Suffering in Silence

One of the main reasons that finally drove me to actually start blogging about this journey was to break the stigmatizing silence that often surrounds infertility. For many reasons, it seems to be a topic that isn't often talked about openly, and something that I personally struggled with myself for a very long time. When we first started our journey in "trying to conceive" (TTC), I was adamant in telling my husband that I didn't want to tell anyone that we were actually "trying." Initially, my thought (and hope) was that I wanted it to be this huge, exciting surprise, especially for our family and close friends, when we could finally announce that we were pregnant. In my own weird, illogical head, I wanted people's response when they found out we were pregnant to be, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea you guys were even trying!" Why this seemed so appealing to me at the time, will never make sense to anyone... really, not even me. Then once our exciting journey started to turn into the reality of facing infertility, my insistence on remaining silent grew even greater. I didn't want people to know. I didn't want people's pity. I didn't want to be "that couple" that couldn't get pregnant and that everyone felt bad for. This whole mess was hard enough, the last thing I wanted was to be viewed as the girl who couldn't have a baby. I didn't want people looking at us and thinking, "Man, I feel so bad for them. I can't imagine what they're going through." Why that was such a bad thing to me, again, no rational explanation. Then one day my husband finally said to me, "Who cares if people know and if they feel bad for us? If they genuinely care and sympathize with what we're going through, why is that such a bad thing??" I pondered this thought for awhile and finally came to the conclusion that he was right, there was no real rational reason why it was a bad thing... it wasn't a bad thing.  In fact, if people who love us want to encourage us, show support and love, and offer prayers, that actually wasn't a bad thing at all... it was a GOOD thing. So slowly, but surely I began to break the silence... and this was one of the best decisions I made.

Looking Back and Trying to Find the Why

Another blow of devastatingly negative news came yesterday afternoon (another failed IUI, but more on that at another time), again causing me to reflect back on the journey of where my husband and I started... and the determination of where to go next. Let me back up for a moment though. Our journey of "trying to conceive" (TTC) started almost 2 years ago.  To this day, I still distinctly remember the rush of excitement when we finally both agreed to start "trying." The rush of emotion that comes from the unknown, from the "wow, we're really doing this," and from the exciting thought of what could soon be still lingers in the back of my mind. However, all of those feelings slowly, but surely started to turn into what I often described as my worst nightmare. At first, as the reality slowly started to set in that we were beginning to approach the 6 month, 7 month, 8 and 9 month mark of still not being pregnant, I still refused to accept the reality that we were potentially becoming "that couple" who couldn't get pregnant. I refused to accept the fact that we may be on the brink of facing the dreaded-word: i-n-f-e-r-t-i-l-i-t-y. I kept my hope and held onto my strong faith that "when the time was right, it would happen." Well, low and behold, almost 2 years later that time still hasn't come. In the moment when we stood face to face with our arrival upon the finite 1-year mark of unsuccessfully TTC, it became official - we were facing what the medical profession diagnoses as "infertility." The one and only positive thing about that (and I use the term "positive" very lightly) is that it opened the door to being able to see a fertility specialist. However, although we had reached this point, I still held on tight to my denial and bucked hard against even making an appointment. Truly, I just didn't want to be "that couple". Reluctantly, I did make an appointment though...

Fast forward two or so months worth of intrusive (and I mean INTRUSIVE), uncomfortable, diagnostic testing to try and determine the cause of our infertility. Throughout the diagnostic process, I couldn't seem to shake the statistics from the back of my mind: approximately 40% of the time the medical cause lies within the woman; 40% of the time within the man; and 20% of the time is unexplained. WHAT?! Unexplained?? Are you serious?? How does anything in our day and age of medical advancements, diagnostic testing, and high-tech. medical exploration even remain "unexplained" regarding a diagnosis? Anyways, obviously I had convinced myself that we would no doubt fall into this "unexplained" category, which would only further my own neurosis in this whole mess. So when test after test (for both me and my husband) kept coming back as "normal" or even "above average," I was torn between this awkward emotional pull of being relieved and disappointed. On one hand, nobody roots for wanting to find something wrong with themselves, but on the other we were looking for some reason, some "explanation" for why we weren't getting pregnant. There had to be a reason, right? This whole crisis in and of itself was hard enough to accept and at this point my only solace was at least being able to have a medically-based reason as to why - is that too much to ask?