By Paige, Guest Author for ITNB

I’d like to offer up my congratulations to the ITNB blog hosts for stating outright that “Stories that end with a child can be found elsewhere… if you want to find those type of comments, there are plenty of other forums out there for that purpose.”

Amen! My husband and I have had a theory (long before we found out we were infertile) that when people have babies, they sort of lose their frontal lobes, you know that part of the brain the helps you understand other people’s theory of mind—that perhaps not everyone is quite as enamored with your little one as you are. This phenomenon can manifest itself as anything from a 3 year old running amok during a funeral service to the endless clucking of mother hens about this birth weight and that milestone. We had postulated that perhaps the deep breathing of Lamaze, a few sleepless nights, or strong diaper fumes had somehow asphyxiated the brain cells of previously grounded and reasonable people. We had not considered that the force could be so strong as to extend to people whose child-rearing gong show was prefaced by a lengthy struggle with infertility. I expected more from these people.

I expected that the ability to empathize and relate to the struggles of the infertile would most easily be mastered by someone who has (to borrow Melissa Ford’s metaphor) previously been an inhabitant of the Land of IF. In fact, this is not so. As I take my own private and painful journey through infertility, hoping to quell my loneliness in the warm blanket of shared experience, I google and ogle my way through infertility blogs. In my thirst for descriptions of the patience and emotional angst of infertility, I find myself constantly barging straight into someone’s online shrine to their miracle child. Pictures of said miracle baby (replete with birth weight and milestones) abound. Sorry, wrong room, my mistake!

My plea to the newly (and happily) fertile: Please, when the infertility door in your life closes, and for god’s sake shut down your infertility blog! Flex those frontal lobes and recall for a nanosecond how it felt to have no baby in your arms. Then, by all means start a new blog where you and your precious gift can cavort about in virtual nirvana without creating awkward and painful moments for the rest of us online who are still here. Infertility is clearly not your focus anymore, stop throwing it in our faces!

What is behind this behavior? This is another of my theories, but I think infertility is an inherently inwardly focused experience: we keep it secret; we scrutinize our levels and counts; we listen for every cramp, every twinge; we work in our bedrooms; we live in our underwear; we search (literally within ourselves) for answers. We look and we look and we forget that we are not alone. When people say goodbye to that time in their life, I assume it’s like childbirth, you forget the pain every time you look at the child—and that’s good. It’s why my friend who was in my position at one time thought it was a good idea to go out for coffee so she could surprise me with her 5-month bump! But no matter how good your memory, how big your frontal lobes, how inspiring you think your story is, it is your story, not mine and you have no business blogging about your parenting experience on a blog with an infertility tag line.

ITNB would like to thank Paige for this Blog Post the nice congratulations and her welcome feedback. We couldn’t agree more!!

It is well known that discussions of money and finances inevitably lead to awkwardness within relationships. That is a general view. In today’s trying times with the current economic recession it is cliché but true to say that “everyone is feeling the pinch.” Within the trials of infertility, the “money” topic tends to rear its ugly head more often than not. Although it is not something that is often talked about beyond the private conversations of the affected couple, we would like to deal with the issue here for a bit.

Most infertile couples would state that they are willing to give anything just to have one child. That list would include body parts, religious affiliation and, of course, piles of money. Whatever it takes! Since infertility treatments require multiple and seemingly endless trips to doctors and specialists, we also gladly give our time, our patience and literally our blood to this process. What we begin to see during this struggle are the mounting costs associated with every visit inside those same sterile medical rooms.

Insurance, while it is a serious hot-button issue in the political and media arenas, is an important factor in which treatments we can and cannot pursue. For those lucky enough to have insurance that covers the majority of these procedures, there still seems to be enough out-of-pocket costs to create a dent in any budget. Others have the even more difficult decision as to whether or not to even begin treatment as they might not be covered at all and everything would have to be paid for by the infertile couple. Even though infertility is blind to class structure and income levels, for all of us going through this it is an added expense we never thought we had to build into our financial plan.

We all realize that children cost money. Our friends and family have made that point inexplicably clear. Infertility costs money too, sometimes more than an actual month-to-month newborn budget. Let’s consider this example which is close to our own hearts; a couple is covered by insurance so most procedures are covered after deductible etc. For years they try the medical route with the maximum IVF attempts and everything leading up to that. Costs could run close to $15,000 or more. The couple then changes gears and looks at adoption ($30K) or donor eggs/sperm ($15K) or surrogacy ($60K++). By the time any of these scenarios play out the couple is out between $30K (min) and up to approximately $100K on the high side. Did I mention that they had insurance?

For those who don’t readily have this cash on hand, it can be difficult to start taking out loans or running up credit cards. So if there is a baby at the end of all that, wouldn’t it be safe to say that the family is then starting off “in-the-hole” money wise? With emotions at an all time high and adding money questions or problems on top makes for a very stressful mixture. We can cry foul or scream that this is unfair until we’re blue in the face. But maybe, just maybe, a child at no matter what the cost, will dissipate any and all problems, even money concerns…

While traveling down the different paths of our infertility journeys we encounter many people who offer advice. The majority of these suggestions come from our close friends and family because they are aware of what we are going through since we made the decision to let them in on our little infertile skeleton in the closet. For those who we choose to tell, there will always be a major disconnect between what they think is going on and what is actually going on.

