I am blessed with an amazing, wonderful husband. Despite the fact that he was supportive, and compassionate throughout our infertility journey, he is still a man and as such sometimes could just not understand why I felt or thought the way I did. A friend would announce their surprise pregnancy and I would break down in tears the minute I could get away. I would spend hours on the internet reading about the miracle of Robitussin or putting your feet in the air for thirty minutes and would be convinced that this is why it hadn’t been working. At exactly 10 days past ovulation every single month I would start looking for signs and symptoms and poking at my breasts one hundred times a day and would be utterly devastated when all of the fifteen tests I took were negative. There are, unfortunately, many more examples, but the overriding theme is that I was literally a wreck most of the time for one reason or another and in comparison my husband was unphased.
We both wanted a child and both were anxious to start a family. The difference is that our inability to conceive was virtually all I could think about and it infuriated me that my husband wasn’t equally consumed by thoughts about children, or our lack thereof. When he would ask me to talk about something (anything) else when we were out to dinner, I would accuse him of not caring enough. When he would express genuine joy for friends who were expecting I would be hurt beyond belief because I didn’t think he understood how jealous I was to see friends getting what I so desperately wanted (some even having a second child while we were STILL working on the first). When he gave up our bedroom on a couples vacation when he should have known that it was “that” time when we needed some privacy, I honestly thought he was making a conscious decision to stop “trying.” I knew in my heart that I was being childish and irrational, but I secretly wanted him to be that way too!
I think the most difficult part of our different mindsets, to me, was his more cautious approach to making the move to try IVF. He was content to wait and see a bit longer, and I felt like I was in some kind of holding pattern not doing anything to help the situation and getting further and further away from my dream of having a child. I wanted and needed a plan – I had to feel like I was being proactive and I couldn’t handle many more months of doing what we had been that was not working. As I began to schedule consultations and start saving money for the treatments that I knew would not be covered, I was also introduced to a support group. Talking to other women who were enduring the same things was exactly what I needed. To know that others were having the same thoughts and feelings, to hear that they didn’t feel like their partner truly understood either, and to have an outlet to talk about all of the things I constantly thought about, was truly a godsend. I am not exaggerating when I say that my husband is honestly the best I could ever dream for, but he just could not understand infertility from my perspective like other infertile women. If I was asked to give one piece of advice to someone about to start fertility treatments it would definitely be to find a good support network and don’t be afraid to open up to them – you all need each other.
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