Kids just know. They smell infertility on you–it’s like they have babedar. Thirty adults in the room and they’ll make a bee-line for the infertile woman. Cling to her leg. Stare up at her with those big eyes. I once was throwing a dinner party. We were having cocktails and I was sitting on the floor because we’re too cheap to buy more chairs. A friend’s daughter crawled into my lap and said, “let’s pretend you’re my mommy!” Excuse me, little girl, but you sort of have your knee exactly on one of my stomach bruises from the Follistim while you twist that dagger into my heart. If you wouldn’t mind scooting it a bit to the left…

My niece once made me watch the “Baby Mine” scene in Dumbo three times in a row with her. It’s like she had caught a whiff of something and couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But it certainly clicked on our third viewing when she started asking, “don’t you want a baby? Don’t you want a baby to love and hold? Don’t you want a baby, Aunt Rissa?”

FOR THE LOVE OF G-D!

I was staying with them and my sister went to work, leaving me at home to play with her daughter. In the middle of a game of dress-up, my niece asked if she could call me Mama. I told her that she already had a Mommy and that I was her aunt. She kept asking why she couldn’t have an extra Mama; why I couldn’t be that Mama. I mean, come on, Aunt Rissa, it’s not like you have children.

Or anything.

After my final “no,” she responded with an exasperated: “well, can I call you Mama Bird?”

How do you answer that? It didn’t feel right, but yet I couldn’t put into words why (1) that still wasn’t appropriate and (2) why I couldn’t even handle the concept of motherhood in another species. She had worn me down to a nub with her questions, obviously fueled by her babedar. I caved. I became Mama Bird for the rest of the day.

She laughs when I tell her these stories now. She’s six. She seems to have lost a bit of her babedar. Maybe it’s one of those senses that dulls as you age–sort of like smell.

But my daughter yesterday took over the job. She spent the afternoon reminding me: “no baby in Mommy’s belly.” I hear you, sweetheart. Loud and clear. I’m infertile! I’m barren! Thank you for reminding me! Okay! Please stop! “No baby. No baby. Mommy’s belly? No. No baby in Mommy’s belly.”

Is it an evolutionary survival instinct? Drive women crazy and they’ll be too depressed to continue trying to reproduce, therefore leaving more food for the exisiting children? Seriously, where are the social scientists to study this phenomenon?

During our weekly trek to the organic supermarket (doesn’t that sound so left wing? Organic supermarket? Just wait, it gets better…), I ended up with a copy of Mother Jones in my basket. I am not normally a reader of Mother Jones—even as a liberal I don’t like agreeing points-of-view spoon-fed to me. But this month’s issue promised “Icebox Orphans & Fertility Gods: the hot war over frozen embryos / who’s going to thaw out 500,000 ‘microscopic Americans’ / love, politics, and the perils of high-tech baby-making.” It had the accompanying visual of plastic babies encased in an ice cube tray. Do you honestly think I’m going to be able to pay for my organic yogurt without picking up an issue? Mother Jones is banking on the 1 in 7 Americans experiencing infertility.

I’ve only read one of the articles so far—“Breeder Reaction” by Elizabeth Weil, which chronicles the lawsuit brought by a lesbian couple against a fertility clinic that refused to serve them as well as addressing the larger questions of regulations, insurance, and big government. The couple had been trying for two years to become pregnant using donor sperm. When they weren’t successful, they turned to an RE who refused to serve them because she said it was against her religious beliefs. The couple ultimately sought the help of another clinic and successfully had two pregnancies. But the question remains whether fertility doctors are the best judges of who is “fit” to become a parent.

The statistics are staggering. Only 59% of fertility clinic directors agreed that everyone should have the right to have a child. Who do the other 41% believe are not fit for parenthood? Strangely, “44% believe that fertility doctors don’t have the right to decide who is a fit parent.” Shouldn’t that number be closer to 59%?

The article raised interesting questions, many of which I couldn’t comfortably answer with rational words though I knew how strongly I felt about these topics with my heart. Should infertility be diagnosed as a “medical problem?” Would it save money in the long run if government regulated fertility treatments but also forced insurance to pay for the procedures? The article covered concepts such as fertility tourism and the RE as a businessperson.

In the end, the question I kept returning to was the idea of regulations. We all know that it can be a slippery slope when government gets involved in deciding things as intimate as reproduction. But what if there were simple regulations in place—mandatory single embryo transfer is the one mentioned in the article as a regulation in place in other countries—in exchange for mandatory coverage? What regulations would you be willing to live with? What about age cut-offs? What about marriage? In reality, the article points out, these regulations exist today—they aren’t dictated by the government, but are instead the policies of fertility clinics. Therefore, one fertility clinic may be willing to help you and another is not.

