A brief interlude from the chronicles of self-publishing, in support of National Infertility Awareness Week. The campaign encourages people to #TalkAboutTrying, #flipthescript and #saythefword (fertility, not the f word).
Talking about trying was something I wrestled with during my own fertility journey. My natural instinct is to talk and share what I’m going through. I feel lonely and isolated if I keep it things to myself. Generally, if someone asks, they get the full story, warts and all. Usually that’s fine, but I did encounter two issues:
- People have a tendency to say the wrong thing.
- Ending up with a list of people who want to be ‘kept up do date’ at every stage.
Let’s take point number one first. Anyone who’s suffered fertility issues will have been on the receiving end of unhelpful comments, however well intentioned. Just for fun – here’s a few of my personal favourites:
- ‘It’ll happen when you least expect it.’
- ‘Just relax and stop thinking about it.’
- ‘Go out and get drunk – it worked for me!’
When I least expect it? So if I became a lesbian / joined a nunnery and took a vow of celibacy, I’d miraculously become pregnant? That’d be when I’d least expect it. I’m not going to stop expecting it and hoping for it, when there’s the remotest chance I could actually be pregnant.
Stop thinking about it. I don’t need to explain to anyone who’s been there, why this is impossible. It’s like asking Santa to stop thinking about delivering presents, or Mother Teresa to stop thinking about the needy. Trying to conceive, for good or bad, becomes your sole purpose. It’s all you can think about. When you’re standing in the queue in a coffee shop, your mind is going over dates and calculations, working out the optimum time to have sex. When you’re in a meeting at work, you’re arguing with yourself about whether to take a pregnancy test a day earlier than you decided you’d allow yourself to. When you’re driving home, you’re wondering whether you should have done that shoulder stand for an extra two minutes, as that could have been the one thing that made the difference between your dreams coming true and trudging on in this state of semi-existence.
Go out and get drunk? That may help for the blessed fertiles who are not even trying, through lowering their inhibitions enough to skip the contraception for the night. But really? Get drunk? I don’t think I need to say any more on that one, the ridiculousness speaks for itself.
Now I’ve come back on each comment with sarcasm (I’m British, it’s what we do), I have to say, hand on heart, I know friends and family mean well. Whatever they say, I honestly believe they want to help. No one who loves us would intentionally say something to make us feel worse. So, perhaps we need to help them help us. I work in communications and am au fait with developing lines to take on all sorts of subject matters. In this case, I think what’s needed is a ‘lines not to take’ – please don’t say any of these things to me (see above). It’s probably best to just listen, be there. Helpful suggestions are not going to be that helpful, unless you’re a qualified fertility specialist.
So, onto keeping people up to date at every stage – this is where my husband and I differ greatly. If it were down to him, no one would have known anything about our fertility woes. They’d have been left wondering why we hadn’t reproduced yet, speculating about problems or us being one of those couples who doesn’t want a family. I’ve been known to have a sort of personal info Tourette’s; ask me an innocent question like ‘do I want kids?’, ten minutes later I’ll be telling you about my cervical mucus and asking your opinion on whether we should have sex again tonight or wait a couple of days for a fresh batch of sperm cooking up.
Me being me, I ended up with a rather large group of people who knew every intimate stage of my journey, then understandably wanted to be kept up to date on each step. Every test result, every appointment every ‘what next?’. It becomes exhausting. You go through it for real, then you go through it again and again as you re-tell the sorry tale at each lunch with a friend, phone call with a family member or water cooler encounter with a co-worker.
Perhaps what’s needed is one update, broadcast to everyone, issued like a press release – here’s the latest scoop. Some might choose to use a blog for this purpose, saving themselves from telling their story over and over. For others, maybe a blanket text to their nearest and dearest would serve better.
I hope #NIAW will help with some of these issues. If talking about infertility becomes normal, it’ll help friends and family find the right words. It shouldn’t be taboo and it shouldn’t be dismissed as no big deal. It’s a continuous struggle, it’s heart breaking every day, it’s climbing a mountain only to find someone keeps moving the summit. We need support from our loved ones and we need to be understood.
In the spirit of sharing everything with everyone, I’m turning my own personal fertility story, along with survival techniques I learned along the way, into a book. My hope is that it may make some fellow sufferers feel a bit less alone, a bit less like they’re going insane and maybe raise a few smiles and laughs along the way.
It’s coming soon, my little contribution to the struggling with fertility community.
Love, Tori x
Tori Day 