Have you no shame?
I was reading my wife's copy of Brain, Child and hit a reference to a fabulous blogger (who is going on my blogroll as soon as I finish this). Her pet subject is infertility--something I unfortunately know about firsthand--and that reminded me that I've been meaning to speak up about it in this space.
We need to do something about the shame that surrounds infertility. We need to do something about the lack of medical coverage for it in this country, too, but that's not going to happen until we upgrade the inability to conceive from an embarrassment to a disability. Heart attack and cancer survivors wear their scars proudly, and we with fertility issues ought to be doing the same, dammit.
When my wife and I struggled with infertility, we agreed not to make things even worse by the act of keeping it to ourselves; as the saying goes, "You're only as sick as your secrets." We were determined to be well. We spoke freely about it. In response many people privately confided to us that they, too, had fertility issues. The "privately" part is proof of the stigma surrounding it, I think. At one point I discovered, astonishingly, that within my project group of less than ten people, three of us had test-tube babies. About a dozen couples that I know personally have revealed fertility issues to me; I imagine there are more who have not.
Babies have come to my extended family in all kinds of ways: clomid, insemination, IVF, surrogacy, adoption. There is that one oddball sister who concieved the "old fashioned" way (and even indentifies the date of our niece's conception as the weekend of our wedding) but so far she's the exception rather than the rule. We've tried not to hold that against her; but I have to confess, when you're doing daily injections, ultrasounds, several blood draws a week, 5 AM visits to the surgical suite--all the time hemorrhaging cash--well, it's hard not to be jealous of people who only need privacy and a bottle of wine!
More later...I have a rehearsal for javaone in just a few hours so I need some 'Zs.
Posted at 11:58PM Jun 26, 2004 by AceOfSpuds in Infertility | Comments[1]