I remember being in the depths of our infertility and a couple ladies that were aware of our situation stating "I know exactly how you feel". And I HATED it! I remember thinking, "you don't know how I feel. Even if you can sympathize, your situation is not exactly the same as mine". I knew others that were struggling like we were and we would talk about our frustrations, but those friends didn't pretend to be feeling the exact same thing as me. They were just supportive and loving.
I came across this article today. I realize that much of it is preaching to the choir, but its nice to remember we're not alone in our feelings and frustrations and our hope. It reminded me that everyone's situation and path to parenthood is different. Its through prayer with the Lord that we find His purpose for us.
(See the original article
here)
So When You Gonna have Kids?
A “late start” on The Timeline
I was 31 when I got married, my wife 28- much later than the typical “Utah
County Mormon” timeline. We’d each heard “when ya gonna get married?” plenty of
times, as if choosing a spouse is like buying a car. Just go find one you like
and sign the papers. Done.
But finally, sweet tender mercies, we found each other, got married, and
started our life together in Lehi, Utah.
About a month later we saw my friend Adam and his wife in the produce section
of the supermarket.
“Have you read the book we gave you yet?” Adam
asked.
“Not yet.”
“Read it. Read it together! It’s thought provoking, and
will do wonders for your relationship.”
“Will do. I’ll let you know what we
think.”
“So when you gonna have kids?” He asked.
And I’m serious. That was literally his next question. We’d only been married
a month. He knew that because he had gone to our reception.
I paused for a second.
“Oh, I don’t know Adam… Hopefully 9 months from
this morning.” Followed by a sideways smile, winks, and a couple of those
awkward fake elbow motions towards my wife’s ribcage.
It totally caught my
wife off guard, and she stammered out an embarrassed comment–probably apologetic
or something. We all got a good laugh, parted ways, and wished each other
well.
That was the first time I realized that within the Mormon community, the
you-need-to-follow-the-timeline question of “So, when you gonna get
married”, had simply been replaced with “When you gonna have kids?” But we
didn’t care. We were newlyweds. Plus, I was the last of 9 kids to get married,
and ALL of my siblings were married with kids…so it was only natural to hear
that question 10 times or so at family gatherings. We took it in stride because
we knew everyone meant well, even though we laughed at how really personal that
question was (more on that later).
We had fun with The Question–developing several replies:
- The Fake Argument: “I don’t know, maybe when SOMEONE decides he is ready to
be a FATHER.” followed by, “Well maybe SOMEBODY should start cleaning up after
herself!”
- The Worldly Answer: “Maybe after we save up enough money for a boat.”
- The Shock the Asker Answer: “Meh… Hopefully never. We don’t
like kids.”
- The Intimate make-everyone-uncomfortable Answer: “Hopefully 9-months from
this morning… eh? Eh? (wink wink)
She’s ready. I’m not.
Six months into our marriage, my wife wanted to start trying. But I wasn’t
ready yet. I felt like we should wait a bit. My wife didn’t completely
understand why I wanted to wait, so this lead to some minor disagreements. “When
you gonna have kids?” transformed from silly question to something personal and
invasive. When asked, I was reminded of how I was the one getting in the way,
holding things up, whereas if my wife were to be asked–she’d think about how she
was ready and I wasn’t.
After 1 year of marriage, I jumped on board, and we officially
“started trying”.
A few months go by, and my wife still isn’t pregnant. Maybe because we were
getting The Question so often, or maybe we felt some pressure because we got
what our local society had deemed to be a “late start”, but for whatever reason,
we felt incredibly impatient. We tried all the timing methods, but nothing
happened. So we saw a doctor who told us some statistics about conception which
calmed us down quite a bit. Basically, if everything is working right, you still
only have (around) 20% chance of getting pregnant even if everything is timed
perfectly. (I can’t remember the exact percentage, but it was along those
lines). The woman who gets pregnant from the first attempt is actually an
anomaly not the norm. The doctor told us to relax and continue trying, but that
after 8 more months we still weren’t pregnant, then we would do some tests.
After a year of trying
A year flew by, and my wife was still not pregnant. We’d been married for 2
years, and had been asked The Question seemingly thousands of times. It was now
a reminder of the disappointment we felt each month. We stopped having as much
fun with the answers, and would say things like “As soon as Mother Nature
cooperates”, or “As soon as God wants us to” with an almost resigned nature.
