So as I wrote about earlier. So many women have a struggle with fertility. So many couples have trouble with conceiving and after a few months realise it isn’t just as easy as having a few unprotected nights of fun. It becomes quite apparent after a few months of “trying” that pro-creating is not something that just happens on demand!
After those few months, those endless amounts of pregnancy tests (First Response made a good profit from me), the waiting to see if your cycle was about to begin… You start, as a woman to think there is truly something not quite right with you. Am I broken? Did I kill all my eggs with all those hundreds of litres of vodka I have drunk over the years? Did my shitty smoking habit lessen my chances of me having a baby? Maybe it was the years of “other substances” that I dabbled in? All these things surely have completely destroyed my chances of having a baby right??? Well, how come people all over the world, who drink, smoke and take drugs can fall pregnant and go on to have babies? Women who eat shit food, have terrible lifestyles, do way worse things to their bodies… why can they have kids? These are all rational and logical thoughts… after all, the media loves to tell us just how awful things are all the time. Like only recently with the bacon hoohaa. You know, how we are all going to die because we eat bacon? Yeah well… I’m never going to be able to have child because I drank and smoked. Or at least thats what you start thinking after you have had some unsuccessful months of trying.
Okay, so then I went on to thinking, maybe its not the drinking and smoking. You know what it has to be. That I’m a geriatric in fertility years. I’m in my mid 30’s. I’ve read all about this. My eggs are apparently sticky or some shit. My googies must be all mashed up?! The sperm can’t fertilise my egg because its old and scrambled with vodka and smoking a Benson & Hedges cigarette. Damn…. I really don’t know what is wrong with me at this stage but I can tell you that you feel… ALONE! It’s sort of like you feel that you are the only woman in history who can not get pregnant! It sounds like an exaggeration but it really feels like that when you are living it.
But then, after I find out I am pregnant and that everything is great and bub is growing fine etc. I start speaking to people about the struggles and I hear similar stories. I get feedback from others that they too struggled or had miscarriages or had months, years, decades of heart aches and disappointments to do with fertility. I find it really amazing that when you are going through it, people don’t give you these stories. When you have gone through it and come out the other end then thats when you get some simpatico kind of response. Its just odd. I could put it down to the fact that when you are in the midst of it all, you don’t see the stories as helpful, as you are purpose driven and goal focused on the “I need to be pregnant” thing, but I don’t think it is that.
It’s a weird thing, Fertility. It’s a secret that we hide. When its all “I’m pregnant and happy now”, we can start talking about all the shit we battled through to get there, but when you are in the process… It’s all hush hush, can’t tell anyone we have a problem. And lets just say “we aren’t REALLY trying” etc. Wouldn’t want anyone to think I was a failure cause my body can’t create a baby in one month because I decided that I want one, now.