Here’s what they don’t tell you about infertility.
You don’t know until you’re already at least a year into trying. You have to wait a full year before any doctor will accept your “self-diagnosis” and try to help you. A full year of tears, and negative pregnancy tests, and ovulation tracking, and being so incredibly hopeful the morning you’re supposed to start your period and it doesn’t come. A year of getting your hopes up and thinking of a million ways to tell your friends and family depending on what holiday falls next on the calendar. A year of heartbreak because all you have to show for it at the end is twelve plastic sticks with one line on each of them.
They don’t tell you that you’ll spend your nights sleepless and crying because the only thing you’ve ever wanted is a baby and your body can’t even do the one thing it was designed to do. They don’t tell you that, because your body decided it can’t function properly, you’ll be shelling out thousands of dollars to have even a fraction of a chance of making your dream come true. They don’t tell you that the timing has to be perfect, that the drugs they make you take to induce ovulation will destroy your mental health, that your body will hate you for going against it.
They don’t tell you about the insomnia, the depression, the panic attacks. They don’t tell you that it will cause more tension in your marriage than you ever thought was possible. They don’t tell you that, over and over again, you’ll have to second guess whether or not your partner actually wants to have children with you.
They don’t tell you that your faith will be tested beyond its limits. They don’t tell you that you’ll be angry at the same God you prayed to for countless nights for any kind of help, that you’d do anything just to get a single positive pregnancy test. They don’t tell you that the words “in His time, not yours” will become infuriating to you rather than comforting.
They don’t tell you that hearing someone tell you, “you’re just trying too hard,” “relax and it’ll happen,” “don’t think about it,” or any variation of the three will make you want to rip every last piece of your hair out of your head. They don’t tell you that you’ll have to tell your family why you haven’t had children yet. They don’t tell you about the look of defeat and disappointment on the faces of your parents and grandparents.
They don’t tell you that your heart will shatter with every new facebook pregnancy announcement. They don’t tell you that you’ll secretly loathe your siblings and cousins for accidentally getting pregnant. They don’t tell you that, the second anything goes wrong with anyone else’s pregnancy, you feel guilt crash down on you because somehow, it’s your fault things didn’t go right for them.
They don’t tell you that you’ll dread every appointment. They don’t tell you that you’ll feel completely and utterly alone. They don’t tell you that every support system you ever thought you had will feel like it has fallen out from under your feet.
They don’t tell you that you lose hope. They don’t tell you that you’ll have to fight the constant urge to just give up.
They don’t tell you any of these things, but trust me when I say, you learn them all one way or another.