My wife’s sister, who got married within a few weeks of us, was pregnant for
the second time. I think from washing their clothes together or something, they
are seriously that fertile. My wife’s friends seemed to all be getting pregnant
with ease. It seemed our whole neighborhood was pregnant. As Mormons, we are
very family oriented–and having kids was a big part of that. We didn’t want to
miss out.
I remember one time a woman in the ward we barely knew was talking to my
wife:
Lady we barely knew: “When you going to have
kids?”
My wife: “Well, we’re trying…”
Lady we barely knew: “Wait, how old
are you?”
My wife: “Uh… 30?”
Lady we barely knew: “Well, maybe that’s the
problem.”
My wife told me about it after church, shaking her head a little that someone
would treat the age of 30 as the age of barrenness.
A word on procreation and family planning
Let’s take a break from my story and think about how personal the subject of
family planning is:
Procreation itself not only involves the highest level of intimacy and the
most private of private parts, but all kinds of other highly personal factors.
From the very painful ones such as infertility, impotence, or miscarriages, to
awkward topics like finances, or perhaps the contention that could arise from
one spouse being super ready while the other is dragging their feet. We’ve all
heard that each couple has that one recurring argument–and differing priorities
on family planning can be one of the most sensitive and raw arguments a couple
can have.
Getting the test results
After 2 years of trying with no success, we did what we were nervous to do,
started getting tested.
Not long after, we were told the news we’d been dreading–though not
necessarily the way we thought it would come. I was completely
infertile. As in ZERO. I emphasize zero because some men can have a low count…
mine was zero.
I was devastated.
It was like someone had punched me in the solar plexus, and not only knocked
the wind out of me, but had injected my entire body with an overwhelming feeling
of inadequacy. My wife was in tears as she told me the results. I just remember
feeling like my face was literally numb. I also remember trying to snap out of
it, and made this hollow attempt at putting on a brave face. It was awful.
Shortly after that, we went to a Urologist that supposedly specialized in
fertility issues, so we could get a bigger picture. He sent his assistant in to
tell the news at first, but I insisted on hearing directly from him. So he came
in begrudgingly and sat across that poorly lit room and told me I had
“testicular failure”, and it was irreversible. I remember facing that Urologist
trying to keep eye contact as if to show I could handle it, as bit by bit I felt
my masculinity peeling away. 3 years before that, I’d been diagnosed with low
Testosterone–and this visit had completed the trifecta of “Worst News for Guys”:
Low Testosterone, Testicular Failure, and Sterility. Awesome. I felt like my
last shred of manliness melted in the room of that Urologist. It was all I could
do to keep from crying like a little boy. My wife described it much later as
watching in horror as she could see my soul absolutely crushed.
I kept asking what our options were, and he said “Adoption or a donor. A
donor is the cheapest way to go. But just never tell your kid or anyone else.
Take it to the grave.”
We didn’t know what to think. So we didn’t discuss it at all for several
months. As in, at all. We didn’t even mention it. A Molotov Cocktail had been
thrown at our “Plan”–completely destroying it, and the despair was too heavy to
discuss making a new one. We dove into every form of distraction possible,
retreating into our self protection zone–we traveled, we worked, we hung out
with friends… we never talked about having a baby.
At this point, “When you gonna have kids” became very painful to hear. As did
some children references at church–the testimonies about having children, and
being blessed with children, and how happy they are and how much God loves them
because of the children they were sent, etc etc…. (I wish I was kidding about
that last point) And now, it seemed like those talks and testimonies happened
all the time. Kind of like when you have a sunburn and everyone seems to want to
pat you on the back. This sunburn just stung of inadequacy. Church became a
big source of pain and insensitivity at times.
We were super private about what was happening, so no one around us knew that
when they were asking The Question, they were reminding us of something that
could potentially never be. It took me about a year to become ok with the idea
of using a donor for my side. Don’t ask me why it took me that long, it just
did. It just felt weird, and when it comes to fertility, infertility, family
planning, etc–there are all kinds of emotions that express themselves
differently for each person. A few days after we started shopping for a donor,
my wife was hospitalized for severe abdominal pain. Ultrasounds revealed an
ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit.
