Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It is normally a day of celebration for our mothers, as Michelle and I are very close to our parents. Since we began this infertility ride, holidays in general, but especially Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have become difficult to endure. It isn’t that we have any less respect or love for our own parents…it is simply the largest in your face reminder that we have not reached a resolution to our situation. Our family is still incomplete. And this particular Mother’s Day was even more emotional due to several extraordinary factors.

The desire to have a family of your own is all encompassing and takes over in every aspect of your life. You get good at masking the pain so that you can function in society and not turn into a walking basket case. But, in innumerable ways throughout the day, every day, you are reminded by something someone says or the passing of a parent with their child on the street or even accidently entering into a department store the wrong way and finding yourself in the children’s clothing section. Some days, it is easier to mask the emotion than others, and as I am slowly discovering, you can also learn to mask your emotions too well, enough to even fool yourself at times.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are always difficult for us, much in the same way that birthdays become because they act as markers of time that is ticking away. And, as the holidays pass, you tell yourself that this time next year will be different. Next year I will finally be able to rejoin society and celebrate this wonderful occasion. And when that next year comes around and you still have not become a parent, it is devastating all over again.

Yesterday was further complicated for Michelle and I for many reasons. The first reason is that Michelle’s parents moved seventeen hours away, to Texas, last year. With the price of gasoline, airline tickets, and the cost to travel in general so high, we are lucky to see her parents twice a year. The most we saw her parents last year was for a week at Christmas. Since that time, Michelle has flown out once, in March, to see her family for her birthday for four days. We have not seen them since. The distance is difficult for Michelle to reconcile because she loves her parents and it is hard not to see them more often. Yesterday, that distance was really difficult for her at a moment when she could really have used a hug from her mother.

To further complicate the emotional drain of the day; we recently found out that my younger sister is pregnant. This pregnancy was unplanned and my sister was really not in a position to be adequately prepared for this news. Let me preface all of this by saying I am severely torn by my desire to fully support my sister and to share in her gradual acceptance and excitement of her upcoming miracle and the desire to go and crawl into a hole somewhere and never come back out again. I love my sister and she has had her own fears about her ability to get pregnant and I know she has felt her biological clock ticking away as well. I am overjoyed that this dream will come true for her and I know she will be a wonderful mother. I am also excited to finally have my first niece or nephew, on my side of the family, enter the world. At the same time, it is going to be a constant reminder of our failure to have a child of our own, in the most proximal way possible. It will be hard to watch her go through the motions we have longed to go through for the last six years and have friends and family ooh and ahh over her progression while we suffer in silence. And one of the hardest things to reconcile is that it is no fault of her own, and I wish I could be more present in the celebration but the pain is so very sharp. I am sure that she doesn’t fully understand our distance but I hope in time she will know that it was never intentional.

These issues and several other related issues all combined to create a perfect storm for Michelle and me as we were getting ready to go to my aunt’s house for Mother’s Day festivities. I knew that the day would be extra difficult for us but was still unprepared when Michelle came to me and said we may need to take separate cars because she wasn’t sure she could make it through the day. I didn’t want to leave her alone on this day, and really, I didn’t want to face it alone myself. We both broke down into a sobbing mess in our bathroom and determined that the best we could do was to stop by and deliver my Mom’s gift, tell her we loved her, and beg everyone’s understanding that we had to leave.

Instead of either of us spending, what should normally be, a day of love and lifting up of our own Mothers, we ended up going to a local burger place for a quick lunch before starting a process of soul baring discussion about where we are with the fertility process, where we are with interpersonal relationships and where we are in our professional lives. It was an extremely emotional and painful process that involved more than four hours, mostly in the parked car, lots of tears and a new level of openness with one another. Instead of being a day of celebration, it became a day of knocking down walls and the painful process of re-engineering the way we rebuild them to ensure that they are stronger and more functional.

Yesterday became a day to reconnect with each other and to reinforce the fact that we entered into this marriage as a single unit and that we have every intention of maintaining that unit as a solitary force to be reckoned with. We still don’t know the clear path that will lead us to our ultimate goal to complete our family. However, I think we know each other a little better and are going to be stronger for the process. And, as I told Michelle yesterday, I realized that even if we are unsuccessful in adding children to this family by all means available to us, I will always see her as the mother of my children when I look into her eyes. I pray that we will be able to celebrate this holiday with our families again soon without the deep pain that steals the joy from the celebration. Ultimately, I know that we will weather whatever comes our way together and I pray that our mothers know that our hearts were with them in spirit.

A Solid Foundation

Yesterday, my wife, Michelle, and I got up on a Saturday morning at 5 a. m. to drive to Jacksonville. The reason we were up so insanely early on a Saturday? We were headed for a fertility seminar, which we heard about from a good friend. The main reason we were going was because we had heard they were giving away three FREE IVF cycles and you had to be present for the entire seminar to win. While we recognized that our chances of actually winning were probably small, any chance to have such a costly dream offered for free is a chance not to be missed. So, we were out the door by 5:30 and on the road to an all too familiar destination.

We arrived in Jacksonville in time for the early registration and were somewhat relieved to see that there were only a couple hundred people here for this seminar which, of course, meant better chances of wining for us.  The seminar is an annual event, known as the Jacksonville Fertility Awareness Seminar. The itinerary is split between the four doctors, representing the three fertility clinics participating in the seminar. Each doctor talked for ten to fifteen minute intervals about various aspects surrounding the pathologies and treatments used in infertility. This would be followed by three personal stories and a representative from the local chapter of Resolve, a national volunteer organization, set up to provide support and education to those of us experiencing infertility as well as some lobbying activities on our behalf. Finally, the seminar would end with a brief question and answer session with the panel of doctors and the all important drawings.