So the question of the day: would you be willing to accept government regulations on fertility treatments in exchange for coverage and what are your limits with government regulations?

The answers will obviously reflect to some extent your own situation. Why would I put regulations in place that limit my own procreation? But…then…I ask our government, why would you put those limits (that you don’t want on yourself) on someone else? Don’t we still have a Golden Rule in place somewhere? A little tarnished? Can’t we polish it up? And not to be a buzz kill, but Mother Jones states in the same issue that “mining the gold to make one 1/3-ounce 18-karat ring produces at least 20 tons of waste” therefore, we may want to recreate the Golden Rule in a different metal.

Back to Mother Jones and their next article about frozen embryos. What a way to spend my afternoon…

I started a garden when I was searching for a summer project that was within my control. And my first tomatoes ripened today. We’ve been eating jalapenos for a few weeks. The herbs were harvested a day or two after transfer (you can probably guess that I purchased seedling rather than attempt to grow the plants from seed–maybe that will be next summer’s project).

I don’t know why I feel so good when I see those little red fruits. Maybe because it seemed so unlikely that I would be able to keep them alive for the weeks required in order for them to bear fruit? We’re talking about a person who has never had a houseplant live beyond a week or two. Hence why we don’t have houseplants. But I researched this and got over my overwhelming fear of most bugs (there is a particularly atrocious green caterpillar-like thing that has been haunting my dreams. He was living on the jalapeno plants–larger than an actual jalapeno–and needed to be removed by my husband as I ran dramatically into the house and told everyone, “the garden project is OVER!”).

I’m going to go harvest. Make a tomato, basil, and mozzarella sandwich for dinner. Feel good about the garden.

So I got to see the full version of Technostorks tonight. Andrei sent us a copy. It was amazing. You follow three couples through their IVF experience–from the first Lupron shots to the betas. The sniffling started about 8 minutes into the film.

What I liked most about the film is that men had an equal voice. Too many times men sit in the frame while their wife speaks. Or they’re shunted into one chapter of an enormous book.

I really liked all three couples and felt such a profound sadness that they weren’t successful. I wish we could have a little Technostorks II where we see the rest of their journey after their IVF attempts. Did they go through it again? Did they adopt or try surrogacy? Did they ultimately become parents?

Okay, so by “profound sadness” I mean that I sat on my bed and bawled. I just cried and cried and cried for my favourite couple. These stories get under your skin because they are so close to your own. And you can guess their emotions because it’s all out of our control. No matter what we do, it’s ultimately out of our hands. And that is so scary. And so sad.

Thank you for making a great film, Andrei.

This subject obviously cropped up when we started writing about Ladies-When-Waiting for the book. At first I was trying to be all sensitive and politically-correct and write Ladies-or-Lords-When-Waiting. My first sign should have been the fact that I couldn’t come up with the male equivilent. Was a knight the male counterpart to a lady-in-waiting? A courtier? A man-of-arms? The King had to have counsel, but I couldn’t find a word to describe this relationship. I settled on “lord” because it seemed like the opposite of lady. Lords and ladies. Right?

But then my husband pointed out that this was a moot point because men didn’t truly have a Lord-When-Waiting (gasp!). And most guys didn’t even really want one (gasp!). Apparently, I learned, these crazy men don’t want to spend all day on the phone with their friends analyzing every fertility sign. What does the male do for fun?

This question also came from a book I’m currently reading on infertility. Overall, I love this book. I’d hate the only post about it to be a criticism because I think that it has great information in it. It’s just their chapter on men and infertility that bothered me. I’m simplifying the chapter, but one overriding message is that men are not as bothered by infertility and actually love the amount of sex they get to have.

“No matter what he tells you, when it comes to the sexual part, your guy is in heaven. Infertility-induced sex is full of guiltless quickies for the guys. And for the first time, the woman in his life doesn’t really mind. Is this great for a guy or what (Vargo, p. 266)?”

My husband may be a fantastic actor, but I don’t believe he is any less upset than I am with infertility. Do we grieve differently–of course. But never underestimate the grief by the way someone grieves. How we show sadness is not necessarily how deeply we feel the sadness. I think one of the biggest disservces we do for boys is encourage them not to cry. Not only is crying a healthy release, but I think people believe that if they don’t see someone outwardly grieving that they must be fine internally. And that is certainly not the case.

