Original Blog Post as a tour stop with Jamie Allen and her original blog on Infertility is Real. Below is the content of that blog stop. I encourage you to subscribe to her blog directly if you get the chance.
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Hello there to Jamie’s blog readers. My name is Heather D Nelson and I’m the author of the book God Had Other Plans – Keeping faith thru pregnancy loss and Infertility. I’m kicking of a virtual blog tour on this lovely fall evening, October 1st, and my gracious host Jamie was kind enough to be my premier blog spot! This is just the FIRST stop of a multi-day blog tour discussing various aspects of infertility and the fall out it leaves behind so if you like what you read, you can check out my information below for the following dates.
As an author and activist I like to think that my work is making a difference in raising awareness and spreading some much needed education on the topic of Infertility. But like any good piece of educational literature, we should begin at the beginning. Start from the basics. My host today, Jamie Allen, has asked that I cover a more basic broad-scope approach to describing what infertility is.
Thanks to some main stream media coverage about the more extreme results of infertility treatments, many people think they know what infertility is. But if you have never personally gone through it…if you have never lived the life that is attached to the label…then you don’t know. Not REALLY. So I’ll begin this article with a simple definition:
Infertile: Medically defined as especially incapable of, or unsuccessful in, achieving pregnancy over a minimum of one year in spite of determined attempts by intercourse without contraception.
There you have it. The basic medical definition of what it means to be infertile. As a woman who has experienced this first hand I can flatly tell you that while this might grossly cover the basic mechanics, it has WILDLY missed the mark on what infertility REALLY is. In fact, it doesn’t even fully describe in itself what all the word entails. If you want to just approach infertility from a strictly intellectual angle, just look up the synonyms that are associated with it. Words like Barren, Fruitless, Sterile, Impotent. Terms oftens used to describe wastelands of scorched fields and flacid and empty lives are also the same words used to describe a childless couple. And if THAT doesn’t jolt you out of the intellectual and begin bringing about a few emotions, lets take a look at some of the logistics of infertility. Lets hit on a topic EVERYONE can relate to whether you have kids, want kids, or are even in the ballpark of considering a potential progeny of your own. MONEY!
Ask any couple undergoing infertility treatments what they worry about the most (other than GETTING pregnant that is) and they will almost all tell you — AFFORDING THE TREATMENTS! Doc visits, drugs, tests, home remedys, vitamins, more doc visits, and so forth and so on can run the monthly bill of conceiving efforts to an EASY 3k and that’s without even blinking. The deeper you have to dive into treatments and alternative therapies and missed work time and the faster that dollar amount can grow exponentially to 10k or more — FOR ONE CYCLE OF TREATMENTS. YOWZER!
And if the money part doesn’t get you, it’s the time. Any given couple undergoing treatment is no longer the master’s of their own domain. They live and die by the calendar, the moon, the doctor’s vacation schedule, and the drug protocol’s they are assigned. You aske them to hop in the car and join you for dinner that night – oh but they can’t cause they have to be downtown for a sonogram at 6 and then do a trigger shot at 8pm SHARP and then the following day they have a date with a plastic cup and a set of stirrups! Or how about that wedding in 6 months that you want them to attend, in some far off locale. They’d LOVE to but they may or may NOT be pregnant by then and they may or may NOT be able to travel etc etc etc. You get the idea. A couple in the throngs of infertility madness can no easier plan tomorrow as they can next month.
And even if you can look beyond the money and the time that infertility sucks away from your life…there truly is an emotional burden to bear. To have a baby, that desire to start a family, is a most unique and personal yearning. Naively you get married and think, “sure we’ll have kids…some day” and you never think that MAYBE your idea of SOMEDAY is gonna be a LOT longer down the road than you anticipated. When a couple finds out that they are going to have to fight an uphill battle to have a baby, they not only have to wrap their brains around the money and time and logistics, but they have to take their MOST private and personal moments together, and hand them willingly over to a medical doctor in a white coat. They take their bedroom moments, their intimacy, their bond, and splay it out for dissection and diagnosis and boldly stand up for judgement hoping that the doctors can fix whatever was silently broken between them. And make no mistake…something IS broken. And that leads me into my first point of what Infertility is NOT.
Infertility is NOT an impatiant, controlling, attempt at family planning for couples jumping on the fad train of wanting twins (or in Jamie’s case, TRIPLETS). It’s not a temporary nuisance or a scheme cooked up by the medical community to earn cash. Just as a cardiologist is a doctor who specializes in the care and repair of damaged hearts.. so is the ENDOCRINOLOGIST or UROLOGIST or any host of other special-ologists in the field are there to care for and repair the damaged reproductive systems. Conception is, at it’s core, a basic equation of A plus B equals C. But if A doesn’t ovulate or has blocked tubes, or B has a production or morphology issue, then C needs a LITTLE HELP to finally make their debut.
Finally, Infertility is NOT temporary – not really – not ever. A couple that has undergone infertility treatments will always bear those scars. Some literal scars if they had surgeries, and many emotional and financial scars. They will forever have a tinge of jealousy when friends take for granted the easy pregnancy they slipped into by mistake. And they will forever have a deep seated sense of loss at the naive bliss that they were robbed of by the over education that infertility brought them too. I once met a couple that finally had their miracle baby after nearly a decade of trying to conceive. They never once questioned the road it took to get their little boy, but they had nearly $100,000.00 in debt that they would be paying off until their child was nearly in College. Now I don’t care HOW unemotional you think you are, if you see a bill that big your gonna shed a few tears. And even if you find the bliss you longed for, you never really forget the road it took. The ups and downs the loss of innocence, maybe even the loss of a baby along the way, as you strived so hard to achieve the miracle that others attained so easily.
But as I always say, it’s not a road anyone HAS to walk alone. There is support, help, guidance to be had out there in the big bad world. As much as I would love to think I’m a pioneer in trying to spread the word on infertility awareness, I’m certainly not. And if you are reading this, perhaps YOU TOO are a little more enlightened and will be able to support someone you know. And don’t be surprised if it’s more common around you than you think. 1 in 8 couples struggle to have a baby. Do you have 8 friends…..
If you do, catch tomorrow’s blog post on some the positive aspects that faith can hold for the couple navigating the Infertility waters…and how YOUR faith can be strengthened by holding their hand on their journey as well. My host tomorrow is the lovely Alaina Mayes and her URL is http://unashamedgrowth.com/
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Special thanks to Jamie and HER READERS for letting me come on her blog today and be a guest blogger. As my thanks for taking the time to read along, I invite you to like my facebook page or visit my book website . I have multiple other blog stops this coming week covering more topics and I am ALSO doing a virtual book signing of my book. If you click on the links you can see all the purchasing options. Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com are listed if you want to just flat purchase a copy online. If you would like a SIGNED COPY, there is a paypal option in the works, but for now you can just use the CONTACT THE AUTHOR form to request your own signed copy. I can ship anywhere and will send multiple copies out if requested.
Thank you again and may you all have a BLESSED day
Heather D. Nelson
Author: God Had Other Plans
http://www.godhadotherplans.com
https://www.facebook.com/#!/GodHadOtherPlans
Contact the Author at http://www.godhadotherplans.com/contact-the-author/