Emergency surgery.
After the surgery, the doctor showed me the photos. Endometriosis. Bad. As
in, so bad, the ovaries were almost destroyed, but not removed in case there was
a chance they could still function. But he warned me that my wife had a very
slim chance of ever having a child of her own, due to how bad the Endometriosis
had gotten, and how bad the damage had been.
All this time I’d been the infertile partner in our marriage, and now it was
likely the two of us. Our backup plan of using a donor was eliminated. Scratched
off the list of possibilities.
The fragile walls I had built up as a coping mechanism came crashing down.
Obliterated. And we went through an even more hopeless time. Fortunately, this
wouldn’t last as long.
Let’s take another break from my story to make the final point to my
post:
As I’ve said, family planning is super personal. And infertility is massively
painful. Just remember that asking someone you don’t know too well about when
they are going to have kids is far more personal than asking how much credit
card debt they have. You have no idea what the couple is going through in that
area of their lives.
My suggestions?
- Don’t ask. It’s frankly none of your business. It’s as personal as asking
how often they make love, and you’d never dream of asking that question. So
don’t ask, let them bring it up if it comes up.
- The culture within the church needs to change to be mindful of those who
might possibly be in your group or congregation who are struggling with
infertility. So don’t ever make statements that may make those with fertility
issues feel excluded. “Unless you have a child of your own, you’ll NEVER
understand the true love of a child” (true story). “Until you’re pregnant,
you’ll never understand what it means to truly bond with your child…” etc
etc–because maybe someone in that group just got the news that they will NEVER
get pregnant. Just remember, not everyone is following your timeline, and not
everyone CAN follow your timeline–but would love to.
- If you find out that someone is struggling with infertility, please please
please love them with everything you got. Hug them if you can.
Cry with them if you can. A dream of theirs just got shattered and taken away.
Yes, there’s adoption, but let them accept that later on. Be with them NOW, as
if they’d just lost a loved one. Trust me, whatever brave face they are showing
you is trying to hide some serious pain of all kinds.
Epilogue to my story:
Here is where I give mad props to my wife. She did not give up. After seeing
about 6 different doctors, she still researched until she found a specialist in
male infertility up at the U of U (Named Dr Meikle–not sure if he’s still
practicing, but I highly recommend him if he is). We scheduled an appt, and we
tentatively went to see him. At this point, I’d been on Androgel for low
testosterone for 4 years. He took me off it right away. Said that in some rare
cases, that can kill sperm count. He took some other measurements too, and found
that other things were high that should have been lower. He warned me that going
off artificial Testosterone would make me “feel lousy”, which was the biggest
understatement of the year–but that’s a story for another time.
The entire process of working with Dr Meikle took about 9 months. This
involved going off Androgel for a few months, having bloodwork done, going on
other medications, having bloodwork done etc.
At the end of all of this I got measured again for swimmers…. which
timeline-wise, was about a month after my wife’s surgery where we found out her
ovaries were destroyed.
I was producing normal…. 106 million. So my body was all systems go. Now it
was my wife’s turn to get bloodwork done, dye tests, more bloodwork, etc.
Miraculously, in the middle of all of these tests, my wife became pregnant. With
mine and her genetics, totally natural. We were ECSTATIC to say the least! We
had a boy 7 months later (he came a little early) and named him Matthew–which
means “Gift from God”. I’m actually hesitant to include that, because remember
wondering why God would bless others with children and not us, but we would have
named him that regardless of how he came into our lives–adoption, a donor, 2
donors, etc.
17 months later, Matthew’s little sister arrived. We’re now a family of
4.
I don’t attempt to speak for all issues that can cause infertility. There are
dozens of potential causes. In our specific example, it was the medication
Androgel that I used (don’t ask me why at least 6 different doctors, including
specialists, saw that on my chart and didn’t take me off of it) which told my
pituitary to stop producing testosterone and dropped my count to zero.
And I know that our total of 4 years of trying, and 3-ish of thinking we were
infertile pales in comparison to what others have gone through.
But the pain is very real. It’s crushing, discouraging, disheartening pain….
and if anyone reading this is going through the pain of infertility I just want
you to know you are loved, and I wish I could give you a hug right now. I feel
for you. It’s an awful feeling, and I pray for peace for you to get through
it.
