“When you are diagnosed with infertility,
you are inducted into a club
you never dreamed you would be forced to join: the ' I can't have a baby club'…”
you never dreamed you would be forced to join: the ' I can't have a baby club'…”
There are many books out there about infertility, but there are few I have found written by authors who have actually experienced it for themselves. Everything I have felt (or feared) they described: the jealousy, feelings of failure, sadness of loss and the overwhelming frustration that comes with it all. They even go into the male side of infertility, which I have rarely seen covered.
Having the courage and the insight to speak about something most people choose to hide or ignore is commendable! Just the first chapter, “This Isn’t How It Was Supposed to Be” describes the whole situation so well. For anyone going through this, this book is a must read. It is very well written, touching and true… just don’t read it in public and make sure you have lots of tissues ready!
The authors write that while it is “often unrecognized as such, infertility truly is a trauma. A trauma is any event or feeling that goes beyond the range of usual human experience and is overwhelming either physically, emotionally or both”… yup… by this definition, infertility is definitely traumatic. They go on to say that “the trauma of infertility is not confined just to the medical procedures you must endure, but reaches into the core of who you are and how you identify yourself. The shift in identity from healthy, normal person to infertility patient is one of the most disorienting and painful changes you might ever have to make.”
So many other books have made me feel as though I had something to do with my condition, like I was to blame. I suppose in some ways it could have been prevented, but I have been nothing but proactive since I was diagnosed and it has taken me a long time to understand that it is NOT my fault. Some books have actually made me feel ashamed, while others brought about a sense of hopelessness. And they all shared the same damn, stupid, advice; lose weight, relax, take your mind off of it and it WILL happen. Yeah, geniuses, that doesn’t work! I am not just being impatient, I have been diagnosed with infertility! That diagnosis, by definition, means that it may NEVER happen.
