Infertility sucks. And we should be talking about it.
It’s National Infertility Awareness Week, and this year’s theme is Listen Up! It aims to empower anyone to make a difference in the infertility community, and I’ve decided to (finally) start writing about this crazy, chaotic process that we’ve been through.
So why now? This shit is scary. And I don’t mean the needles, injections, ultrasounds, blood work, and everything else that comes with IVF—I mean this. Writing about it. Sharing this means dredging up all of the feelings from the last three years. It means reliving the past, and being very public about something that is usually very private. And, I’m a very private person. I didn’t want to discuss this at all for the better part of two years—with anyone. Not even my closest friends, and certainly not the internet.
But lately I’ve been a lot more open about this process and everything that we’ve been through. I feel like we’re at a point where it’s not only much easier to talk about it, it actually helps.
Recently I met a friend of a friend who is about six months pregnant. Turns out she used IVF to get pregnant so we got to talking about the process and shared our stories. I saw my friend a few weeks later and she pulled me aside to tell me how much my talking about IVF helped her friend out, and that she was really glad I spoke so candidly about it.
There are a lot more people talking about infertility today—and IVF in particular—and I realized that sharing my story might help. Even if it’s one person. One person who’s lost and doesn’t know where to begin, one person who’s terrified to commit to this journey, or one person who’s afraid to share their own experience.
I know these feelings all too well. The ups and downs that instill the fear of even coming close to acknowledging that you’re struggling to conceive a baby can be crushing.
So, here goes.
To learn more about National Infertility Awareness Week and Listen Up! visit resolve.org.
