I have been preparing for National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW) for the past month, motivated by all of the amazing people I met at the Walk of Hope in Arizona in March, and this week at the first meeting of the new Tucson Resolve Support Group.
Reading the comments on the infertility boards and being in the support group reminded me of how important it is to know that you are not alone, and to make people aware of what the experience is like.
And don’t think that just because I’m writing from a place of having been resolved with a child now for ten years that the old wounds don’t open back up.
When people have their second, third, or any whoops baby it still cuts like a knife.
So many people joked right after we had Elliana that we would likely just pop out another one.
They don’t joke about that anymore.
From what I can tell from the comments on facebook and other infertility blogs the experience hasn’t changed all that much.
The insensitivity, the lack of social graces, and the general ignorance about infertility still exist.
The desire to know all the details of every cycle protocol down to the smallest unit of measurement timed to down to the smallest nanosecond is very strong.
No matter how much we research or how efficient we are, waiting for that beta test result is always nerve racking.
There are so many blogs written by women that speak so eloquently to those issues that I am taking on some ‘manly’ issues to contribute awareness about one guy’s views on all this stuff.
My views have been shaped over the years by other ‘almost a fathers’ I’ve met who were honest and blunt about how they felt about the entire infertility adventure.
Starting with my 90th daily post in a row tomorrow–Infertility Mantalk will begin.
I’m hoping this will foster a louder voice among the DHs to help promote more awareness, and pride in being an ‘almost a father’.
I also hope it will shed some light on a shadow that has been cast over the collective rights of couples to pursue their families with the help of reproductive doctors: the personhood movement.
Although I appreciate the movement’s desire to protect life, something I am for the most part aligned with, there is some misinformation and mischaracterization of not just the practices of infertility clinics, but the nature of the motives of the couples who seek out medical assistance at these clinics.
My hope is that we can open an enlightened dialogue that finds some kind of bridge between their desire to protect life, and the infertile population’s desire to create it.
Let the infertility mantalk begin!