Isolation is a feeling and an emotion that we all feel from time to time. Whether we isolate ourselves because of pain or otherwise, we become more and more lonely as our infertility progresses along its path.

In a previous article we mentioned that sometimes we become estranged from friends and family because we just don’t want to face their children-filled realities. That’s fine, we suppose, but what about those folks that actually care and want to hear from us and want to try to help and understand?

All of us here in infertile-land have (or should have) a couple of close confidants that we keep very tight inside our inner circle. These are the folks (friends and/or relatives) that know when our next round of IVF is or if we are considering adoption or surrogacy. These people know some things our families don’t and they keep it to themselves sans gossip. They are so well versed that they seem to have gone through a part of that “sensitivity training” that we wish so many others would go through. They go miles above and beyond anyone else even made an attempt to. We can label these folks as true friends who care.

What happens though when these people start to drift away too? This, to us, is a sad state of affairs. The writing on the wall starts to show when the infertile couple becomes the only one’s reaching out by phone, email or otherwise. Communication is a two-way street, for sure, but since they are a source of our comfort, we generally are blind to the fact that it slowly becomes more one-way. Even though they respond when contacted, they seem not to contact first. Is there a pattern here? Anyone else seen this?

Since these so-called wonderful people have been our only in-person emotional outlets, are they now sick or fed up with this since it has gone on so long? Has our depressive tone run them off? Did they even care in the first place? Were they just keeping us around so that they can compare their much better off “having children” situation to our failures so that they can say, “Well, at least we’re not like the so-n-so’s.”

Are our contacts going to dwindle down to none? What then?

Since the holiday season is upon us, we would like to take a brief moment to acknowledge a known sore spot with those of us who are infertile. On an almost daily basis we are sifting through a larger amount of physical (snail) mail which has been growing post-thanksgiving. Tucked into these piles of online and store catalogs are the little things that seem to send those of us sans-kids into our dark places. Yep, we’re talking about Christmas cards.

However, these just aren’t any normal Christmas cards like the one’s you might receive from an out-of-town grandparent that has a $15.00 check inside. Nope. These are the cards that come as a postcard or in an envelope that display our overly fertile friends and their grouping of kids all in their holiday best. Most of these tend to be themed, quite poorly, to show how children are growing year after year. The worst ones may even include a family update newsletter but that is a rant for another article.

Not to say that this is an entirely awful thing to want to display your family in a photograph to keep up with minimal correspondence every holiday season, but to send them out to those of us who desire to have the chance to one day create these pictures for ourselves is bad taste. After a while of infertility most friends should be aware of our feelings and understand that viewing a holiday card with them showing off their children front and center can, unfortunately, make us upset. Especially since the holiday season already brings its own set of sad emotions.

Here is our plea; DO NOT SEND US ANY OF YOUR STUPID, STAGED HOLIDAY CARDS THAT FEATURE YOUR FAMILY IN A PHOTO OF ANY KIND. We do not care to see your entire family in matching red and/or green holiday sweaters in front of a phony snowy forest backdrop. We do not care that it took you all afternoon at Sears or Kmart or JC Penney’s photo department and do not want to hear the story of how the photographer coaxed all the kids into only one good shot. Please do not make us waste paper and postage by throwing these straight in the trash or better yet using the “return-to-sender” feature of our postal system.

A lot of us infertile folks may think this in our heads, but we wanted to say it out loud…Please stop rubbing it in our faces that you have children and we do not!

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!!

By Jane, Guest Author for ITNB

F is a loaded letter. F is for Frustration. F is for F#@K, this sucks! And yes, F is for Fertility.

When my husband and I first started this process, we quickly amassed a mounting pile of paperwork from our various doctors. So I organized it and neatly tucked it away in my filing cabinet under F for Fertility. I very intentionally chose to label it “Fertility” rather than “Infertility.” You could say that I had a beef with the word “Infertility.”

Though there’s an accepted medical definition for infertility—no conception after one year of regular intercourse—that’s not my interpretation. Perhaps I could accept something milder like “Subfertility,” but to me, “Infertility” sounds like more of an absolute: No Chance for Fertility, Ever. It just sounds so negative, so final, so harsh. Especially when I was just starting the process…shouldn’t I be allowed a glimmer of hope, without being slapped with such a drastic label?

I decided to boycott “Infertility.” I refused to utter it. When I confided in a friend, I used an alternate term. “We’re fertility-challenged” or “we’re seeing a fertility doctor,” I would say. When I first called up the reproductive endocrinologist’s office and was given the choice between a gynecology appointment or an infertility appointment, I asked for a fertility appointment. In my mindset, it seemed absurd to ask for an infertility appointment. Infertility? Why would I want to sign up for that? No, thanks. I’ll take fertility, please.

As long as I am struggling to remain optimistic about the process, I would like the outside world to offer me some optimism. But when I hear the word “Infertility,” I just think about the past and what hasn’t worked so far. Personally, I try to redirect my negative thoughts as much as possible—though it’s often a challenge—to something more hopeful. Whenever I hear “Infertility,” it just drags me down.

