How Infertility Improved My Life
How infertility has improved my life.
Even though I know the American dream is bullshit, as a woman who has worked for the past twenty years in the entertainment industry, I have developed a really intense work ethic. Somehow working twice as hard as the men around me while taking ten times more crap led me to think that in all situations, if I just keep pushing, it’ll all work out. And while my workaholic tendancies helped me survive my job, they didn’t help much when I woke up at age thirty-eight and realized I wanted a kid.
No matter how many times I took my temperature, penciled sex in on my day planner, or visited the fertility specialist, I still couldn’t get pregnant. So after a year or so I began looking not just at what I was doing, but at how I was doing it. Treating getting pregnant as just another project didn’t account for things like my age or the fact that I had no balance in my life. So I decided to go the extra mile and began to radically change my eating habits, quit caffeine, take up yoga, and even do accupuncture, all while questioning if being a workaholic for the rest of my life was really what I wanted.
Doing all this was thrown into super slow-mo by what self-help books might call “my family of origin issues.” My dad is a high-functioning alcoholic who weighs 400 pounds and my mom, who has never eaten a scrap of food before two p.m., smokes a pack of Benson and Hedges every day and refers to the never-ending box of wine in her fridge as her “therapist.” I grew up thinking Chef Boyardee was really healthy, because it in some way involved tomatoes, and I can’t remember a time when my family ever took a walk or a hike or otherwise did any physical activity together. Quite simply, when I finally came around to the idea of self-care, I had no idea how to do it.
The first time I went to a yoga class I started crying, because the feeling of “being in my body,” doing something good for myself, was so foreign and confusing to me. As I was sneaking out the back door of the gym, another realization hit me: taking care of myself made me feel like I was in a car driving away from my family while flipping them off in the rearview mirror. Sure, they kinda suck, but sometimes staying on a sinking ship with people you know is a better proposition than floating solo on a life boat in the open ocean.
One of the first things to go in my quest for healthy living ended up being non-stop multitasking. Typically my nights and weekends were filled with what I call faux-relaxing. Always on guard in case some crazy work emergency might come up, I spent most of my down time catching up on emails while watching bad pay-per-view movies with my husband. Basically I had no boundaries between work and my life, something I knew I’d need not just to be less stressed out and therefore more able to get pregnant, but also to be presen as a mom.
You know those people who are texting all the time? It’s like they are not really in the room with you and they are not really with the person they are texting either? They are nowhere. Well that’s what I was like, even though I don’t text that much; I was nowhere. Not really at work and not really relaxing.
Yoga helped. Having a place where all I did was one thing helped me see the value of being focused. At first, taking the two hours out of my day to get there and back and attend the class made me completely insane. I was giving up two whole hours of scatterbrained productivity! But when I came back to work, I chose more enjoyable projects to work on and finished them faster because I wasn’t reading a fertility book with one hand, working the project with the other and writing emails with my toes. I focused, stayed present and the most amazing thing happened: I started to leave work at work and slowly began to take my weekends back.
But even after I mastered the exercise thing and was able to do yoga sans tears, even after I figured out what quinoa was and added it into my diet, even after I learned to be more focused and present, I still couldn’t get pregnant. It was time to admit some other stuff I’d spent a long time denying.
I came of age as a feminist in the ’90s. Back then, my friends and I talked about language and the body, queerness and sex, while simultaneously living total “neck up” realities. We ignored our biologically female selves in favor of a “we can do anything” ideal that made sense to us at the time.
If you even mentioned actual biological differences between men and women back then, you were labeled an “essentialist” and immediately dismissed as an old fashioned fuddy-duddy. I remember seeing a bunch of stuff about women’s biological clocks at the grocery store in my thirties and writing it off as anti-feminist, if-you-don’t-get-married-by-thirty-you-never-will, Ally-McBeal-type garbage.
And now, at age forty, here I am undergoing IVF, an intensive fertility treatment meant to get me pregnant, and realizing that some crappy magazine headlines actually do end up being true. While it’s not the case for everyone, at forty my eggs are just old and have too many chromosomal problems for me to get pregnant without medical intervention.
