The Right To Expect? The Demands and Disappointments of Infertility by Jude Acosta, author The Next Osama (Jodere, 2006) and The Worst Is Over (Jodere, 2002)
First published in Women's News.
It is, or so we believed, our natural birthright. Birds did it. Bees did it. We did it. Just like that. In fact, most of the women visiting fertility specialists right now were afraid of getting pregnant and, for years, juggled IUD's, diaphragms, condoms, and pills to protect themselves from what they felt would be inevitable if they didn't cover themselves with creams and impermeable membranes.
The end of the twentieth century has had the last laugh, with hundreds of thousands of women finally throwing caution to the wind and finding out that caution was the last thing they needed. A whole generation of women that had felt so in control of their reproductive systems, found themselves at the mercy of forces so far out of control they could hardly be isolated at times.
"I was so prepared to be pregnant," one woman, L, said plaintively. "I dumped my pills in the toilet and waited the month you're supposed to wait. Then, I figured it would just happen. It's been 46 months-and no one knows precisely why-but I'm still waiting. And visiting doctors, and going through procedures. God, how I hate that word. If I never hear it again, it would be too soon."
Where there is expectation, there is disappointment.
And there is enormous disappointment in women who desperately want to have children and experience pregnancy, but for one reason or another cannot. The two combined lead, in turn, to the taking of extraordinary measures to make it happen.
L, like many others I see in my practice, had tried numerous in vitro fertilizations (IVFs), artificial insemination (AI), and high-tech assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) after having suffered two miscarriages. The process has taken years and cost many tens of thousands of dollars.
The toll has been high for her and her husband not only in physical and financial terms, but in emotional and spiritual ones, as well, having been thrust into the deepest parts of their souls to determine who they are, what they truly value, what they are willing to do without, and what they are willing to give up in order to have a child. They have boarded a fast-moving train, running on bio-engineered tracks and roaring past the stations they thought were theirs.
Dag Hammarskjold wrote in his private journal, Markings:
Thus it was. I am being driven forward Into an unknown land. The pass grows steeper, The air colder and sharper. A wind from my unknown goal Stirs the strings Of expectation. Still the question: Shall I ever get there? There where life resounds, A clear pure note In the silence.
The women and men like L and her husband, who confront seemingly insurmountable reproductive difficulties, persevere. But many discover few answers and find themselves increasingly disconnected from one another on more ordinary planes: What to do with their free time, what to think about when they go to bed, and what to talk about over dinner-if it's not about getting pregnant.
One insightful patient, R, comments: "After so many years of such focus, such intensity of purpose, I would sit down with H and I didn't know what to say anymore. I had started seeing him as a semen donor and little more. I didn't know who I was without a baby, I didn't know him anymore as a husband, and I didn't know what we would be together if we were not going to be parents."
Striking A Balance Persevering on the path is strength. To keep your center is to endure. (Tao 33)
Women (and men) pursue fertility with a vengeance. Unfortunately, what they lose at times is their center-the knowledge that who they are does not need to depend on circumstance for definition, clarity, or peace.
"If I'm not a mother," laments one client, C, "who am I?"
J. Acosta is a writer and practicing clinical psychotherapist. She has written two books: THE WORST IS OVER (2002, Jodere) and THE NEXT OSAMA (2006). Her third is due to come out some time next year and she is currently in the middle of her fourth.
She has her practice in New Mexico with her canine therapeutic assistants. She has worked with anxiety and fear in patients for twenty years. She has watched it, felt it, wrote about it, and helped heal people from it. As a result, she has learned a few things about fear, particularly that growing epidemic she calls VIRAL FEAR.
