Infertility is a very delicate topic. I’m going to do my best to describe it from my point of view. There is no way I can relate to every woman who has suffered. I can only speak of what I know.
A part of me has long moved on from my infertility (it’s hard to convince people of my experience when I have three beautiful children, including a set of twins!) but lately, it’s been coming up more and more often. As a mom of twins, I’m often asked the most absurd questions by complete strangers. (I promise to post more on this one day. It’ll be a good laugh!)
One very common question is, “Are they natural?” I understand the context of the question. They basically want to know if the twins were created from infertility treatments, but the wording of the question pains me.
Are they natural? You wouldn’t ask this about just one baby, would you? And yet so many babies are not “natural” in respect to this question. Well, I’m here to tell you that every baby, yes every single one, no matter how that baby was created or what it took to get that baby here happy and healthy, is natural!
I’m honored to get the opportunity to spread information about infertility to the readers out there. So many people have no idea what it’s like. And so many others simply feel relieved to have someone understand. Today, I’ll talk about the day we found out about our infertility.
In early 2007, I saw my OB for a normal annual exam. It was at that time that I confessed to her that we’d been trying to get pregnant. I cried as I told her it’d been 4 months and that I just didn’t know what I was doing wrong. She gave me a generic statistic about how women coming off of birth control could take up to two years to get pregnant, but to reassure me that nothing was wrong, she did some ultrasounds and ran some blood work. She also had my husband provide a semen sample.
About two weeks later, while at work, I received a phone call that will forever be implanted in my memory. The nurse was emotionless and said simply, “Based on the results of your tests, we are no longer able to treat you. You will not be able to get pregnant on your own. We’re referring you to Dr. _____ and have made an appointment for you to take place on …” It was about this time that I was crumpled on the floor behind the teller line, trying to not make a scene but what else was I to do? The nurse said very little else. She gave me the information for a reproductive endocrinologist (infertility specialist), specified that it was my husband’s results causing the concern, but rather than having any answers to my questions, she simply kept repeating that I needed to go to this follow-up appointment and go from there.
I cried. I couldn’t move. My boss told me to take a minute to gather myself together and I looked at her like she had just stabbed me in the stomach. Take a minute? I was just told that I could never have children on my own. I grabbed my purse and keys and simply told her I was leaving. I said I’d be back as soon as I could but that I just needed to leave. I drove the 15 minutes or so to see my mom at work. I screamed while I was driving. I was crying so hard, the tears were blocking my vision. It sounds like a scene from a horror movie but it was my reality. And it’s the reality for millions of women around the world.
I went back to work an hour or so later. I was numb as I finished my shift. I just kept playing the conversation over and over in my mind. But more than anything, I simply couldn’t figure out how to tell my husband. There was no way I was doing it over the phone so I just kept working. That night when I got home, I sat him down on the bed. I took his hand and I just said it. “Honey, we can’t get pregnant.” I went on to describe the activity from that day. I don’t even remember my words, I simply remember his eyes. They went blank and tears slowly started rolling down his cheek. The only part of that conversation I remember is when he asked me if I was leaving him. He knew how much I wanted to be a mom and was devastated to learn that he was keeping me from my dream. And it was at that moment that I realized that being a mother wasn’t as important as having that man by my side. I knew we could get through anything. It was a hard several years (which I’ll write more about over time) but we did survive. If you’ve recently experienced the horrific day I described above, just know that you too, will survive.
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Category: PregnancyTags: Heather C.
