Babies are a lousy cure-all
Jul 26, 2004 Infertility
A discussion over at a little pregnant made me think about something. Having a baby, unfortunately, is not a cure for infertility.
I think it’s a myth that parenthood resolves infertility. I’ve been hanging with formerly infertile people who are now parents for some time and I always ask them (as some of you know, because I’ve talked to you on the phone) whether or not having a child cures their infertility. It’s interesting because not everyone has the same answer. I’ve met women who went on to have unplanned pregnancies after conceiving via treatment and they say that they still feel infertile. I’ve met others who have never given birth and they say that they no longer feel infertile.
I talked to several therapists who specialize in counseling patients through IF decisions about this and they say that they believe that whether or not a person feels “cured” depends on where they are in their self-work when the fated double-line (or call from the social worker or what-have-you) shows up.
I think that for many of us, the drive to get a baby cancels out so much of our self-care. We get tunnel vision and baby achievement eats up every little bit of energy we have and then when the baby arrives, we’re depleted. We haven’t taken care of the emotional resolution of our infertility.
Infertile women are at greater risk of post-partum depression because of this. We know, of course, that having a baby doesn’t solve all of our problems but it can come as a surprise that having a baby doesn’t heal all of our wounds. In fact, parenthood illuminates fissures in the relationships we have with ourselves and others.
Those of us who went to great lengths to achieve parenthood are more apt to feel guilty if we’re not enamored with our babies or being mommies right away because how can we justify the time and expense if we’re not now perfectly happy? How do we dare tell people that sometimes we wonder if we should have had our babies when those babies took so much effort?
I met a woman the other day who has a daughter via adoption and a son via a surprise pregnancy. She said that mother’s day is still the worst day of the year for her. She hates mother’s day with a passion. It reminds her of her years and years of sorrow and anger and she can’t erase that — no matter how many messy little handprint paperweights and crayoned cards she receives. She is still bitter at baby showers, still has days where seeing pregnant women at the mall is too much. She told me that she realizes now that during treatment and then during the adoption process, she was so focused on achieving parenthood that she forgot to process what was happening to her. She feels (and please note that I’m not trying to put words in her mouth, those words were there already) that she didn’t take the opportunity to grow through her infertility and instead fought it as hard as she could.
When I interviewed women this past spring (thanks again to many of you who volunteered!) and talked to therapists, I realized that we don’t get a lot of support in working through infertility outside of the specific realm of treatment. We talk a lot about treatment options and we offer each other sympathy when that annoying neighbor gets knocked up again but it’s very hard to help each other be ok with our own unique form of resolution.
Part of this, I think, is that we are blinded by our own infertility stories. It’s difficult to understand women who make choices that would not be our choices. I think we all do a very good job of saying, “I support that decision” even when it’s a decision we don’t quite comprehend but it can be hard for us to help each other process.
Sooner or later for our own emotional health, we have to learn to accept our infertility. That doesn’t mean we stop struggling for parenthood (unless that’s the path that makes the most sense for us) but it does mean that we need to resolve our rage and grief. I know how difficult this is to do because it comes up in new ways in all sorts of unexpected situations. But if we don’t, then even when we have a baby in-arms, we will find ourselves still hurting and we don’t deserve to hurt for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes when I’m reading a blog and the writer is raging against the great injustice of it all, I wish I could be there with her and gently say, “No, it’s not fair but then life is not fair” in the way my therapist said it to me. But I know that out of the context of this loving, therapeutic relationship it just sounds snotty. I don’t mean it to sound like, “Yeah, well, who said life was fair? Get over it!” I mean it more like, “With my deepest sympathy and love for you, I wish I could help you move past the injustice and move to a place of peaceful surrender.”
Surrendering to infertility sounds so terrible — it sounds like giving in — but in surrendering, we accept ourselves.
When I was actively infertile, which is how I think about the time of trying for a baby (now I think of myself as an infertility survivor), I used to do a meditation of being held and forgiven. I would imagine the feminine face of God looking at me with overarching love and aching sympathy. I imagined her cradling me and sorrowing with me and I tried to forgive myself for being so horribly blighted by my infertility, for failing my son and his father in not being able to complete our family. It was a terribly painful prayer/meditation because of the way it forced me to acknowledge the awful truth of my infertility but it was healing, too, the way blood washes out a wound.
Wonderful, beautiful Julie said something so profound to me during our interview. She said, “I think what we’re doing now is both a means and an end … it’s a stepping stone that we have to walk over to get to where we’re going.”
Her perspective is such a wise one. We don’t have to love the journey to love ourselves on the journey or to appreciate what we gain.
I think this perspective, too, helps us when we’re making treatment decisions. It’s easier to honor our limits when we remember that the means are just as important as the ends.
I’m really hoping that my Brain, Child article survives edits. If it does, it’ll be out in — I believe — October and the further I get into this entry, the more I realize that this is really what the whole piece ended up being about.
