at your confidence, that begins to
drive a wedge between you and those you love. It conjures images of bitter old
women, cackling in their rocking chairs, avoiding the sight of newborn babies
at all costs. It can break a woman down to her very core, and I’ve yet to find
the cure that erases its heartache and shame.
I use the word “shame” intentionally there, for my diagnosis
of infertility is very much linked to personal guilt. Back in college, when a
child seemed a distant dream but the desire for a date Friday night was
overpowering, I began to drastically reduce my caloric intake while increasing
my physical output. By the time I was diagnosed as anorexic, my body was
covered in a thin layer of “fur,” I couldn’t sleep on my side due to jutting
hip bones, and my mom was scared to hug my fragile body too hard. The recovery
process was long and arduous, requiring both physical and emotional
intervention, but I finally came out the other side. Though anorexia still
sometimes snuck up when I least expected to see her, beckoning temptingly as I
tried on swimsuits or searched for a bridesmaid’s dress, she had mostly been
eradicated.
That is, until June 25, 2012. Jeff and I had been trying to
conceive since the previous summer. We’d actually been successful just a few
months in (which we later would learn was a near-impossibility by all
statistics and diagnoses), but we’d lost little Blueberry at just 7-8 weeks.
After a few more months of trying--both on our own and with the help of our
OB--a close friend had stepped in and offered to set up a phone consultation
for me with a doctor at the fertility clinic where she worked. On that muggy
June afternoon, I clutched the phone to my ear as I listened to the RE explain
that, after reviewing my medical records and a comprehensive questionnaire,
there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that PCOS had been an incorrect previous
diagnosis and that the subsequent treatments I’d undergone based on that
assumption were not appropriate for me. Rather, I had a condition called hypogonadotropic
hypogonadism, likely caused by my own mistreatment of my body in the years
I’d battled anorexia.
The tears waited until after I received the list of tests
we’d need to undergo, the offer to discuss payment plans with the financial
manager, and the assurances that injections and an IUI could likely get me pregnant--though
there were no guarantees about carrying to term. I remember placing the phone
gently on the dining room table, shuffling to a bench in front of an open
window, and watching tears pool on the windowsill as they rushed out of every
aching part of me. Hours later, Jeff arrived home to find me in the same
position, wracked with guilt, bowed heavily under the weight of my actions and
their repercussions. Anorexia was no longer a temptress trying to win the
battle for my affections; she now crowed victoriously from the corner,
relishing the sight of the label she had tacked above my head: “Infertile.”
In the next year, we would undergo a battery of tests and
two more surgeries: one to remove scar tissue and the second to remove another
child that my body had failed to nurture into life outside the womb. We would
watch our savings deplete as they went into the syringes Jeff had to puncture
me with nightly; we would stare at each other in exhaustion after days that
began before daylight in order to fit in monitoring before the work day. And
even when a third little baby took up residence inside me, we would still flit
between despair and hope, never knowing what news the next appointment might
bring.
And yet, somehow, in spite of that label of infertility, in
spite of our two losses, our doctor gently placed our healthy, tiny baby in our
arms on the afternoon of February 8, 2014. I had recovered from anorexia; I had
overcome infertility; I had become a mom at last.
Would that it were that simple.
Though offering raspberries on Lily’s round little belly or
watching her sturdy legs take her across the playground has forever changed the
hold anorexia held over me, she still plays her trump card from time to time.
Having Lily didn’t make me not infertile--it merely eased the ache and pain.
But it doesn’t assuage my anger when I realize we’ve run out of time and means
to give her a sibling. Yes, fertility treatments gave us this little life that
we snuggle a bit closer every day, but infertility still took away a future we
had dreamed.
My daughter is beautiful, but she doesn’t make infertility any less ugly.
If you would like to read more about my journey, please take a look at my blog, Inch by Inch, Row by Row.
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2015 NIAW "You Are Not Alone" Series
2015 NIAW "You Are Not Alone" Series
Tory, your last paragraph broke my heart. So much love, my friend.
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