Looking beyond the comments that are off-the-cuff (see the article Why don’t you just adopt? posted below), lets delve further into some conversational pieces that arise now and then. Two specific examples that we have encountered illustrate our point.

First, we have a couple of close friends (have drifted as of late though) that went through infertility problems and tried IVF. Both were successful on their first try. Originally this gave us hope because they did the treatment prior to us starting our journey. At first, they were very sympathetic, understanding and full of useful information in regards to process. Now that we have gone through the medical ringer a few failed times, the relationship and conversations have changed. A snippet of the last in-person contact we had went like this;

Successful IVF Couple: “So how are you guys doing / handling everything?”
Us: “We’re trying to get by you know…(distant)”
Successful IVF Couple: “We totally know how you feel.”
Us: “Did your treatments end up with you having children (sarcastic)?”
Successful IVF Couple: “Yes, but…”
Us: “Then you don’t know how we feel because you’re not in our situation, it worked for you. You got your children (upset).”

While they might understand the medical process aspect of what we’ve gone through and what we are still going through, at this point they have passed us by in emotional feelings going from bad to good. We are stuck with bad.

Our friends and family might have the best intentions and only a small few might inquire as to our feelings just to be nice. Reality is that since they’ll never understand, why should they bother to take time to hear us out completely? On a more negative note, do they really care at all?

Second example; we have some relatives that have actually said, “We cannot pretend to understand what you’re going through.” That is true enough. We have tried to explain to folks that want to listen how we are feeling emotionally over and over again. Lately it’s not worth the pain. Every time we have to talk about it, it just takes us down another step on the depression ladder. If they wanted to really understand more, they would do their own research online or in books as infertility battles are very well documented. Maybe since it does not affect them directly, the motivation is not there. Maybe it is a time issue.

And why wouldn’t they have the time to research our feelings and issues? Oh yeah, they’re busy with their kids.

Research, research – everywhere! What would we do without the internet now-a-days? Not to mention the amount of in-print information that you can pick up at the local bookstore on any given topic. Infertility? Yep, there are plenty of sources to find information beyond your practitioners.

With all of this at our fingertips the obsession of finding the exact cause of our infertility rears its head early and often. Additionally, we search for a “cure” as well. Most of the time, these endless quests lead us down many paths, sometimes multiple paths in concert.

Everywhere we turn; books, magazines, websites, we are reading a multitude of different (and similar) theories regarding infertility. For every author or blogger or expert that has something new to try (i.e. alternative methods, diet, etc), another will contradict that same theory recommending nearly the opposite. Make sure your diet is Gluten Free, no, wait, Gluten is OK, but don’t eat dairy! Make sure you get plenty of exercise but don’t exercise while going through IVF treatments. Start taking herbs but not with medication. Don’t drink caffeine and the list goes on and on…Ugghh! It is enough to drive you crazy and make you question everything…

We try to subscribe to a new theory or a method, sometimes even combining a few simultaneously. Who knows what is helping vs. hurting? The end-of-our-rope has come on more than one occasion. We’ve wanted to give up practicing these theories, but seem to somehow press forward. Are we going to try everything? Maybe so. Can someone please give us the RIGHT information?

Welcome to our blog. Our catchy title is not meant to say that Infertility is by any means “hip”, but rather to show that it is extremely relevant and common in today’s world.

As we begin to work on our mission statement for our “about” page, we will start to describe why we created this blog. We are a happily married couple of 7+ years and have been going through the trials of Infertility treatments for the last 3+ years. We have been unsuccessful and wanted to create a platform to share emotions of our journey as well as give others a place to share their experiences.

We see this blog evolving as dual purpose. First, it will be a place to display our actual range of emotions, as we have ok days, bad days and even worse days. It was suggested that this could be therapeutic in a way. Second, there is much to be said regarding friends and relatives who do not understand the struggle that we are going through. This will be a type of “Sensitivity Training” for them. Even though our friends and family try to be supportive, they just don’t get it and tend to be non-helpful with their advice and commentary.

We don’t have a happy-ending to our story yet and are trying to find peace along the way. This blog will not highlight happy endings. Stories that end with a child can be found elsewhere. The same goes for support. It should be understood that we are rooting for all couples going through the Infertility process and wishing them much success – “baby dust” and “sticky thoughts”. However if you want to find those type of comments, there are plenty of other forums out there for that purpose. This site will just be an outlet for the real-time emotional effects of not having your own biological child and the feelings associated with failed treatments.

As we begin to post more articles and stories, the blog will start to take shape in these directions. Please bare with us and feel free to comment on anything and everything. Thanks and there will be more to come soon…..