Visualize this!
This annoys me. I was wandering around as is my wont and I happened upon a post on an infertility board (ok, I wasn’t wandering; I was stalking someone I used to know from an infertility community because I never did find out how her last cycle went) and there I saw a post that comes up on all of those boards sooner or later, the post I like to call “that annoying now-pregnant woman who thinks she has all the answers.”
The woman used to be one of us — you know, barren — but then her cycle came through and now she’s the proud owner of a positive pregnancy test or of an actual baby/child. Heady with success, she is now an expert on infertility and she decides to come back to old haunts expressly to tell everyone how to do it right this time.
Now I hate to say this (having a cupboard full of herbs myself) but the women who seem to do this most are of the natural-minded ilk. They tell you it was their green juice or their accupuncture or their all-organic, soy-free diet but my least favorite is the bragging visualizer. She’s the one who meditated her way to a bouncing baby.
I think meditation/visualization are grand things and can help make a mommy wannabe sane but insinuating that this is a magic bullet to motherhood. Bullshit, I say, and with some authority.
I visualized like crazy back when I was taking herbs by the fistfuls. I totally believed that I could call that baby straight down from heaven and into my waiting arms. I took a tip from this woman and held an image in my mind of my womb as a welcoming red room while I cooled down after a run. At night before bed, I pictured a cool, clear pool where I washed away my sorrow and breathed in hope. I was calm and confident. And it worked. I conceived.
Then I miscarried.
Telling women that visualization will cure her infertility is — to my mind — the same as faith healers who blame cancer on its victims because surely they must not have loved god enough.
In my sorrow, I gave into guilt. It was my fault, not only for owning an imperfect body but for having an imperfect soul. I tried harder and miscarried again. And again. So I went on clomid and well, long story short, we’re really excited about this adoption.
Today I read a post from a woman who was typing one-handed because she was also NAKing (nursing at keyboard) her new baby girl. She was telling another woman — one who was posting about her third failed IVF — that she was whining her way to a negative pregnancy test.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but you won’t get a baby with that attitude,” she admonished. “I turned my frown upside down and started picturing my baby and in the very next cycle, I got pregnant.”
(This is not an exact quote because I don’t want my readers to be able to google her; know that it’s damn close though. I’m sure if you go to most any infertility board, you’ll find another post an awful lot like it. I will say, though, that astonishingly this woman was not flamed. Why? My theory is that women in the throes of infertility are all too ready to take blame.)
Again, meditation and visualization can be great coping mechanisms but they’re not magic. Can it make a difference? Well, I think it might help but I’m not willing to say that I miscarried three times during my period of intense focus because it wasn’t intense enough. Besides, I know seventy thousand women (some on my blogroll) who are now mothers despite giving into their discouragement. We’re all human and the mere act of moving on to the next cycle is a hopeful one; sometimes that’s the best we can do.
(I’m sorry. I’m on a rant. I think I’m PMSing. Heck, I’m giving into it.)
Did you know that most women with unexplained infertility (this is the category I fall into, well, that and recurrent miscarrier — they have no idea why my body doesn’t work) will have a random pregnancy within ten years? Many infertile women will up and get pregnant because of some random blip in their hormones or their horoscopes. They might get pregnant after they adopt; this doesn’t mean adoption cures infertility. They might get pregnant after they meditate; this doesn’t mean meditation cures infertility. They might get pregnant after they shop at the Gap; I guarantee that the Gap doesn’t cure infertility.
That there’s a mind-body connection I have no doubt. That this connection exists in the same way for everyone, I do doubt. Besides, I think that we each have life journeys and so what is true for one person might not be true for another. I also think that it is up to every individual to make sense of his or her own path. Some women probably will be “cured” through visualization but to admonish those of us who haven’t had the same luck, well, that’s thoughtless as hell. I will never understand how someone can go through infertility and not gain the compassion that allows her to support other struggling women.
This is my visualization of choice: Picture yourself strong and happy. Picture yourself at peace. Picture yourself blessed and loved. All the women through the ages who have been where you are now are sending you their love and strength. You are not alone. There is great compassion in the universe for you. Whether you believe that compassion comes from God/G-d/Goddess or from those women who came before you or who are there with you now, allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself that comfort.
That’s the one that works for me.
Well, there’s my rant for the month. I am off to watch ER.
I still have a couple of hours before ER, but I just had to respond. Though I don’t know the exact post you are talking about, I have run across people like this often (since I run one of these communities).
Thank you for writing this. I’ve also experienced women and books who fault the infertile woman b/c of a lack of positive thinking. Bullshit, I say — if that were true, then all those women who got pregnant in war zones or through violence (i.e. rape) should NOT have gotten pregnant (I seriously doubt they were thinking fertile, positive thoughts).
Again, thank you for speaking out on this.
My grandmother tried for 3 years for her first pregnancy. Of course back then, there were no fertility doctors or support groups. She still doesn’t know why it took her so long to get pregnant. But after she finally got pregnant, the floodgates opened. She had 5 pregnancies in the following 6 years. I would have thought she’d be the one to help me when I was going through it, but instead she told me I needed to pray more and not commit the sin of dispair. I suppose that’s what her priest told her all those years ago. Maybe that helped her, but it made me stop confiding in my grandma about infertility.
My grandmother tried for 3 years for her first pregnancy. Of course back then, there were no fertility doctors or support groups. She still doesn’t know why it took her so long to get pregnant. But after she finally got pregnant, the floodgates opened. She had 5 pregnancies in the following 6 years. I would have thought she’d be the one to help me when I was going through it, but instead she told me I needed to pray more and not commit the sin of dispair. I suppose that’s what her priest told her all those years ago. Maybe that helped her, but it made me stop confiding in my grandma about infertility.
I think that visualization will work for just about anything you’re struggling with, it’s beautiful. Thanks for sharing it. I love to read your writing Dawn.
If you give me the URL, I’ll be happy to pop up on that board and offer to help those beeyatches visualize my boot in their pie holes.
Ouch.
I am pretty sure I told you in the past that I think positive visualization was how I conceived Logan (with fertility tx) and also Adam (with herbs). I didn’t realize it was insensitive and certainly didn’t intend it that way, and I apologize.
Well, it takes more than positive visualization to conceive (sperm helps ha ha ha) but I think you knew what I meant.
Okay, coming out of lurkdom to say Thank You for such a well articulated entry on the Very Things that I’ve been mulling around lately in my own head. I have one almost 5 year old and despite years of trying, I have not conceived again. And as my daughter ages, the subject is apparently open to public discussion as the ‘aren’t you going to have more?’ type questions (smugly asked from those certain individuals who seem to ascribe to the belief that easy reproduction indicates being a superior type of human) are arising with more frequency. We are considering the finacial implications of adoption (whether or not we produce another birth child), and I so enjoy reading your journal for a peek into your journey. thanks!