After finding a table at the front, we walked around to the various booths that had been set up for each clinic. All of the clinics had a lot of valuable information to offer and several had their own drawings for alternate prizes. One clinic even had a second drawing, to be held at a free luncheon after the seminar, for another free IVF treatment. We were concurrently torn by the prospect of giving up our relaxing Saturday morning in exchange for an early 120 mile drive, a day spent engulfed in the very subject that brings us the most pain along with the prospect of doing it all for naught contrasted with the excitement of the possibility of winning a free chance to proceed with our attempts at achieving our dreams.

As veterans of the fertility process, there wasn’t a lot said, during the initial presentations, that was news to us. The thing that I found the most interesting was that, even in this small community of fertility physicians, there is still plenty of dissension of ideas for what paths are the best to take to achieve success with this process. I think it is reflective of the greater community at large, in that fertility assistance is still really in its infancy and, though great strides have been made in such a short time, there is still so much that is really unknown about the process. To put it in perspective, the first successful IVF treatment was reported in Europe in 1978 and the success was not achieved in the US until 1981. The first reported success, with IVF treatment, is less than 35 years old.

After the educational portion was complete, it was time for the personal stories and the Resolve representative to speak. This was the most rewarding and the hardest part of the day. Resolve was up first. The most interesting part of her participation was the fact that she stated she was intending to travel to Washington DC, along with other regional Resolve representatives, to speak to congress about the desire to create a tax credit, similar to those given for parents who adopt, for individuals that incur the high costs of fertility treatments. It is comforting to know that there are people out there that are fighting on our behalf to bring some attention to our plight. The personal stories started of with a man from South Georgia. It was a bit surprising to see a man willing to get up and talk of things that are considered so personal and, for most men, highly embarrassing. I was comforted by the fact that his graphic story about his first experience of providing a semen sample at his small town lab was just as embarrassing and uncomfortable as my own. In fact, it almost seemed like he had been privy to my experience and was quoting me exactly. Although, I also have to say that I was even more relieved to say that the similarity stopped when he was caught, literally pants down, by a local police officer while he was trying to collect his sample, in his car, in what he considered to be a remote area. Luckily, the cop was just as embarrassed as him and he had the paperwork handy to prove his story. The things we will all go through to have a child. He also brought light to the difficulties that the process can bring to a marriage and how easily it can destroy it from within if the communication lines are not fully open and you both are not on the same page with the process.

The last two stories were interesting for the reason that they both highlighted something that most people don’t really get. This idea was not new to me because it was brought up by the woman that headed up our brief infertility group a few months ago. She started the fertility group through our church because she and her husband had struggled with infertility for seven years before having their daughter and she felt compelled to help others. The statement that she made in one of our initial meetings struck me like a lightning bolt. She said “being infertile does not end with a successful pregnancy. Just because you have one child, it doesn’t change the fact that you still suffer from the same conditions that prevent you from getting pregnant, in the normal time frame, without medical assistance.” The first woman spoke of the pain she endured after deciding to have a second child. Her first daughter was born without issue but she suffered four miscarriages over the next several years. And she highlighted the fact that during this intensely painful period, she was constantly challenged by the insensitive questions, of those around her, asking when she intended to give her child a sibling. Infertility has many different causes and may have different onsets for each person. The second woman discussed the fact that after several unsuccessful attempts at carrying a child to term, she and her husband decided to use a gestational carrier to carry their child for them. Again, since the birth of her daughter, she is often asked in casual conversation about the method of her daughter’s birth. Is it really anyone’s business whether your child was born vaginally or through a C-section? This question causes her pain because it is a constant reminder that she was unable to have the “right of passage” of carrying her own child. Yet, ultimately, her end goal of a family had been achieved through alternative methods. These stories were so relevant because they highlight the fact that we all tend to be a little to comfortable in invading each other’s personal experiences surrounding fertility and pregnancy because it is accepted by society and it is assumed that no problems ever existed with the pregnancy process if they were not common knowledge. I think we would all be much happier if these topics were left off of the table unless someone opens the door to share their story of their own volition.

The drawing for the free fertility treatments was quickly dispensed with and we did not win. We decided to attend the luncheon for the clinic that was offering one last drawing for and IVF treatment. We ended up sitting at a table with two women that were also from Tallahassee and struck up a conversation about our common experiences. The company was great and the food was good. We didn’t win this drawing either.

While it was a difficult day and we didn’t win the treatment we were hoping for, you couldn’t really begrudge the winners because, after all, they are basically in the same boat. There were two things that really made the day worth while to me. The first was the simple reminder that our story is not completely unique and that there are success stories all around us. I still have great hope that our time will come. It was great to see so many men in attendance, at the seminar, and to have a man actually get up before a crowd of his peers and share is very personal story with the rest of us. While the process is extremely hard on the male ego, it is important for all of us to look deeper and realize that the emotional toll the process takes on us and our spouses, as well as the physical stress on their bodies, far outweighs the perceived loss of our “manhood”. The second thing that made me proud was when one of the women we sat with at lunch stated that “You guys look like you are approaching this process with a unified front.” I was so proud of Michelle and me as a couple. While we have had our moments of breaking down and lashing out at one another in moments of anger or frustration, we have not allowed the process to become bigger than our commitment to each other. We are unified and I know that we will eventually find our path to parenthood together and when we do; our family foundation will be solid.