B(IF)FF.

Describing what infertility feels like to someone who hasn’t personally experienced it is surely impossible. We try, like Boulder eloquently does, to come up with analogies, but I’m not sure anything can really get the point across. And I think that’s what makes going on with your everyday life so difficult. I’ll meet up with friends and/or relatives who will kindly ask me what’s going on with “the baby stuff” (as my sister-in-law recently referred to it) and my answer barely skims the surface of what is truly happening to me. I don’t mind them asking, and I happily share the details of the monitoring process and the giving of shots and the IUI procedure and the progesterone and when test day is. But I’m completely unable to express the frustration, the sadness, the disappointment, the gleams of hope that truly make up “what’s going on with the baby stuff.” Thus, I feel like I’m forced into being this superficial, phony friend/sister-in-law/daughter, because I’m not honestly sharing how I’m doing. Not only do I feel badly about being infertile because of what it means for my future, but I feel badly because I know it makes my parents and D and those that truly love me worry about and feel terrible for me. And this makes me less likely to want to spend time with a friend/sister-in-law/parent, because I hate not being able to be completely open with them, so I choose staying home rather than going out. Which then only leads to feeling isolated and alone and, of course, depressed. It’s one of the many Catch-22s IF has introduced me to.

Which I guess is why having fellow IF friends can be such a relief. Mare writes today about meeting Amy, a fellow IF blogger, and how great it was “to be in the company of someone who totally and completely gets my situation.” And I hear what she’s saying. Recently my best friend found out that her husband has congenital bilateral absence of vas deferens, so that their only option is IVF. She’s just begun the grueling tests, the calls to insurance companies, the endless waiting for the next step. Although she has been ttc for a year and a half, it’s only now that she confessed she sees what a struggle I’ve been undertaking. I wish to hell she didn’t have to find out. Statistically I thought that at least my trouble would allow those close to me to escape the IF curse. If it’s 10% of the population, shouldn’t I be the 1 out of my closest 10 friends (granted, I’m not sure I have 10 close friends) to suffer? Alas, that’s not how it works apparently. When she first found out she called me and said, “Let’s do IVF together!” And I honestly wanted to. It won’t work out that way timing-wise, but just knowing that she and I are walking this road together makes me think the trip will be less painful.