1 in 8.
7.3 million Americans.
That's a lot of people. It's roughly the amount of Americans who proclaim themselves to be vegetarians, the amount of people who were behind bars in correctional facilities across the country in 2007 (there's your fun fact of the day).
It's also the amount of people who are affected by infertility. 7.3 million equates to 1 in 8 couples.
So if the statistic is that big...why does no one talk about it? Chances are good you know someone in your family or circle of friends who is fighting it. But 61% of women who struggle with infertility hide their journey. They feel it's their secret shame, their cross to bear alone with their partner.
Michael and I are 1 in 8, and I am going to talk about it.
My opinion: women who go through this don't make it well known because it is an admission that something about what we're designed for is broken. Going public is an admission of our failure of a basic tenement of womanhood: the ability to reproduce. Being able to get pregnant and birth a child is taken for granted by so many as something women are just supposed to do. No one ever questions their ability to do that when they're growing up daydreaming about what life will be like when they're older. They may question their desire for children, but not their ability to have them. As a young girl, I played house by holding a baby doll in my arms while fixing play-doh spaghetti for a a neighbor or classmate I roped into pretending to be my husband. In junior high I giggled with lab partners while making punnet squares to determine what color eyes and hair our future children could be born with. In high school, I played MASH with girlfriends at lunch, eating french fries while previewing what kind of career and house fate would give me and how many fictitious children I'd have.
After you're married, you only get so long before people start to drop hints about starting a family. The timing is different for each of us, but for couples who begin the journey of planning a pregnancy, that first month is a roller coaster of fear, excitement, nervousness, and gleeful anticipation.
But here's the reality for an infertile woman: they don't tell you that after four months, the excitement of having sex during your "fertile time" starts to wane a little. No one tells you that at six months, when you get your period, you feel down in the dumps for an entire day or two. At eight months, when well meaning friends ask if you know how to chart when you're ovulating, or to "just relax", you bite your tongue to keep from lashing out. Ten months pass and you start to feel restless. You're waiting for this chapter in your life that you're desperately wanting to start but for some reason, you can't turn the page.
After a year the questions come flooding in. When will it be our turn? Is something wrong with me? Why hasn't it happened? The journey begins to take you to dark places. Why is it easy for so many people, but not for us? With each passing month, a knot of disappointment in the pit of our stomachs grows larger. We try to keep it buried deep down, not draw attention to it, because if we let it out, it would consume us.
After a year, women like me put on brave faces when we see pregnancy announcements on Facebook (or we hide you for the next nine months-just admitting it). With each month that passes and no positive result, our light dims a little with the realization that yet again, our prayers weren't answered. We celebrate when our friends' bellies swell with new life, but at the same time, we clamp our lips down to keep them from trembling. If you're our friend, trust us, we're joyful for you and your baby. We don't want to be treated like we're the elephant in the room when it comes to your pregnancy. But you should know that there's going to be times when we leave your house and grip our steering wheels with white knuckles, sobbing at every red light on the way home from your baby shower.
After the 18 month mark the question begins to transform, and I'm sure that's part of why the 61% don't talk about it. Because it creeps into our heart, a shadowed figure motioning to an infertile woman's deepest fear: What if it doesn't happen?
How do you mourn something that's not there? For most of us, we cope the best we know how. We fall apart on some days, and we pick ourselves back up the next day. We turn to God, our husbands, our friends for support and encouragement.
I'm lucky enough to attend a church where people don't have to pretend like they have it all together, and it's okay to not be okay. Thank God, because I don't think you'd buy the mask I'm trying to sell anyway. I have a circle of cherished friends that probably wish I would stop over-sharing about our next steps to achieve conception, but we're past the point of no return with that. The beauty of these friendships: they listen when I share the ugly parts of this path I'm on-without any pity or judgment- so that it doesn't swallow me whole, and I'll forever be grateful beyond words for that.
But I'll tell you something real about being 1 in 8: It's a grief that can't be spoken because it's a loss of something that hasn't happened. It's a sadness that curls your toes and leaves you hollow. Our patience pants are so worn down that we're sure you can see right through us. Sometimes we can't talk to you about this because we're afraid that unless you too are going through this hellhole of a journey and can relate, you won't like what you see. You'll see a brewing storm of anger, bitterness, jealousy, disappointment, and sadness lurking right below our surface, and then you will know that we're damaged goods.
You'll see that we hate ourselves when we play the "at least" game, but it still creeps in when we least expect it.
"Oh, my kid was a monster today! I need a break!" at least when you come home from a girl's night out, you're coming home to a house that's not empty.
"I didn't sleep for more than two hours at a time this whole week!" at least that means there's a baby actually using your extra bedroom.
"I feel like crap and have thrown up for six weeks straight!" at least you can get pregnant. I would give anything for that.
Maybe it's better that you DO see all of this. If you see it, your understanding of the struggle infertile couples go through could bring forth light into the moments when we're struggling with darkness. It brushes away the cobwebs from the corners where we've placed our dreams of being parents. It helps us believe again because it's not a secret we've put on a shelf. If we can talk about infertility the way someone can talk about their cancer treatments and still gain the same level of encouragement and support, perhaps my fellow 1 in 8'ers won't feel so alone.
The 1 in 8 are a tenacious bunch because we have to be. Hope is the whisper we all cling to, because that's the spark, no matter how tiny, that gets us through the next round of testing, shots, exams, medications, temping, and all sorts of hoops we jump through for our chance.
Hope is the belief that many years from now, when all of the heartbreak is just a memory that occasionally aches like a broken bone that never healed completely, we'll look back on this with our kids in our arms (even if they're being monsters) and tell them how much we fought for them.
Hope is the reason I write this down: because even though infertility has been a part of my story for two years, it is not the sum of who I am; although it has changed me, it will not break me.
