When someone suffers a loss they are expected to grieve. Unfortunately, when a woman learns that she is infertile grief is not always the expected reaction. A person diagnosed as infertile is often suffering similarly to one who has had to bear the tragedy and heartache of losing a family member or friend. Learning that your dreams of family may not come true is heart wrenching. Finding out that having the one thing you want most in life – a child – will be difficult, challenging in a myriad of ways, and maybe impossible is devastating.
The different emotions that you experience when you learn you are infertile can make you feel a little insane. You often don’t know why you are so angry or depressed and feel as though you are the only one who is feeling this way. Even your husband or partner may not completely understand why you are reacting in a certain way or can think you are overreacting. My husband never understood why I would obsess over baby news one day and start crying the next when I heard of yet another friend or relative who was expecting. Looking back I realize that my reactions were indicative of the different stages of grief that I was in. Like many, I did not follow a clear path through the stages but I did experience all of the emotions that would be expected of someone grieving.
There are five generally accepted stages of grief that people usually go through, albeit loosely and not for a precise amount of time in each stage. The first stage of the grieving process according to the most generally accepted guide, the Kubler-Ross model, is denial. If you are anything like me, this stage is very familiar. I spent many, many months after learning of my fertility challenges trying to conceive naturally and making myself believe that I would get pregnant on my own despite what the doctors said. Many people know well before they even visit a fertility specialist that there are probably issues but are in such a state of denial that they don’t even want to visit the doctor or think it would be a waste of time.
In my situation visiting the fertility specialist did not immediately catapult me to the next stage of grief. I thought that finally hearing that we would probably not conceive on our own and that fertility assistance would almost absolutely be necessary, would catapult me past denial. It didn’t. For the first few months after our initial consultation I was still in a state of denial. I clung to the percentages that said that it was, if not probable, still possible for us to conceive on our own. I tried all sorts of home remedies and diligently tracked fertility signs trying to make our “on our own” efforts fruitful. I was textbook first stage of grief, though. When asked I would brush it off and just tell anyone and everyone that we were fine. I was honestly thinking not, “this can’t be happening to me,” but rather this isn’t happening to me – I am not going to let it.
Eventually, I did move past this first stage of grief. It got to a point that I could deny no longer. Each person must come to each stage on their own and no amount of advice or prodding will really help. Nevertheless, I would be remiss not to add my two cents. If you are in a state of denial but there is that niggling thought in the back of your mind that there may be something wrong then it can’t hurt to visit a specialist and either put your mind at ease or maybe get a much needed wake-up call. If you are under 35 years old and have been trying to conceive for 12 months (6 months over 35) with no success it may be a good idea just to visit a physician and see what is going on. More often than not the issues are smaller than you are imagining and treatments that are not terribly invasive or expensive might just do the trick!
Related posts:
