What Infertility Feels Like

None of my closest friends have children. None of my closest friends are, to my knowledge, even trying for children. My parents had no problems conceiving, and neither did anyone else in my family.

I think this makes it difficult for our friends and loved ones to really empathize with Leah and I. We have sympathy. I think people are familiar with disappointment. That's a feeling that we all know, to a greater or lesser extent. But going through this difficulty is more than experiencing disappointment.

When Leah and I first started trying to conceive, things were great. We waited for nine years of birth control pills to filter out of Leah's body. We were trying all the time (which was extra great); every month brought the expectation of happy news and us having this little, happy secret that would be just ours until everyone would be happy to know. After all, it's bad luck to tell anyone through the first trimester.

That lasted for three or four months. After that, things started to become serious. We became students of Leah's body. We bought tools to help us understand: the two-decimal sensitive Basal thermometer, the Basal body temperature chart. Leah learned the length of her cycle. I learned that Leah's luteal phase (the time after ovulation) is longer than the average woman's. We planned our time together around the schedule, saving up for week long sprints in the middle of the calendar. I drew a line with a red felt pen on the two-degree jump when Leah ovulated. We kept a stack of calendars so that we would have a good idea when she would ovulate. We read to each other in bed afterward while she elevated her pelvis above her heart.

But there's also conflict. Leah takes extra-hot showers, and I accused her of poaching her eggs. Leah blamed herself and her body, always taking responsibility. Love-making became a means to an end, and expediency shoves aside romance. During the Olympics we spread a comforter on the floor of the living room so we could make love before we were both too exhausted to perform but not miss any of the events. I stopped asking whether Leah got her period and started looking for telltale wrappers in the bathroom trash. We didn't tell anyone we were trying because we didn't want anyone's pity or disappointment when nothing was happening.

After months of that we sought professional help. We worked hard to become worthy of conception. We started praying every night before bed. We worked hard to become healthier, eating better and trying to listen to our bodies. We saved more and spent less. We never ate out. We stopped going to movies. We began bringing bags with us to the grocery store to limit our impact on our environment.

We took advantage of the techonolgies available to us. We went through four cycles of artificial insemination. We still avoided taking pregnancy tests when we were allowed to. We were supposed to take pregnancy tests on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Leah has taken more time off work in the past two months than she had in the previous five years.

All this is about disappointment, but that's not the only thing.

There's a biological urge to procreate. Leah feels this more keenly than I do, and have felt it for years now. We've been together eleven years, and a child represents the culmination of that time. Our sister-in-law once said that she'd never want to have a child once she's thirty, since she "wouldn't be able to bend over" to take care of one. Leah's mother feels her age more than anyone in my family. Leah has begun walking with the same hip and ankle stiffness of her mother. She feels the passage of time.

For me, it's no so much about a biological clock. I've always wanted a child. I've wanted to have one when I'm thirty. I'm not going to reach that goal now. But it's not about acquisitiveness, either. It's not another thing to have, like a big truck or a 2500 square foot house. It is, in part, about reaching another milestone in my life. With my education and career, it's not clear that I have many left. The expanse of my next 20 years of work stretches before me. There are things that I want to pass on. I feel deeply that I can be a great father. There are lessons I have learned not only from my father's successes but also his mistakes, my own successes and mistakes.

But it's not only that. My sister's child was conceived when her husband had been out of work for almost a year. I talked to a woman yesterday whose nineteen-year-old, unmarried sister was six weeks' pregnant with a child whose father could be one of three men that she slept with within the week she'd ovulated. Baby Bryn was conceived to prevent her mother from being shipped off to Iraq with her Army Reserve unit. Everyone's heard stories of women who have "trapped" men into marriages by accidentially getting pregnant.

There's a deep sense of injustice that Leah and I feel, but we cannot discuss. We try hard not to indulge ourselves in self-pity. We are goal-oriented people. We have done everything we can to deserve a child; I can't imagine anything else we could do. But it's not about deserving. Terrible people have, and will, be able to have children for reasons that have nothing to do with their capacity to love or care for them.

I spent hours trying to find a metaphor that describes what it's like to deal with infertility. It's not like wanting something really, really, really bad and not getting it for Christmas or your birthday. There's no one that can give you a pregnancy. It's not like studying really, really, really hard for a test and still getting a C+. There's no amount of work that one can put in to conceive a child. It's not like sending out 200 applications and doing 50 interviews and still going jobless. There's no market that will improve; there are no lesser options from which to choose.

I decided that the closest thing was that being an infertile couple is like being the Boy in the Plastic Bubble. We can live without conceiving our own child. Leah can survive without knowing what it's like to nurture a living thing inside herself for nine months. I can accept that I'll never be in a hospital waiting room expecting good news without (really) fearing terrible news. But, at this point, that doesn't feel like really living.

Leah and I are living in a bubble where there are three women every day at our gym with enormous bellies and little versions of people inside them. We are in a bubble where we see five strollers and six kids while we're grocery shopping. We can't escape the bubble, but what we want has no price, can't be given or negotiated for. It's kind of like that.

It's easy to think that this is just fate. That there is a biological issue that has no cause and no cure. But fate can't be resisted; fate can't be reasoned with. I can't accept fate. I can't accept destiny. If I'm to believe that this project has a chance of success, I have to believe that there's a plan and that Leah and I have some agency to execute it.

I have to believe that we have some control.