The Club

The other day, my sister Collette was telling me about a woman she met at work. Collette is a hairdresser and has an amazing ability to strike up an intimate conversation with a stranger in about 3 seconds. She asked the woman if she was married and she said yes, that she had been married for 10 years. Collette asked her if she had any children and could tell by her response that it was more than a simple no. Since Collette lives with us now, she is very sensitive to recognizing and sympathizing with women experiencing infertility. She asked the woman if she wanted children and her response was, "We would like to have children whenever God chooses to bless us with children." I.e. we want children very badly but until this point, for whatever reason, God has withheld them from us. Collette proceeded to share my story with this woman, who she found out had been through 9 years of infertility and multiple rounds of unsuccessful treatment.

As Collette re-told her story to me that night, I felt immediately bonded to this mystery woman. It made me realize, once again, how prevalent infertility is yet how infrequently we hear about until we go through it ourselves. Going through infertility is like joining a secret, underground club of women sharing the same unrealized dream. This club does not discriminate based on age, nationality or religion. You need not apply, as your admittance is determined for you.

It seems like no matter what crowd I'm in, I can always find someone going through infertility. We don't wear nametags or have any other outward sign of affiliation but to those that belong, it is easy to spot the other members of the club. We stare longingly at children in the mall, inundate pregnant women with questions and hesitate mournfully when asked when we plan to start a family.

We have our own language of acronyms and abbreviations like TTC, HSG, FSH, IUI and IVF. We keep track of time in cycles, not days. We can be confused on what day of week it is but tell you with unparalleled accuracy how many days we are from ovulation.

We all have our canned responses to the questions "Do you have any children? Do you want children? When are are you guys going to have children?"

"No we don't have any children."
"We haven't been married very long."
"We're enjoying our time together before having children."
'We'd love to have children in a few years."

The excuses we make to a society that is ignorant to the problem, uncomfortable with the pain or disillusioned about the solution.

We've all heard that we just need to relax and stop thinking about it. We've heard numerous stories of women who "stopped trying" and adopted and then got pregnant right away. In fact, we've heard countless stories about other women who did one thing or another and "got pregnant right away." Just take a pill, a shot, change your diet, change your lifestyle, have this surgery or that procedure, try this position or this time of day. We have our doubts and although it sounds ridiculous, we try them all to no avail.

We are the Barren Women's Club. A sisterhood of empty arms, empty womb.

Do you know someone in the club?? Let me know and I'll pray for them too.