Fears

So, I've been thinking about my fears a lot lately. From the time I was fourteen until the end of college, my biggest fear was that I would never get married. It was a somewhat irrational fear brought on by years of feeling like I just wasn't enough (and years of having bad hair and big glasses...but that's another story). Sometimes when I would share this fear people would tell me, "Maybe that's God's way of telling you that you aren't meant to get married." AND, "You should really consider the fact that you might be single forever." Really? My impression was always that God gave me a strong desire for marriage because He meant for me to get married. Well, after a hard breakup at 21 and several months of depression, I realized that I just needed to look at getting married as a goal on my life's to do list and I needed to use my desire to find a spouse as motivation to put myself out there. So, I joined dating websites and took chances on guys that I never would have considered before and I went on lots of dates (one of the main reasons I took to online dating was that I worked in a field where nearly all of the men were married and my social pool lacked single men as well). Anyways, about 6 months into my experience, a great guy emailed me and the rest is history!

When MBL and I were dating/engaged we knew that we wanted to start a family as soon as we got married. That caused a new fear to arise in me. I became afraid of infertility (and I have to kind of chuckle at the irony of that). I worked with two women who had fertility struggles, one of them took five years to get pregnant and the other went through numerous treatments to get her two kiddos, and I just knew that I didn't want to face that kind of battle. I also just *knew* that I would get pregnant easily because that's what women in my family do---example? My two cousins who got pregnant while using birth control. And my mom who got pregnant four times while using birth control. Ha. I was a cocky jerk. Note: WAS. Anyways, obviously now that we have the diagnosis of infertility there are a whole slew of new fears like will I ever get pregnant? Will we get to have the four children we want? How much will we end up spending on treatments? Will I fall on the "wrong" side of the statistics again? (example: 97% of women under the age of 25 will conceive within one year of unprotected sex...how did I end up on the wrong side of THAT statistic?). Blah, blah. Anyways, these fears can be all comsuming, but when I look at the facts I realize that chances are good that we will eventually have biological children. However, I digress.

Now that we have been diagnosed with infertility and I have the underlying fear of never getting pregnant I have to once again face comments about "God's will." Nothing has been said directly to me regarding this, however, there are loads of people out there who are anxious to declare infertility as God's will. Such as, "Maybe infertility is nature's way of preventing those couples from procreating?" OR statements like, "IVF is against nature and people who use it are going against what should happen, which is for those couples to remain childless." These statements disgust me to no end. Seriously, they make my stomach churn. And, they piss me right off! Why do they piss me off? Because it suggests that infertility is a means by which nature prevents certain people from procreating. And that these couples are undeserving of having biological children, whereas all the couples who are able to "naturally" conceive are the ones that nature intended to carry on the human race. I seriously do not understand how people reach these conclusions. My dad's parents were able to conceive fifteen times and had ten children. Both were drunks that fought so violently, their CHILDREN would take turns blocking the stairs to ensure that neither tumbled down them. My godmother's niece has had two children, despite the fact that she is addicted to heroine and cocaine. Her first child was adopted by her 60 year old mother and her infant is being kept in the hospital because she was born addicted to heroine and the mother has lost parental rights. Saying that nature controls who is and is not able to conceive is like saying that my father was undeserving of being born into a loving, stable, and violence free family. I just don't buy it. My husband and I have a great (albeit strained, at times---thanks, IF) relationship. We both have decent jobs. I am nearly done with my Master's and have plans to pursue my Doctorate. We are healthy, well-educated, and will undoubtedly make great parents. So, how could anyone suggest that our infertility is nature's way of suggesting that we should not conceive and have children? Ugh. Makes me mad.

On a totally unrelated note, I had a dream last night that I was trying to speak with my two cousins (the pregnant, birth control using ones) and my aunt, their mom, about the pain of infertility and in the dream I was sobbing from the pain (emotional, not physical, that is). I just wish people were more educated and understanding!!!