It was funny hearing Lisa recount her recent meeting with our old infertility doctor at tonight’s support group.
She was talking to him about how after sixteen years of unprotected sex we STILL have never gotten pregnant.
She described how she looked at him in seriousness and said:
“You know, I am beginning to think we are really infertile!”
As the other attendees laughed, I realized we are still in a bit of disbelief that we are infertile.
You’d think with our daily IVF daughter reminder now for 11 years we’d have forgotten that.
But everybody else still seems to get pregnant.
Or I mean everyone else who isn’t really trying, or didn’t mean to try, or got drunk one night and forgot to pop the pill…you know the same stories that infuriated and made us feel like fertility lepers all those years ago come screaming back into our lives.
And we feel infertile again.
Because we are.
I know that if you are in bad place right now you are saying STFU, Denny.
You’ve got your kid.
Quit your bitching.
Lisa and I felt the same way every time somebody mentioned this same topic when we were still trying to get past primary infertility.
The thing is though, we have a lot of infertility friends who got their ‘whoops’ later too.
Not us.
We don’t get the ‘whoops’ experience, apparently.
Which is okay.
We are thrilled to have our IVF baby and she has filled the parenthood void to its brim.
But no matter how you slice it, when push comes to fertility shove, we know one thing for sure.
We really are infertile.
My wife and I will never have our whoops moment, I am confident of that. I have lower testosterone than any man I know. Not once did I ever get anything but a zero count. To be honest, I struggle with wanting to feel envious toward couples who do end up getting pregnant by mistake after they were supposedly infertile. That type of ending is just too happy for me.
Sooo…I’m still in the middle of reading Brene Brown’s “I Thought It Was Just Me” and something she wrote reminded me exactly of that moment where we were all laughing with Lisa. Here it is:
“When we don’t reach out to others, we allow them to sit alone in their shame, feeding shame the secrecy and the silence it craves. Just like we can’t use shame to change people, we can’t benefit from other people’s shame. We can, however, benefit from shared empathy.
We don’t reach out to ‘fix’ or ‘save’ others. We reach out to help others by reinforcing their connection network and ours…
One of the benefits of sharing out story is experiencing ‘knowing laughter.’ I define knowing laughter as laughter that results from recognizing the universality of our shared experiences, both positive and negative. It embodies the relief and connection we experience when we realize the power of sharing our shame…
Knowing laughter is not the use of humor as self-deprecation or deflection; it’s not the kind of painful laughter we sometimes hide behind. Knowing laughter is acknowledging the absurdity of the expectations that form the shame web and recognizing the irony of believing that we, alone, are trapped and entangled in the web…
There is something moving, spiritual and essential about sharing knowing laughter with people who understand our struggles. My favorite definition of laughter comes from the wonderful writer Anne Lamott. I once heard her describe laughter as a ‘bubbly, effervescent form of holiness.’…
Here’s what Marki McMillan, one of the researchers, writes: ‘Laughter is the evidence that the chokehold of shame has been loosened. Knowing laughter is the moment we feel proof that our shame has been transformed. Like empathy, it strips shame to the bone, robs it of its power, and forces it from the closet.’
When we reach out to others and share our stories, we increase our power and potential to create change. For most of us, reaching out to others results in tremendous individual change, and inspires some still further to engage in collective change.”
Whew! That was long. But I think it was important to share. Here’s to many more moments of ‘knowing laughter’. We’ll all get through it, as long as we do it together.
I love this! Thanks so much for sharing Maria. Beautifully written.