Many of my friends have asked me over the years how they should approach the topic of infertility with someone who is infertile. I honestly don’t have an answer because for everyone who suffers, it’s different. And even for me, every day is a new day and I don’t know what my trigger will be or if I will even have a trigger. I have no control when it hits me. I wish I did because I would rather be at home in the arms of my husband when it does hit. It's embarassing when it hits in a public setting. And even in a situation where I am public about our struggles, I still find it hard to speak up to those around me when they do something they aren't aware of or I get hit with a trigger. We know what pain we go through daily, but we don't want to show that pain. We still feel the need to hide it, we don't want people to feel badly for us or think we are crazy. Some suffer in silence, some are open about it. But one thing I’ve noticed is that many people are hurtful and they don’t even know it and they truly had no intention to be hurtful. So to try and stop the cycle, I'm going to share some of this with you all. For the men and women who don't have the courage to speak up or speak out about it. Many in the infertility blogging community refer to them as the “mean-wells”. Mean-wells are things that people say when they truly have the best of intentions and don’t know what to say, so either to break the silence or get rid of an awkward moment people throw out these phrases.
I gotta say, I have been found guilty of these at some point or another so please know that this is not me preaching at you saying you are all wrong or place blame, it’s quite the opposite, I’m just making everyone aware. These posts are all about AWARENESS, not blame. When in doubt and you want to say something a simple, “I’m sorry, is there anything I can do?” can go a lot further than some of these. When I share these, my intention is never to get you to walk on eggshells around others, but just to be considerate of others and to help you understand why your friend may have freaked out or went suddenly silent randomly, started crying for no reason or walked away from you mid conversation.
"Just relax and it will happen."
You may think that this is helpful but in many cases, your level of relaxation has nothing to do with your infertility. To the man with a low sperm count or the woman with no eggs left, relaxation will do nothing to help them. Unless you know the intricate details of a person’s infertility, don’t assume.( It’s like going to a cancer patient, not knowing what type or level of cancer they have and saying, ah don’t worry, chemo will fix that.) And speaking from experience, I can send my hubby’s man parts on a week-long meditation and relaxation vacation and when they come back, they will work the same way. It will not magically fix our infertility. And sure, for some people, they do just need to stop thinking about it and relax, but for the majority who have struggled for more than a year or two, there are other underlying causes to the infertility that cannot be fixed without the help of fertility clinics or a qualified Reproductive Endocrinologists.
"Maybe you weren’t meant to have kids."While you may mean well with this statement, it can be one of the most hurtful statements you can ever make to a couple struggling to get pregnant. It’s like looking at a person with glasses and saying, “you have bad eyesight, maybe you were just meant to be blind.” Couples dealing with infertility mostly deal silently and want nothing more than to have children. Saying that they maybe weren’t meant to be a parent is playing on someone's mind who is already severely blaming themselves internally for their lack of fertility. Do you know how many times I’ve sat there and wondered if my lack of prayer or belief in a higher power is causing our infertility? Or whether the food I ate is causing my infertility or some higher power thinks that I don’t deserve a child? I have analyzed and over analyzed every single aspect of my life and hubby’s life to find something, ANYTHING, that I can blame it on or fix in hopes of getting pregnant. Trust me when I say that no matter what you say to us, nothing you think or say is more harmful than what we think to ourselves over and over again. Sure, we blame ourselves every single day in some way, shape or form for our infertility, but you confirming those thoughts suddenly make all the crazy thoughts true in our minds and it makes it so much worse.
