Infertility is a very personal battle. And this struggle…this fight…this abyss of sadness is something we tend to keep to ourselves. We don’t share it with the people who we see everyday or those who love us most. We retreat to our computers where we find amazing support on message boards and blogs from people who don’t know us and wouldn’t know us if they walked right into us on the street. But this is a huge thing that we go through. It is physically and emotionally draining. (I’m not even going near the financial implications, see The Price of Money below.) It is a lot to keep from the people you love and share your life with, isn’t it?

The majority of people decide they want to have a child and get to make love to their partner in the privacy of their bedroom. They get to surprise the world with a pregnancy whenever they see fit to share it. We don’t get that. Those of us fighting this battle get phone calls and emails asking when our next doctor’s appointment is…when the next procedure or cycle will be. Our sex lives (or lack thereof) are out there for the entire world to know. (Doesn’t it feel like that sometimes?) We can’t have a baby the “old-fashioned” way. We need doctors and embryologists and anesthesiologists just to have a chance at having a baby. We get looks of pity and pep talks. (And who needs or wants those!? Or is it just me that gets really angry from that crap?) We get poked and prodded and used as pin cushions. We don’t get to surprise anyone with the news if …IF…we actually get pregnant. And we don’t even get definitive results…we have percentages of success based on age and a whole host of other things that are beyond our control.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve skipped lot…and I mean A LOT…of family functions over the past two years because I couldn’t handle seeing kids or because I had just gotten a BFN again (see Becoming Estranged below). In a way, it feels like I’m hiding from my life. I hate that. How much of your life have you missed since finding out that you were infertile? How much of your struggles with infertility have you kept from the people you see every day or those you love? Telling our loved ones may make this fight easier to bear but telling them comes with questions…the ones about when you decided to have kids… what have you done so far…are any of us ready to answer those questions? Do we even have to?

I mentioned all this to a good friend of mine who is also struggling with infertility. And in all her infinite wisdom she said to me: “If they ask questions, you can say with impunity, ‘This is a really difficult process for us, and we’d prefer not to talk about it. I hope you can respect our wishes.’ And who knows, maybe having the visible support of your extended family will help us cope? Maybe in keeping it private, we’re giving ourselves a heavier burden to bear?”

And you know what? She is 100% absolutely positively right. How many of us suffer in silence daily only to cry to our computer screens because the people we talk to in cyberspace are the ONLY people who can even begin to imagine what it is that we are going through. We get by on virtual hugs instead of trusting those who can actually hug us. We go through the motions of every day life. We suffer through the intrusive and insensitive questions such as “Are you having kids?” We smile at family gatherings and hang out at the bar (there should always be a bar at family gatherings) because it’s easier then facing the kids that are running around laughing or the talk of so and so’s pregnancy.

But the question remains…are we making this harder on ourselves then it needs to be? Maybe we should have a little more faith in those we love? Maybe we should come out of the infertility closet?

For more articles by NewsGirl including the original of this article, please visit her blog I’ve Got News For You and follow her on Twitter @GotNewsForYou .

Looking back, when my husband and I first started trying to conceive, we had this idea that only beautiful lovemaking was going to create our child. Plain old ordinary sex was just not going to cut it, we thought. Nothing but passionate and loving intimacy was going to get us pregnant.

During our first year of trying, I recall a month or two where we decided not to have sex, even though the timing was right. We were tired or otherwise not feeling up to it that day, so we intentionally skipped it. No child of ours is going to be a product of obligatory sex, we insisted. Our mantra became, “Only the most beautiful kind of lovemaking will create our child.”

As it turned out, that was far from the truth. The doctors have since told us that it will be no lovemaking of any kind—obligatory or otherwise—that was going to get us to our goal. Our only hope for conception was going to be quite the opposite of our original thoughts.

Unromantic, indeed! It is far from intimate; mediated by doctors, nurses, and lab technicians. Forget candle-lit dinners; we use thermometers, pee sticks, and specimen collection cups. In fact, there is a great irony to be found in our fertility treatments: My doctor told me that I can bring the semen sample with me when I go for my intrauterine insemination. My husband’s physical presence is not even necessary.

So, no, there will be no romance in our quest for conception. And that’s not to say that there is no romance in our relationship. Sure, it’s still there. What we’ve really lost is the romance of an idea. This idea which now, in retrospect, seems a bit naïve. We’ve lost the romantic notion that our child, if we are blessed with one, will be created from a physical act of love.

ITNB would like to express our thanks to Jane for her article. We think it is something we can all relate to!