Infertility

But all the people were feeling for us was sort of like sadness. And kept saying you would be a lovely Mum, you would be a lovely Mum and a lovely Dad and all this, you know. And that actually didn’t help very much. It just makes you feel worse actually, but what they are trying to be is kind and say, you know, it is definitely, I am sure it is going to happen. Always sure it is going to happen. Go on holiday and all the things, they try and give you advice about. It didn’t help at all. Not really. Not at all. It just made you feel worse, but the people are trying to help you and show their concern and all that, and it doesn’t actually help, because the thing about it, as you mentioned before, it is very isolating. And infertility is extremely isolating. I am sure the same as if it was as a terminal illness or whatever, you know, it is you, on your own. That is your situation, and whatever people say or do around you, it doesn’t make any difference actually. It helps but to you in that situation it is not going to make any difference. So I do think it is similar to that.

They are incredibly… incredibly difficult to deal with. It seems to be more and more our consumer societies. It is geared up towards these special event days. And whether it be at church when it is Easter and they do talk still about getting the daffodils for the Mums and also Easter egg hunts. Whether it be Christmas and the joy of new birth coming into the world. It is extremely difficult, I can’t turn on the television without seeing kids surrounded round the Christmas tree, opening presents and being really excited and the number of times, that I have heard, “Oh Christmas is a time for children.” I could scream when that happens. I must be honest that Christmas I paint a smile on my face and go through the motions but I wish that I didn’t have to go through it and I put on a brave face for the sake of people around me. But inside I just think that I just really find this difficult to celebrate. Mother’s Day is incredibly difficult. There’s cards everywhere. The length of time that these things seem to be heralded in the shops seems to get longer and longer. So not only do you think oh well I have got two weeks and then it is Mother’s Day. It seems to be going on for six weeks before Mother’s Day. I am not denying mothers their moment of triumph in the fact that they have got a family, but spare a thought for those who haven’t. It is very, very difficult. Women who don’t have children, who can’t have children or are struggling to have children, feel like failures anyway. Whether it be at work when everyone is talking about the children going to school or where to get the uniform or the sub contractor that we have in at the moment who is complaining that he has got little sleep because he has got an eight week old baby. It is so difficult, but then having the events on top of it, it is just a double stab in the guts, just to say well look, you know, you are not a parent, you are a failure. 

Some friends were really lovely about it and really did try to help and would kind of talk to me about it and things. And other people were just absolutely hopeless. And I think you have to accept that people don’t really understand what you are going through, and people do say sometimes things that seem to you so crass and awful. But it’s just that they don’t understand. And they don’t mean to be unhelpful, or they’re not trying to be horrid. But I think sometimes it does really feel as if people are just trying to get at you. You know, people would say, I remember someone saying to me after our first IVF attempt didn’t work something about, “Oh, well, you could always adopt.” And I thought, “But, you know, this is only our first IVF attempt. Why are you saying this to me now?” And then other people would sort of assume that because you were having treatment it would inevitably work. And I remember saying, someone saying to me when we’d had our first lot of embryos put back something like, “Oh, well, you are pregnant really, aren’t you? Because the embryos are inside you now.” And, and to me that was just, I don’t know, it was just too unbearable to even think about. I thought it was a really upsetting thing to have said to me. But I know that the person who said it was actually trying to be really positive about it and, you know, upbeat and make me feel better. But I think it’s like anything, you know. People can’t necessarily understand unless they’ve actually been there themselves.

I found it quite difficult to expect support from my Mum for example. And Dads are Dads and my Dad was sort of in the background and sort of, I’m sure he was supportive, but he wasn’t really included in any conversations about it or anything. Like his role was to be a background person. But for my Mum there’s always that issue of she’s someone who’s wanting to be a Grandma who can’t be a Grandma, so like it’s difficult for her too. Which doesn’t mean that she can’t be supportive. But I was always aware, particularly like when I was pregnant, and it was just for a few weeks, my Mum would knit bootees and jackets and all sorts of things. So I knew how much, how important it was to her so you sort of, you want to protect your loved ones from sort of saying, you know she’d get the phone calls oh it didn’t work again and but actually I didn’t want to discuss it loads with her, because I knew that it was quite painful to her too. And probably the person I did discuss with most in the family would be my sister-in-law. And she’s like a nurse, and been a midwife so somehow it was a different sort, and I suppose she wasn’t quite, you know, she would have loved [husband] to be producing babies, but somehow it wasn’t quite as emotionally close to her as it was discussing it with someone like my Mum so you have to think about that sort of thing when you’re looking for support from your… I had to.

But it was just, you know, as soon as I found I started trying, everybody was pregnant. The whole world and his husband, her husband were pregnant. All the secretaries in the office, you know especially the nineteen years old seem to be at the drop of the hat. And you would have to go “ooh lovely.” And all your friends and that I found… that is kind of … I was horrifically jealous, puce with jealousy. Eaten up inside, bitter, twisted, angry, couldn’t look at a man with a beer belly without getting upset and basically quite hysterical about the whole thing. And I laugh now but it was extremely painful because I just felt so helpless and powerless and yet powerless is not fun and I found the worse thing, the reason we didn’t tell many people, was that the people you do tell, tend to pity you and I find being pitied actually the most disempowering thing of all. So there is a physical kind of stuff that you are going through which is a bore and a drain and you know, having to rush out of work and get a scan and what have you. But it was, for me, it was more the emotional and sociological impact of it that made me suffer the most.