The first story in our new reader series comes from a 33-year-old woman who has struggled to conceive for more than two years. “As I write this, I have one hard-won blastocyst on ice, waiting to be transferred to my uterus.” She looks back to the beginning:
From my early twenties, I often told my doctor at annual exams that I was concerned about my fertility because of irregular, scant, light periods and a history of eating disorders in adolescence. I was written off as young, healthy, and too anxious for my own good.
When we started trying for a family at 30, I brought it up again and was told to come back after one year of trying. After spending almost $2,000 on acupuncture, hundreds of dollars on vitamins, thousands more on counseling and mindfulness and relaxation, seed cycling, supplements, and ketogenic diets, I was finally referred to a specialist. After an invasive and painful procedure to open a blocked fallopian tube, we spent a year on medications and HCG injections to force ovulation, awkward timed intercourse, and bouts on birth control to suppress the cysts that kept developing.
After over a year with a specialist, our infertility is still unexplained.
My recent IVF cycle results were surprising and devastating. After 11 days of stressful and uncomfortable injections, the dozen good follicles I had left yielded only three eggs—well below average, especially for someone under 35. Only two of those eggs fertilized. Only one survived to blastocyst.
I made a $15,000 bet on my body and feel like I lost. I am hopeful my upcoming transfer will bring me a positive pregnancy test, but I don’t believe it will. Without any other blasts in the freezer, I’ll have to start all over again.
Infertility is isolating, painful, and discouraging. We watch as others around us build their families and move forward with their lives while ours remain stalled. Vacations, career changes, moves, and even dinner plans revolve around cycles and medications and often can’t be planned at all. We live two weeks at time, for years at a time, always treading the line between the hope that keeps us going and the despair that month after month of failure brings.
It becomes hard to remember to picture a child at the end of the process, and even doing so can be a painful reminder that we may not get there.
Not everyone in our tribe of infertiles will become parents. Some will find motherhood (or fatherhood) in other ways—by fostering, adopting, or something else that works for them. But we all hope we beat the odds and come out with more than just a mountain of debt in the end. Until that time, I’ll keep living two weeks at time and cling to the hope that my single frozen blastocyst might one day be my baby.
My colleague Olga just started a discussion with readers about the reasons that ultimately compelled them to become parents. But there are many people who would love to have their own biological children but can’t because of fertility problems, and we’d like to discuss that distinct experience as well. (Adoption is one major option, and we’ve heard from readers in our 14-part ongoing series who adopted children for a variety of reasons.) In a recent Atlantic interview conducted by Julie Beck, The Art of Waiting author Belle Boggs discussed the taboo topic of infertility “in a culture that venerates parenthood above all else,” as Julie put it. She continued:
One in eight couples have trouble conceiving. Boggs and her husband were one such couple. In her book she tells the story of her infertility, of treatments and support groups, of giving up and then trying again, of the jealousy sparked when she saw other mothers, of nightly shots and picking out embryos for the in-vitro fertilization that eventually allowed her to have a daughter. […] And she grapples with the fact that trying for a child is always an uncertain prospect. In a “never-give-up” culture, how do you decide when it’s time to let go?
Did you ever decide that? Have you struggled with infertility more generally? We’d like to hear your story: hello@theatlantic.com. Here’s one reader, Rachel:
I have twins thanks to fertility treatments, so I’m not personally dealing with the negative emotions of infertility now. But yes, the guilt and shame and trauma, there’s much of it on the way there. To this day, every time I drive on the highway to the city where I had my treatments, I think about ultrasounds and blood work and all of those emotions. Even though in the greater context of my life and that city, I’ve traveled there MANY MORE times for other reasons. My twins are three and a half, but that city still reminds me of infertility.
In the July/August 2013 issue of The Atlantic, Jean Twenge more specifically examined the issue of infertility related to age—“but the decline in fertility over the course of a woman’s 30s has been oversold,” a claim she supported with a slew of statistics. Twenge also invoked her own experience:
[T]he memory of my abject terror about age-related infertility still lingers. Every time I tried to get pregnant, I was consumed by anxiety that my age meant doom. I was not alone. Women on Internet message boards write of scaling back their careers or having fewer children than they’d like to, because they can’t bear the thought of trying to get pregnant after 35. Those who have already passed the dreaded birthday ask for tips on how to stay calm when trying to get pregnant, constantly worrying—just as I did—that they will never have a child. “I’m scared because I am 35 and everyone keeps reminding me that my ‘clock is ticking.’ My grandmother even reminded me of this at my wedding reception,” one newly married woman wrote to me after reading my 2012 advice book, The Impatient Woman’s Guide to Getting Pregnant, based in part on my own experience.
One of the readers on Twenge’s piece, Stefania, struggled with pregnancy in her late 30s:
The real problem is that, after 37, and then after 40, and then after 45, there is a very increased risk of miscarriages. I conceived four times in two years, for example, but I had four miscarriages. First time I was 38. So I don’t think it is wise to wait if you really want to have babies. I was aware of that and I suffered a lot through my miscarriages. I am not willing to give up, yet, but I know that there is a high possibility of not becoming a mom. And I will accept it.
But since most women are not able to accept it and end up being depressed, obsessing with forums, doctors, drugs, fertility treatments, and going on for years, I strongly suggest to begin early IF you have this big desire to become a parent. My experience in forums and with other women taught me that. Act fast or be prepared to accept the consequences.
Do you feel you waited too long to try to have kids and were unable to? If so, and if you’d like to open up about it (anonymously or otherwise), please send us a note.