I tell you what. If my editors kill it, I’ll upload it somewhere here in case anyone is interested.
July 26th, 2004 at 2:25 pm
Yes! Please upload the article!
Thank you Dawn for so gently reminding us to take care of ourselves and our relationships with our partners as we travel along this IF road… it _is_ easy to believe that a baby will make all of the pain go away, but I know that in our case at least, we have been fundamentally changed by eight years of IF. And those changes need to be grappled with, acknowledged and honored.
This is where we stand now: just about to begin the adoption process, but fully aware that we have been scarred by the IF that preceded it. This is the part where we start moving forward with the last little bit of hope we have left, but that progression has to include healing, too. For everyone’s sake.
Your posts help with all of this… thank you doesn’t seem like enough.
July 26th, 2004 at 2:38 pm
Very interested indeed. I miss the smart analysis and thoughtful compassion of your voice.
Your essay reminds me of something a spiritual director told me after I fell in love with a woman while still married to a man. She said “this will never not have happened.”
However I dealt with it, whether it would end up in my past or as part of my future, the experience had forever changed ME.
Infertility–even “survived” into parenthood–never, I’d imagine, goes away. The grief of losing all the dream-children–whether miscarried or never conceived–becomes part of who you are. That makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
I survived the loss (four years ago) of a child I was extra-legally parenting, and I have been surprised by how much grief related to that has been stirred up by our current adoption process. I dream him coming to me as an adult demanding to know why I abandoned him in favor of a “new” child.
But in the end, I think our grief really presents a fabulous opportunity to become both deeper people and people more capable of holding things lightly. In the end, I do think infertile people might well make the best parents.
July 26th, 2004 at 4:20 pm
Amazingly well-put, as always. I am at a loss for words. I wept reading this.
July 26th, 2004 at 5:33 pm
I rarely, if ever, talk with anyone about my infertility. Even now I am struggling with my words, wondering if I should erase this.
I just don’t fit in anywhere it seems. I don’t know what is scarier, navigating through this alone or being judged as not wanting enough because I won’t go the medical route.
You’ve grabbed a hold of a part of me that is deeply buried. The meditation you wrote about caused me to weep on a day that has already seen too much crying.
I think I’ll save your entry. (if that’s okay and not too weird) I need something to help me through days like this and your words, so obviously from your heart’s painful experiences, have helped me today.
July 26th, 2004 at 5:58 pm
How timely my reading of this post was. I have been contemplating seeing a therapist to deal with some of this infertility “stuff.” I’m aware of my diet mentality “the world will be better when…” and your post reminded me of the need to deal with this now not later.
July 26th, 2004 at 10:56 pm
I look forward to reading your article, too, Dawn!
What you said about accepting that it’s not fair…I get that. For a long time, I was so wrapped up in anger over the unfairness of it all that I could hardly even think straight. I may have spent the last year or so of ttc on auto-pilot, merely trying to beat the odds. Once I accepted that it wasn’t fair and wasn’t going to change unless I made it change, I felt better. My mind cleared out, and I realized that I no longer wanted to have the monthly drama waiting for Ovulation or my period or another miscarriage. All I wanted was to be a Mother, no matter how I got that way. And here we are, hoping to adopt.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have these little breakdowns where I’m scared and worried and bitter over the unfairness of it all. I feel like a dog on a leash. I pull and wriggle and cry out, but at the end I realize that it’s just that way. If that makes sense. I’ve accepted that I won’t be carrying our children or birthing them, but I simply cannot accept that there won’t *be* children. So, rather than be depressed about what I originally thought would happen, i focus on what really is going to happen. A whole new ball of anxiety, but at least I have hope at the end of that tunnel.
Okay, done babbling now. I just wanted you to know that, once again, your words spoke to me.
August 2nd, 2004 at 8:53 am
Beautifully written and so true. Some real lessons in here. I think I am going to keep having to come back to this post. Thanx for this.
August 22nd, 2004 at 12:29 pm
I have PCOS and it has affected my fertility from the beginning. Although I am eternally grateful for my two children that I finally concieved and birthed, I still deal with “secondary infertility” and I am experiencing much of the same range of emotions I did trying to get pregnatn with our first, as we try for our third.
It’s tru that we are supposed to be “all fixed” and happy once we have a baby, but infertility isn’t all about having a baby it is a comment on our own individual womanhood. It isn’t SUPPOSED to be hard, because even if it doesn’t entirely define a woman (and of course it shouldn’t) it is still supposed to be something that we can do. A woman has ovaries, has a uterus, has a birth canal therefore she shoudl be able to be pregnant and give birth. Maybe this is just what I sense, I don’t know, maybe not everyone feels this. But havine dealt with the struggles of PCOS and being out of control of my own fertility, this is what I have felt.
Thank you for a thought provoking and excellent article.