I think my semantic choices have been based on a combination of optimism, denial, and a touch of superstition. Admitting that my husband and I were infertile meant acknowledging a possibility that we might never be able to conceive. It was hard for me to admit that then, and it’s still a difficult scenario to think about now, though only time will tell.

And though I’ve resigned myself to the term “infertility” by now, I still wince a bit whenever I use it. Semantics can be quite significant in the way that we perceive something. As long as we’re on this emotional journey, perhaps a better label would help us all feel a little better?

ITNB would like to once again thank to Jane for her article. Sometimes we would all just like to say “F-THIS!!”

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?

By FertilityChick, Guest Author for ITNB

When I was younger I avoided doctor’s offices as much as possible. Basically unless it was annual physical time (and even those I tended to, ahem, “miss” – bad I know), or I was really, really, REALLY sick, I stayed as far away as possible. As a recovering needle-phob, I knew a doctor’s office was the very last place I wanted to be. In most cases the visit resulted in a blood test or an immunization. Man, if only I knew!

Sadly, my foray into the cruel world of infertility started with a lot of avoidance. We weren’t really ready at the time for a family. I was dealing with school and then the start of a career. However, in the back of my head, I had a sense something was wrong and wasn’t ready to face it. I knew multiple doctor visits were on the horizon and wasn’t ready to spend my life sitting in those cracked, vinyl chairs of the waiting room. Not to mention the influx of invasive tests (and needles!) that I knew awaited me.

The time came when my courage increased and I was ready to deal. However, that didn’t prepare me for the amount of waiting time I would endure! The grand tour of waiting rooms: visits with my family doctor, then the OB/GYN, later at the fertility clinic, the ultrasound lab, and the RE’s office. Now I even wait at the Naturopathic doctor’s office. (Yes, now I’m actually paying for someone to stick needles into me!) In fact, when doing a monitored cycle, I spend more time sitting in a waiting room than I do in my own living room!

Time in the waiting room has become a metaphor of infertility for me. It’s about waiting. Waiting to see the next doctor or technician. Waiting for the next blood test, the next ultrasound, the next round of acupuncture. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for follicles to grow big enough to trigger. Waiting for the right time to do the next IUI. And then of course the hardest wait of all: the two week wait. In essence, the wait to see if all of this waiting is finally over so that hopefully a new kind of waiting begins.

I’m still at the beginning of my infertility journey and now that I’ve decided to take the summer months off, I’m doing a different kind of waiting. Funny, there are moments that I loathe the waiting rooms; the despair, the desperation. Other times, I’m oddly comforted by others who are also playing the waiting game. The ones who smile knowingly and understand what I’m feeling.

This definitely isn’t what I signed up for. I’ve probably seen more doctors in the past year and a half than some people will see in their lifetimes. My only request is this: can we get more comfortable chairs and better magazines in these damn waiting rooms? Seriously folks, we’re basically here on a regular and first name basis!

For more articles by FertilityChick, please visit her blog What If? and follow her on Twitter @fertilitychick.

As we pass through the arc of life the old adage of “we are born, we grow old, etc…” is known to all. When we look at our own expected life milestones there are differences depending on the environment we grew up in. Typically some of the expected events in our lifetimes include; our first words, first day of school, first kiss/love, high school graduation, college graduation, first full-time job, first promotion, meeting our mate, getting engaged, getting married, buying your first home, having a child/children and so on as your children then repeat the milestones.

For the majority of individuals, these steps seem to flow with relative ease. However when you get stuck at one of these steps or one doesn’t happen in the timely manner that you prefer, everything else in your own life plan comes to an abrupt halt as well.

It appears to us that in our society there is a large emphasis on completing the majority of these life tasks. Included in this same emphasis is the overwhelming importance of having children and starting a family. While this is the grand wish of Infertile couples, it only adds to the burden and headache of the current situation.

Infertility treatments can go on for years. It is during these years that time seems to stop and all other milestones take a back seat. Life’s setbacks can occur at anytime to anyone, but Infertility hurts physically, emotionally and sometimes financially. We always find ourselves asking the question, “When will we reach that milestone?”

A pretty typical question couples (or individuals) ask themselves. After being diagnosed with Infertility – you can’t help but feel broken at times. Doctors tell you have this issue, you have that issue, it might be this, it might be that and so on – ahhh! – too much to process.

If you are like us, in addition to feeling broken, you may feel guilt. Although you know that you should not feel broken and guilty because your diagnosis is a physical problem and doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person….it is still a REAL feeling that waxes and wanes.

This guilt sometimes can interfere with your marriage. As a couple, we know that we are in this together, but we can’t help feel that the other would not have to deal with this annoyance if we weren’t married to each other. These feelings can even get to the point where one person actually verbalizes these thoughts by asking the other to leave for greener pastures.

All we can do is try to stay strong and support each other without question. We might not be broken in the true sense of the word, but our hearts surely are…