Infertility and Finding Your People

 Pretty much from the day you get married, you begin trying to conceive (TTC). The first few months are disappointing, but you know it takes a while sometimes. But a couple of months have suddenly become a year. “But, still, you’re only 29, you have plenty of time.” But soon the red lights and alarms are coming on. And before you know it, you’re in one doctors’ office after another. You are soon both being treated, ad individuals and as a couple. TTC Naturally becomes cycle upon cycle of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Daily painful injections. Intrusive tests. Battles with insurance providers. Getting up at 5 AM to drive an hour to the reproductive clinic for retrievals and transfers. Each cycle telling yourself “This is the one”, only for each cycle to either be unsuccessful for result in pregnancy loss.

As the husband, you see your wife…your Queen…your best friend hurting. And you’re searching the universe for a way to ease her pain, while trying to acknowledge your own pain without additionally burdening her.

Infertility is dark. It’s ugly. It’s painful. It eats away at you.

It is so common yet feels so lonely and isolated. One in eight people struggle with some degree of infertility. As many as 15 percent of all pregnancies result in a pregnancy loss. We feel isolated because we don’t talk about it.

Which results in people often not seeing our pain behind our masks. We gather with friends. We attend family parties. And there’s always those questions. “When are you guys going to have kids?” “Well don’t wait too long!” “You two are going to be wonderful parents!” With each question, a new plastered smile to desperately try to hide the deepening pain.

Every Mother’s and Father’s Day trying so hard to balance honoring our parents, while falling apart inside and wondering “why not us? What’s wrong with us?”

If you’re reading this and you’ve gone through infertility, you’re nodding your head as you know. This was mine and my wife’s journey. Just as it has been for so many.

Infertility sucks.

A Couple of Exceptional Women

Then one day, as fate would have it, by chance on a Sunday morning there was a radio on in the background. Playing on the radio was a talk program called “Exceptional Women”. This episode was featuring Olympic great and local hero Nancy Kerrigan talking about her infertility journey. My ears perked up. She was on there with the Director of an organization called Resolve New England.  “Oh my God, this is us!”, I thought to myself as I listened. I pulled out my phone and started googling Resolve New England and learned more about the organization. I reached out to the Director on social media, and soon we were befriending each other. I still remember sitting with my wife at dinner a few days later. “So, I found this organization…” and told her how I had started reaching out online, and I was finding it very comforting. I felt I had found a place that got us.

Finding Resolve

Soon both my wife and I were members of RNE. We became active online. We fad found fellowship. A community. We raised money and walked at the Walk of Hope. We registered for their annual conference; an all-day event filled with different workshops. There we met so many other people in the same boat. We learned about coping with the pain. We learned about the importance of community. But most of all we had found the belief that if we really want to be parents, then there is a path to parenthood. It was at one such annual conference we had discovered adoption may be the path for us. We talked to different adoption agencies. But perhaps most influential of all we had lunch with a couple who had built their journey through adoption. And we just felt a kinship with them. We truly related to them, and that was when we really realized “yeah, this is the path for u.”

RNE had given us strength and resolve to make it through so many INF cycles. So many failed attempts and pregnancy loss.  While each cycle hurt, there was community there for us to lean on. That was huge. I feel like there wasn’t a month that went by that the Executive Director, who has become such a good friend, check in with us to see how we were doing.

And it was RNE where we found out true path to parenthood: Adoption.

Opening Up at Work

Joining RNE and becoming active with them gave me more courage to open up selectively to others. I told a couple of close friends. But I also chose to tell my work. I work in a small office. I started with my two bosses, and eventually told the rest of the staff at a holiday party. And in hindsight, that was a very important move for me. I think giving them some insight into what was happening with my wife, and I helped me connect with them better. It certainly humanized me. And just those periodic check-ins from my colleagues. “How are things going?” It Is so simple and so easy to take for granted. But it really made a difference for me.

Helping Other Men

The more I became active online, the more I realized I was kind of a rarity. Logically speaking, infertility struggles are nearly 50 percent women and 50 percent men. Right? For every TTC attempt, there generally needs to be a male involved. Yes, I know it’s not always a romantic partner. But, nonetheless, infertility affects A LOT of men. Yet support circles are very heavily female centric. And the reason for this is simple. As men, from childhood we are trained to bottle up our feelings. Do not talk about them. I know with each generation we are getting better about that and thank goodness for that. But I’m part of that generation where you just don’t talk about it.

Regardless, the more I became active, the more I found other men. Whether it was in Facebook groups or Twitter or Reddit, I was finding other men going through the same stuff. Even the RNE annual conferences had male specific sessions, even if there were only a handful of men including myself in them.

What I found was interesting. People started asking me about my experience, and my advice. And while I am in no way trained to offer counseling, I realized that sometimes people just need someone to talk to. So, yeah, I would read my DMs. I’d listen. I’d offer “well, I can only tell you what worked for me…”, and in doing so that not only helped me build upon my sense of community and finding my people, but I found it a blessing to be there for someone who needed to vent.

Realizing Our Journey

Finding our people gave us hope. Followship was abeam of light through the fog on our darkest days. “If you are determined to be parents, you will find your path” tuned out to be 100 percent accurate. We found out path. And we had people supporting us along the way whenever there were doubts. And now we look at our son, and we know we had to walk this path. Every needle. Every pill. Every negative test. Every tear. It was the only path that led us to our son. The family we were destined to be.

And our journey doesn’t end here. My wife and I are still members of Resolve New England, and don’t see that ending. We can’t wait for September to bring our son to the Walk of Hope. And maybe even one day we will be that couple at a lunch table, talking to other folks trying to build their families. We are both forever grateful for what this community has meant to us. And it stands to reason that we are ready to start a new chapter. One we’re we can hopefully be that beam of light for others.