Fertility treatments are painful AND humiliating for women. And you can’t dismiss the pain factor. But just because men are not giving themselves injections or having surgery (though they sometimes are!) doesn’t mean that it isn’t emotionally painful. Does ejaculating into a cup have the same pain factor as having a tube inserted through your cervix? Certainly not. Is it equally humiliating? Certainly. I haven’t met these men who were thrilled to make a donation. I think they’re thrilled that their part in the procedure isn’t painful, but I don’t know many men who are excited when walking into the Sperm Palace (our excitement was also dimmed by the squat German woman who led us to the backrooms announcing each time, “it must be a clean specimen!” as if we were thinking of mixing a little dirt into the sample before handing it off to the andrologist.)

Which is not to say that there are probably men reading this blog who are snickering and saying, “she has it all wrong. I don’t care if we can never have kids and I love all the sex. I can deal with a crying wife any day of the week in order to get all that baby-dance loving!” Though…if they’re taking the time to read an infertility blog…doesn’t that mean that infertility is sort of…on the brain?

I think women (okay, what I mean by “women” is actually “I”) often forget that men don’t communicate the same way as women. And I think men also forget this. They don’t realize that women need to speak about it and women don’t realize that men really do need to have downtime from the topic. The fact that a woman needs to speak about it a lot does not mean that she feels it deeper than a man, and a man’s avoidance of the topic doesn’t mean that it doesn’t profoundly affect him. We forget that we get something out of talking about it–clarity, peace, information.

My husband was always happy to discuss infertility with me, but it wasn’t a topic he discussed at length with friends. When he spoke about it, he was passing on information. He may talk about emotions after they’ve been expressed, but rarely as they were happening. He didn’t talk about how he felt. At least not directly. Which is not to say that he didn’t feel deeply. When we started trying-to-conceive, I began a journal. I thought that it would be a pregnancy journal. Little did I know that I would fill the pages with entries about longing and treatments. I have beautiful entries that he wrote into that journal–messages to our not-yet baby begging him/her to arrive. He never sat in front of me and sobbed, but I can read those words and know that his heart was breaking too.

I was often frustrated that my husband could go to work and compartmentalize infertility. He could go for hours without thinking about it. And, again, that’s not to say that it wasn’t affecting him profoundly. I thought my pain trumped his because my mind was always focused on infertility. The amount of time I spent thinking about it had to mean that I was feeling it very, very deeply. Well, no. It was happening in my body, so realistically, I never got to have a break. I was at work, but I was analyzing every twinge. I’m also an information junkie, so I spent a great deal of time either reading books or surfing the Web. The amount of time I spent on these activities did not reflect how deeply I felt. It reflected how I coped with my emotions.

One time, I was driving with a friend from Massachusetts to D.C. We stopped off at my grandmother’s house for lunch. During the meal, she asked my friend if she had a boyfriend and my friend said, “well, I have a girlfriend. I’m a lesbian.” My grandmother took her hand and said, “Lesbians I understand. Girls: you laugh with them, you pee with them (I think she was referring to the fact that we all go in packs to the bathroom, but perhaps Grandma meant something very different…). Girls bring everything beautiful into a relationship. But two men–who brings the beauty into that relationship?” Oh, Grandma, I’ll send you a link to some chat rooms and you can ask your questions.

Grandma’s point (I’ll translate Grandmaese for you) is that women talk through things. It’s the woman who brings up the topics for discussion and moves the relationship forward. Or does she? I think from a female perspective, discussion is the best way to deal with things therefore a woman believes “something is getting done” if they are talking about it. But I wonder if men believe anything is “getting done” when you’re talking about something. Grandma couldn’t imagine what happens when two people who don’t discuss their feelings get together.

EXCEPT

That men will discuss infertility (and other emotional topics) with their wife or partner. It’s just the rest of the world that they leave out of the conversation. It’s a matter on intimacy. While I speak about IF with my husband, I also speak about it with most of my friends (male or female) as well as the greater world through this blog. Talking about IF is the way I cope with IF. My husband, on the other hand, will speak with me (especially if I bring it up first), but once he has discussed it once, doesn’t feel the need to collect opinions from different sounding boards.

Ah, men truly are from Mars.

What I’m trying to say is let’s give guys a break. Let’s not make them talk like girls. Let’s not ignore their pain. Let’s let them cope in a way that suits them best.

Oh, who am I kidding? Like I can control how I feel when I have all those hormones racing through my body. I’m about as sympathetic and gentle as a…well…as a hormone-raging woman.