National Infertility Awareness Week is on the down side of the hill, but there is still so much to say while I have a banner under which to be more than a normal infertility fighter.
When I was choosing my What If? prompt, I sailed right past one question that just didn’t fit me: “What if I never get to do all the things I’ve put on hold in my life for ‘once I get pregnant’?”
I looked right over the prompt because I didn’t think anything had been put on hold. We’re still living. We’re still doing things. We’re renovating our kitchen, for crying out loud!
But wait.
Cortney wrote her own What If entry on this prompt, and what she said made me slap my forehead.
I lost my job on our first medicated cycle, and instead of switching CAREERS, I starting caring for a friend’s daughter. It was a great opportunity for me and my friend. Her wee one would get to stay at home, and I wouldn’t have to deal with office stress and restrictions while hormonally cycling my brains out.
It’s great, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have a more accommodating work environment, but I thought for sure by now that I’d be preparing for my own child and thinking about what steps I’d soon take when I can return to work and make a career switch.
The time away from working on a career was/is supposed to only be a small blip on the radar of my life.
That blip gets bigger each month. It’s practically a bloop.
My career isn’t where the “on hold” stops.
Rob and I haven’t traveled to visit family or friends in our hometown/state (or elsewhere) because Rob’s vacation time is reserved for doctor visits and time at home with a (not-yet-conceived) baby; travel money is paying for meds and copays; and we have to be in town on essential cycle days.
My wardrobe is dwindling of fresh-looking, not over-worn clothes, but I refuse to buy new clothes because what if this cycle is it? What if I’ll need maternity clothes soon and then have wasted money on new clothes I might never wear enough to make the purchase worth it?
All these things completely escaped my brain because these rationalizations have become my new normal. I’ve become accustomed to making “What if this cycle is it?” rule my decisions. How did infertility put my life on hold without me even realizing it? Why are our lives a broken record of “maybe this cycle?”
Infertility. It sucks. Pass it on.
Moooooooooooo(n)
Taking Charge of Your Fertility. TCOYF. If you’ve been on TheBump.com, it’s a sure bet that those letters have been bouncing around your head like a bee in a bottle.
If you’re unfamiliar with TCOYF, be patient and hear me out.
It’s National Infertility Awareness Week, and one of my main concerns with calling attention to this devastating subject is education.
I was raised in an average family and was educated in public school. If you’re anything like me, your education regarding the female reproductive system more or less pretty much fizzled out after that one week of Sex Ed. I think, for me, that was in fifth grade. I was 10.
I knew the basics. The ovaries release eggs. If you have sex, sperm can and will meet the egg, which then creates a baby that will grow and then come peacefully out of your vagina to the sound of a choir of angels.
OK, I admit I exaggerated that last part. I’ve never experienced childbirth, but I know enough that the picture that was painted of it back in the day was a whole lot more pleasant and happy and definitely did not include the word “episiotomy.”
Back to my education.
If you don’t have sex, your body will shed the lining it built in anticipation of a baby, and you will bleed. Don’t worry. You can still swim. You can still play with your friends. You can still go to school. Take some Midol, strap on a heating pad and feel free to be a bitch that week.
Easy peasy, right? I thought so.
I got my first period the week before I turned 12 and just went with the, um, flow. I never paid attention to when I should expect things to happen, but I had been warned that week in fifth grade that we shouldn’t expect to have regular cycles at first.
So I didn’t worry.
I got to age 17 and thought it was a little odd that, almost six years later, I still wasn’t at all regular. I was forever surprised by my period, and it was UGLY. I’ll spare you the southern details, but the rest of my body HATED periods. I’d feel weak and feverish and sick to my stomach. I’d shake uncontrollably. It was awful. Inspired by my cousin who had to see a gynecologist for ovarian cysts, I decided maybe I should see someone about this maybe-every-three-months period problem.
“Don’t worry about it. Here, take these birth control pills. They’ll make your cycles regular,” said the gynocologist.
Great! Thanks!
So I started the pill, and WOW! It worked! My cycles were regular, painless, easy peasy – just like I was told they should be.
Fast forward to age 24, when I meet some fabulous women who are way ahead of me in the baby-thoughts game, and my brain starts to grab onto key information like a magnet. You don’t have real cycles on birth control. You don’t really get a period. It’s all a fallacy.
Weird, but whatever. That was then, this is now. And maybe my doctor meant that the birth control would regulate me once I stopped taking it. That’s possible, right? (It actually is, but …)
Fast forward another year and a half. I’ve learned so much more and start to get worried. I don’t think my body ever functioned correctly, and it likely isn’t something the pill would fix. Maybe I should stop birth control and see what’s wrong. Maybe I need to learn more about what’s going on.
And that’s about the time a good friend, who had fought infertility and walked away with some horrible battle wounds but also a beautiful, thriving pregnancy, handed over her copy of TCOYF with instructions to read it.
So I did.
Wow. Did you know that discharge is actually cervical mucus that is essential to carrying the sperm into the uterus? Did you know it changes throughout the cycle and acts as a sperm taxi when your body is bursting forth an egg and doesn’t waste time creating it during not-fertile times? And holy moly! My temperature changes through my cycle, too?
The female body is a GENIUS! Why did I never know this?
Not only did the book finally give me a proper, thorough lesson in the female reproductive system, it pointed me in the direction of what my problem as a teen could have been – what it could be when I finally ditched the birth control.
The book covers everything from an in-depth lesson of how our bodies (should) work to how to avoid or achieve pregnancy to potential health conditions to menopause.
It’s usually recommended to women want to take a more active role in the trying-to-conceive obsession and to those who are having issues.
It’s so much more than a how-to-get-pregnant guide, though, and it should be required reading for all women. We should all have been properly taught about our bodies when the gears fired up in those formative years.
Maybe fertility will never be an issue for you. Maybe your reproductive system will function in the normal way we were taught in grade school. Maybe you’ll never have ovarian cysts or endometriosis, fibroids or cervical issues.
You can choose to leave such knowledge as arbitrary, useless crap you’ll learn about if you ever need it, or you can be proactive and learn about it before you encounter an issue and be that much more armed to face what challenges you.
I suggest the latter. I wish I had learned much sooner. Maybe I would have been diagnosed with PCOS 15 years ago and had it under control by the time I wanted kids. Maybe I wouldn’t be battling infertility.
If you can do something to avoid those questions, why wouldn’t you take charge?
TCOYF. Essential reading for all women. I shall blog about it tomorrow.
My paint pants
Coat #1 – DUNZO!
Infertility’s Common Thread connects me with countless others.
Celebrate National Infertility Awareness Week and spread the word. Kill the ignorance.