"Why don’t you just adopt?"This generally pops up when you mention that you are having trouble conceiving or if you announce that you are going through with treatments. In some instances, it is fine. I have had people ask me casually in discussion “Have you considered adoption?” and have honestly answered. But this really does come down to the delivery of the question and the reason it was asked. My husband was adopted. I love adoption because it brought me to my husband and if he wasn't adopted by Debbie and Joe, I may have never crossed paths with him and fallen in love. I hope to one day be able to adopt a child, but this question, in this form, makes me see red. Especially in the context of, "I just don't understand why you just don't adopt already..."This is a very personal decision for someone to make. Adoption is not easy nor is it cheap. In many cases, expensive infertility treatments are less expensive than adoption. While I see the pluses to adoption (my husband had an amazing life and amazing parents who adopted him), it’s a difficult and very personal decision to make. Then if you do come to the decision, it can take a year or more to just complete all the required steps to be approved for adoption. (If someone is looking at international adoption, the paperwork process can take 2 years before you move onto the next step and by the end, can cost you upwards of 50 grand from beginning to end.) Lawyer fees, home studies, and courses are required just to process your application. Someone comes into your home and assesses you to determine if you are qualified enough to be a parent. This is very difficult for many to go through. People always wonder if they are a good parent, but how about being judged if you would be a good parent before you even get the chance to be one and by someone who views you in a small sampling of time. And then that decision is left in the hands of social workers and the government. Then if you pass that, you go on a wait list for a child. For some, this is an option. For others, it’s not. It’s not as easy as “oh, government, I want a child!” and the government coming back saying, “hi Kim and Chris! You want a child? Here you go!” I always use the fruit analogy when trying to explain it to someone who has no knowledge of this. Say that you really want an apple, but you're mildly allergic to it but if you take an allergy shot you can have it. But instead of that apple you really want, everyone just tells you to have an orange instead, because they are all fruit, right? So why should it matter what fruit you have? And sure, maybe the orange is good and you aren’t against it and maybe another day you would want or crave an orange, but you really wanna try to have that apple first cause it’s all you want, you’ve been craving it all day. You know how yummy that apple is going to be. You know how juicy it’s going to be. Or maybe you just never had a liking for oranges. You have nothing against it, but it’s just not for you. So you go with the apple because you gotta try, right? Yes it’s a bad example because we are comparing apples and oranges to kids but it helps some people understand the thought process of a biological child vs. adoption.
"At least you know that you can get pregnant."Repeat pregnancy loss is as much a part of infertility as any of the other causes of infertility. The chances of miscarrying your child is 1 in 3 in the first trimester (the first trimester is the first 12 weeks of pregnancy) and that is why so many people wait until they hit 12 week milestone before announcing as your chances of miscarrying drop dramatically after the first trimester. For many women, they have issues (known or unknown) that cause repeated miscarriages and some of these can happen in the second or third trimester. A miscarriage is very painful for any woman or couple. Many feel that this is a private issue to deal with but for those that do find the courage to speak out about the losses sometimes fall on deaf ears, others either do not wish to talk about the loss or throw this mean-well out there. This phrase is hurtful to a mother who has recently lost their unborn child. Unlike other deaths that we experience in life, there is rarely a service, a burial or a mourning period and if one mourns longer than the public in general thinks they should, they are not given the same consideration if it was a parent or grandparent who passed. At the end of the day, the loss is still a loss. You found out that you were growing life in you and now that is no longer there and you have to process it on top of going through the process of a D & C or in some cases in late term miscarriages or stillbirth, the mother actually goes into labor and gives birth to their dead child. Miscarriage is not something that can be brushed off and should be treated in a manner similar to other deaths in life. Consider the situation before you try to use this on people who miscarry once or even repeatedly.
"You should have started trying to have kids when you were younger."
This one really bugs me and tends to be the excuse or mean well that the general public fires out on message boards or group discussions when infertility is profiled by the media. Sure, there are a small number of people who did not bother starting to try until well into their 40’s, but in many cases, age has nothing to do with this. I’m 29 years old and we just hit our 3 year anniversary since we started trying to get pregnant. We decided that we didn’t care if I got pregnant before we got married because we were already living together for almost 2 years, engaged and together for almost 6 years at the time so we started early expecting it to take us at least 6 months to finally get pregnant. I mentioned to my doctor at shortly after 6 months that I worried something was wrong and we were told not to worry, we’re young, we have plenty of time to get pregnant. When I pushed again, he told me to wait until we’d been trying actively for 1 year. When I returned after the year wait, he started running tests. We found out after we were both tested that our cause of infertility was Male Factor Infertility. We finally got our doctors to do what we wanted but it took us almost 3 years to get the referrals and tests sent to the right doctors. A week and a half ago, we met with the fertility clinic and got checked out by an urologist that specializes in Male Factor Infertility. We finally have some direction but may have to face very expensive fertility treatments to be able to have biological children.
Sadly, our story is not uncommon. Many of the 1-8 couples struggling with infertility are under the age of 35. I’m in groups where I am one of the older members at 29. And many of the people in the 35-40 age range group who are still seeking treatments have been seeking treatments for, in some cases, up to 5-10 years and many of these couples were told that they had plenty of years left before they would have to worry.
So, to wrap it up, all of this is just meant to make you aware. We don’t make cancer jokes or inappropriate comments in front of a person suffering from cancer. We don’t make dead people jokes or inappropriate comments at funerals. The point is, other conditions are generally given consideration when you talk about it and infertility is no different. It all comes down to the delivery and the sensitivity of the questions or statements. Silence is ok. Just saying, I’m sorry, I don't know what to say or do, or I’m here if you need me can go so much further than these comments. We don’t want you to walk on eggshells, we just want you to be aware.
Questions? Comments? Please share.