And while not having healthy role models played into it, as did my workaholism and the extreme idea of equality I adopted in college, another thing held me up perhaps longer than any other. It is this element that really was the petri dish in which all my body denial truly thrived: I was taught as a kid not to trust myself.
I listen to myself now. When things were really crazy in our house (“Oh no! Dad is outside with a gun again and may start shooting in the windows!”), my mom simply had us lay on the floor until the situation subsided (or Dad passed out) and then we all went on as if nothing had happened.
I remember times when my insides were screaming, “Oh my god, Dad is so drunk he is about to drive us all off a cliff! Nooooo!,” but instead of saying anything I just stared into the distance and told myself it would all be okay. Is it any wonder that as an adult I didn’t eat when I was hungry or take the day off when I was sick? Is it any wonder that I ignored my longing to get pregnant for so long, or was taken in by the myth that I could magically triumph over my own biology?
Look, IVF is no joke. It involves a lot of shots, drugs that make you feel awful, going to a clinic almost every day at seven a.m., and of course having surgery to remove your eggs. It is also crazy expensive and most people’s insurance doesn’t cover it. Quite often, it doesn’t work. And when it does, you can still have a miscarriage.
I know this sounds depressing, and it is. But it’s also forced me to take time and figure out a lot of things I might never have gotten around to figuring out. In doing so, I’ve become even more aware of how much I not only want to be a parent, but how much I want to be a good parent.
And even though I don’t have a baby yet, trying to have one has changed my life for the better. I am not a crazy multitasking workaholic anymore. Sure it’s been hard for me to maintain a great meal plan and exercise consistently while doing IVF, but I am taking walks when I get stressed out, taking my vitamins every day, and listening to my body when it says “you need a break.” And among all the pain and heartbreak of this process it’s been nice to receive a gift: I listen to myself now.
Sure, I wish I had started this all sooner, listened to my body earlier, but I’m grateful in a way that it hasn’t been easy. Because now when I do have kids, whether by birth or adoption, I know I am going to listen to them. I am also going to cook them real food and take them on hikes and thank them every day, because just by taking their time getting here, they’ve already taught me so much that I want to teach them.
awesome, awesome piece
I love the way you describe your family, your reaction to yoga at first…everything is very insightful
Wow. Brutal honesty makes for an excellent, thoughtful, insightful article. Thank you. I am your age (forty) yet my childhood/young adulthood were markedly different from what you describe. I grew up in a sheltered, conventional, stable home. However your essay gives me a view of what some of my college friends tried to articulate to me twenty years ago – upbringings and worldviews that I just could not comprehend at the time. I really appreciate this piece – Thank you.
That was such a lovely, sharp, insightful piece, filled with humility and great writing. Thank you. I relate to aspects of it very much even though I’m not in the same situation, especially the multi-tasking workaholism issues, and it’s given me a lot of food for thought.
Excellent piece. Fab writing.
Awesome. Good for you.
Congratulations, this is one of the few good things I’ve read on Babble in a long long time, leading me to wonder why I even came back for more self-indulgent banal crap…Now I will have to keep on checking it out just because of you
Although I have been blessed with a healthy baby and have never had to experienced the anxiety of trying hard to conceive, I also have a very crappy family background and can relate to the fact that as such, one has to learn a lot of things that are second nature to most, even including what pleases oneself, when you had to suppress your own desires growing up to the point that you don’t even know what you like or what makes you happy, or somehow have the notion that you won’t have it anyways so why giving yourself a heartbreak by even trying?
As if it hadn’t been hard enough to survive childhood and remain relatively normal and somewhat successful!
I was also very touched by your article on your dream house. I hope this baby comes to you one way or another!
You know, I “came of age as a feminist in the 90s” and I never interpreted it to mean that our actual reproductive health would somehow magically stay 20 while the rest of us aged.I liked your essay and identify strongly with the part about overcoming bad family of origin dynamics to prepare to be a better parent than you had, but I don’t get why this has to be juxtaposed against feminism as if not getting easily pregnant at 40 is proof we were all wrong about biology being a bad way to structure privilege.
