AceOfSpuds: Technology, Life and Art ...blogged by Richard Berlin

Enough miracles to go around?

Irony of ironies, for an infertile couple: my wife is a natural childbirth instructor! So last night, when we were happily buying ice cream at Cold Stone in order to help "save seventh period" for the local high school, we were intrigued to see two women on the bench nearby--clearly friends--one of whom was wearing a t-shirt with a large stork and the words "Surrogate Mothers - We Deliver Miracles." So I struck up a conversation, and we learned a lot. Let me tell you, I can't imagine anybody who knows more about being an IVF patient than a gestational surrogate; the two women we talked to had been through it over and over and over. Somehow, talking to them made our own process more real and less scary.

By strange coincidence, while we were having the aforementioned conversation, getupgrrl was posting her latest and saddest news. The optimism I was feeling last night has evaporated in the face of this reminder about how truely cruel life can be.

I'll let you in on something that very few people really understand. Having a baby is every infertile couple's dream come true, no question. But the baby doesn't make the infertility go away. Infertility and childlessness are not the same thing, and it's really the infertility--not the childlessness--which causes most of the grieving. Which is one reason that "You could just adopt..." is a really insensitive response. An infertile couple with one child is cruelly reminded whenever they start thinking about what a great big brother/sister s/he would be. And even if that one child is exactly the right number for your family, you still will never forget the pain of the struggle. Even when you gaze every night at that angelic, sleeping face, you are still an infertile couple. Even when you're awakened every morning by that little bouncy creature snuggling up in your bed and telling you he loves you, you are still an infertile couple. Even when you are unequivocally welcomed into the fraternity of parenthood by playgroups, schools and other rites of passage, you are still an infertile couple. All of the joys of parenthood cannot completely make the years of infertility recede into blessed forgetfulness.

That's not altogether a bad thing. Sometimes the memory can be a wise counselor, reminding you how empty your life felt before, and how much you love and want the child whose behavior is currently driving you up a tree. Sometimes it can bring up indignation: at parents who mistreat their children, or the rash of dead-baby abandonments here in California. And sometimes the grief all comes flooding back. For me it usually happens when, like today, I hear another infertile couple's bad news: I am transported to the cold, gray day in December 1998, when our doctor showed us the ultrasound pictures that indicated our latest treatment had failed...and I hear my wife's plaintive "I thought since it was Chanukah, maybe I could have a miracle, too."

Our go/no go ultrasound for this cycle is on Tuesday. Dear God please help me regain my optimism by then.

Posted at 05:01PM Jul 21, 2004 by AceOfSpuds in Infertility  |  Comments[4]