Please write more for Babble. I loved this piece and your honesty.
I want more! who are you? where is your blog? Because I want to read it daily.
fabulous writing
Busy dad. LOVED this piece. Do not be a stranger.
To the author: I didn’t realize it was you who wrote the dream house piece. I can’t identify with your experience whatsoever (for which I consider myself blessed), but I do enjoy your writing, and it helps me to understand others’ perspectives. Thank you, and best of luck to you with your child-bearing or adopting.
Shannon, I’ve read about a campaign not all that long ago in which some organization put ads on subways telling women that yes, their fertility does start to decline in their late 20s. Public health issue, right? Possibly saving women, partners, insurance companies a lot of pain, time and money? Various groups of feminists, however, threw fits, saying that this was little more than a scare tactic that would keep women out of the work force. While it’s great that you managed to keep biology in perspective, it does seem that there is a lot of room to say that various feminist groups do in fact push the “career woman” image at the expense of the women’s biological reality. Feminism has been saying for a long time that women can have it all, and sometimes that’s just not true.
To add to the above topic, I hope we are entering a new phase in feminism. One that can encompass parenting as well as working. Now that we have found a place in business, we have to accommodate the idea that being sucessful as women cannot always mean working in the same way as men. In fact, many men are tired of working to the exclusion of a personal life as well.
I never realized how having a successful career in an office setting could be so adverse to motherhood, especially of babies. I’m a secretary, not an executive, but I have seen that it is next to impossible in either type of position to sucessfully breastfeed a child. I gained a new understanding of why women years ago did not work outside the home. Mothering an infant is a full time job in itself. The way workplaces, maternity leave and day care are set up in this country is not conducive to having babies.
Work/life balance is truly an issue in America and we have to find a way to fix that.
I loved this piece and I love the comments. Yay for interesting thoughts on things!
Thank you, I really enjoyed this piece. I too come from a not-so-perfect background (an obsessive-compulsive alcoholic father and a mother that would rival the worst enabler in the world). I too experienced infertility for about 5 years. I’m currently 6 months pregnant with our first. Your article helped articulate for me something that I wasn’t able to quite put my finger on as to why this pregnancy finally happened, especially when it did – least expecting it sort of thing. I found out about this pregnancy 2 weeks after a majorly cathartic moment for me (after just finding out that my 19 year old brother in law had impregnated his extremely immature girlfriend). I spent much of that evening screaming, sobbing in a way I wasn’t used to – primal, gutteral. How could life be soooo unfair, to give these two high school drop outs a baby and not me? It made no sense. But looking back, it was the first time probably in my life where I let my emotions take over completely, not just acknowledged them and then quickly stored them away again. What a hard thing to do for someone who comes from our type of background.
I truly hope for you someday soon, you will get to have that life-changing moment that all fertility-challenged people patiently/not-so-patiently wait for. It sounds like you’re on the right path. Thank you for sharing your story.
p.s. – what fetility-challenged couple hasn’t heard this piece of advice before, but I have to give it – I’m a living example. Stop trying. My husband and I knew all along that we never wanted to turn baby-making into something stressful. We figured it would happen when it happen and we’ll cross that bridge if it ended up not happening. Of course, after 5 years of not not trying I tried yoga and meditation (both specifically geared for fertility), accupuncture, herbs and the most westernized thing I tried – Metformin for PCOS. But in the end, at the time of conception, I was mourning the passing of my father and also not on any routine, medication, herb or other intervention. In a sense, I had completely let go. The catharsis just sealed the deal I believe.
Thank you. I had to kiss ass a little more but I can’t help it. This is a great piece.
Great piece, really appreciate the honesty and insight.
A bit off-topic, but I also agree with Melissa Andrews’ comment above – work/life balance in this country has gotten out of hand to the detriment of all of us (kids, parents, friends, neighbors, non-breeders, co-workers, SAHMs, ALL of us).
There’s got to be a way to reshape the lens of our society to include better support and increased flexibility and options for working parents, especially for mothers of infants. Would love to see a piece on Babble about what work is being to done out there to improve quality of life for working parents – maybe about a non-profit or advocacy group. I know nothing about organizations which may be trying to further this cause, but if I did, I sure would sign up to help them out!
Great “sel-reflection” piece. My own rearing was in a home with three brothers and a sister who all had daily chores that mimicked those of our father and mother. My dad appreciated mom for having his babies, so he helped out with laundry (clothe diapers), and he did almost all of the cooking in the family. We sat down for dinner each night at the same time with full meals from the garden. Your article has provided greater insight on what my students must feel when they go home alone for hours and can’t realize where their next meal will come from; no to mention that it may not be a healthy meal. Thanks for sharing; you’ll be a wonderful mother some day.
What a journey! A future child giving you the gift of life. Wish you the best.
http://www.smilelaughordie.com
Your honesty about where you’ve been and where you are at is refreshing. As a mother of 4 I’ve realized my children have taught me far more about myself than I have taught them.
I must say that while your family would beat mine at the dysfunction olympics, we are still attending and competing. So much of what I saw affects me on a daily basis with my son, and I come close to weeping when something comes out of me that reminds me of my dad. I became a dad at 37. My wife was 40. We went through 7+ years of “unexplained” infertility, including IVFs, an egg donor (whose name was carelessly revealed), and pure heartbreak. After a routine removal of some endometriosis (which should have been the first move not the last, thanks docs!), we became pregnant one-on-one, so to speak.With all that said, I think having a child at our age was good for us. We were settled in careers, secure in out marriage, and, quite frankly, we have gotten a lot of awesome hand-me-downs.Good luck no matter what road you take to parenthood. Enjoy the ride once you get there, and the road in the rear-view mirror will seem less ugly than it did.
The comments about feminism exhibit some misunderstanding. Feminists, as a group, have never said that women can “have it all” – and certainly not all at the same time. There may be some deluded or thoughtless people who claim that, but that isn’t the general goal.
Feminists want women to be respected and to have the power to choose what they want based on real information and opportunities. We want women also to be safe from aggression, insult and prejudice as much as we can. We understand that choice – choosing to parent or choosing to work, choosing to have sex or choosing not to, choosing to speak or choosing to be silent – often means choosing-not at the same time. But we want women to be and feel equally free to make either choice, based on what is important to them, rather than what men and fearmongerers believe they can and should be doing.
It is quite possible to have children past 25 – adoption is an available option until you are 42 in many places. If you want to be a parent, and wait until later because of career or emotional reasons, that’s not a problem. If you want to reproduce and give birth, the equations are different – my understanding of the science is limited, but it seems that after 36 or 38 the odds of conception dramatically decline. However, the OMG NO KIDS AFTER 20 ads were not clear – they were intended to provoke a fear response and promote conservative values, not to really provide information. I, and most feminists, would not object to an ad that gave facts – especially one that gave other important facts, such as the decrease in earnings power to women who get pregnant. That’s how people make empowered choices – by obtaining accurate information about the costs and benefits of each option.
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard and cried at the same time. What an amazing, honest article. Wow. I relate to a lot of your points. You really touched me. Thank you!
I really loved this essay….
But, @erinscarem, I hate to be this way but it has to be said regarding your comment: “p.s. – what fetility-challenged couple hasn’t heard this piece of advice before, but I have to give it – I’m a living example. Stop trying.”
You DID NOT conceive because you stopped trying. There are FAR FAR FAR more examples of people that quite trying and NEVER conceived at all…ever. I wonder why it didn’t work for them? I’m glad for you and anybody going through all of this deserves it, believe me, I understand–we’re adopting after 7 years of failed treatments. But this whole “stop trying, it’ll happen” nonsense (1) gives a false sense of hope, (2) it quickly leads to self-blame after failing yet again to get pregnant, (3) makes dealing with infertility again in a second child attempt all the more bitter, and (4) steers a person away from actually taking positive steps toward being a parent whether it be medical treatment, adoption, or something else.
I don’t usually comment, but I had to on this article. Your last line made me tear up. What a beautiful line that by taking their time to get here they have taught you so much.