Tag: Child-Free Living

Wanted: Child-​​Free Infertility Support

I wasn’t plan­ning on post­ing any­thing on my blog today; didn’t have any­thing sched­uled to post. In fact, I had other plans to work on another writ­ing project I’ve been work­ing on.

But then I saw some­thing on my Face­book news­feed in response to a RESOLVE post­ing. And, well I just had the need to address it on my lit­tle cor­ner of the world.

You see, I sub­scribe to RESOLVE’s fan page so that I can get the lat­est infer­til­ity news that they post on Face­book. It’s been use­ful in remind­ing me to vote for my favorite infer­til­ity book and my favorite “What If” post from NIAW 2010. And it tends to post arti­cles from their web­site about var­i­ous top­ics deal­ing with infertility.

Since I’ve sub­scribed to RESOLVE’s page, I had seen mul­ti­ple arti­cles in regards to treat­ment options for Infer­til­ity rang­ing from IUI to IVF; donor eggs/​sperm, sur­ro­gacy. But never had I seen any­thing about child-​​free liv­ing … until today.

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You *bet* I “like” this!!

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Which of course, I imme­di­ately “liked.”

Of course, that was swiftly fol­lowed by the first commenter.

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Name erased to “pro­tect the un-​​informed” …

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<sigh>

Some­times peo­ple don’t get it. And what’s sad is that some­times it’s peo­ple within our own Infer­til­ity Community.

As I’ve men­tioned before, there are rea­sons why child-​​free liv­ing is right for Hubby & me.  We have delib­er­ately and care­fully thought through our other options, includ­ing adoption.

It’s so easy for every­one to say “just adopt” when there are thou­sands of hur­dles (both tiny and large) to over­come. It’s finan­cial. It’s emo­tional. It’s stressful.

I can tell you for myself that I could eas­ily open my heart to a child; eas­ily let a child into my life. But know­ing the heartache I’ve expe­ri­enced from infer­til­ity, I just don’t know how much more my mind and body … and quite frankly, my spirit can han­dle. It’s already been shat­tered to pieces and glued back together many times over.

It’s a mat­ter of how many more times do I want to put my hand in a pot of boil­ing water and not know if my hand will be able to grasp onto some­thing … or if I’ll come up empty-​​handed and burned yet once again.

As if the infer­til­ity diag­no­sis isn’t dif­fi­cult enough, we’re faced with oth­ers who con­stantly feel as if hav­ing chil­dren by “what­ever means nec­es­sary” is more impor­tant than sim­ply mov­ing past some­thing that in my heart, I’ve already grieved. It’s like pulling a band-​​aid off when the wound is just about healed; mak­ing it seem to the infer­tile cou­ple … that has invested a lot of time and energy (not to men­tion money) we spent on hav­ing chil­dren … was all for naught.

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Even Ellie & Carl from “UP” decided to live Child-​​Free after Infertility …

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I just find it frus­trat­ing that even amongst our own Infer­til­ity com­mu­nity that there’s a lack of sup­port for those cou­ples try­ing to decide if a Child-​​free life is the right choice for them. It’s as if it’s taboo to speak of mov­ing on with your life sans-​​children.

Even in the RESOLVE Infer­til­ity Sup­port Com­mu­nity boards, there are only two com­mu­ni­ties of which you can choose. One is “Find­ing a Res­o­lu­tion for Infer­til­ity” and the other is “Liv­ing After an Infer­til­ity Resolution.”

Now when I signed up, I log­i­cally chose the lat­ter group. After all, I had found my res­o­lu­tion to live child-​​free and I wanted to find oth­ers that came to that deci­sion as well. Except, well … except when I started to see the mes­sage boards, I didn’t spot one sin­gle dis­cus­sion about child-​​free liv­ing after Infertility.

So, okay … then I went to the “Find­ing a Res­o­lu­tion” com­mu­nity; think­ing maybe there might be some dis­cus­sion about mak­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free. Nope … struck out there, too.

What frus­trates me is that I’ve already felt “dif­fer­ent” than the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion by not being able to con­ceive a child; be a woman in all sense of the world … be able to pro­cre­ate.** Now that Hubby & I have cho­sen a less tra­di­tional path … it seems as if the pool of cou­ples out there, that are will­ing to talk or write about this cho­sen path is much, much smaller. And maybe they are out there in droves, but infer­til­ity is no longer the pri­mary focus of their lives.

Maybe I’ll be there at some stage of my life, but right now I’m not. And right now it would be really great to find some other sup­port out there to get through those moments. You know … the ones where I begin to ques­tion that deci­sion again? The times where I feel pres­sured by oth­ers to “keep on try­ing” or “just adopt”?

Yeah, it’d be really good to have that sup­port. In droves. Just like the rest of the gen­eral Infer­til­ity Com­mu­nity. The same com­mu­nity that helped me feel less iso­lated when I oth­er­wise felt alone.

And hey … if you stum­bled onto this post and are liv­ing Child-​​Free After Infer­til­ity and find your­self want­ing addi­tional sup­port  out there*** … well, con­sider this blog or my Face­book page a place where you can hang your hat.

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** And yes, I’m aware that being a woman is not lim­ited to whether or not I can bear chil­dren. I’m just using this state­ment to elicit an example.

*** Because there are resources out there; like Pam’s Silent Soror­ity site and, in par­tic­u­lar her blog, A Fresh Start.

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Related Links:

RESOLVE’s Liv­ing Child­free Arti­cle

RESOLVE’s Infer­til­ity Sup­port Community

Emily’s post about mak­ing the deci­sion to live Child-​​free

Emily’s Thoughts on Adoption

Emily’s Rea­sons for Liv­ing Child-​​Free After Infertility

Emily’s List of Child-​​Free After Infer­til­ity Bloggers

Emily’s Face­book Page

1">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 1

(I guess I need to start off by say­ing, no … things have def­i­nitely not changed in my bar­ren world. And don’t let the title of this post fool you. Appar­ently I may have “freaked” a cou­ple peo­ple out by both the title and the pic­ture below … LOL!)

I’m not a bet­ting per­son. Which, when you think of the many trips Hubby & I have taken to Vegas, is quite humor­ous. All those casi­nos, and the most we played were slots.

I mean, I’ve played poker and black­jack in my col­lege years; but seri­ously, all bets were based on pen­nies. Or cig­a­rettes, depend­ing on who you were play­ing with (<cough> Tim <cough>). But to place actual money that’s more than a dol­lar (okay, maybe $2 max for a slot machine)? Can’t see myself spend­ing that kind of money.

My odds with these tests were never good

Which, given the odds that Hubby & I were given when we did our one cycle of IVF, makes it ironic. We were given a 51% chance that we’d be suc­cess­ful in our pur­suit to become preg­nant. We knew the odds were only 1% more on our favor. We had hoped to win this bet — a bet in which we put a boat­load of money into the pot — and we lost. And I was devastated.

That’s not to say that I regret ever hav­ing done our one cycle of IVF. Because even back then I knew that this was some­thing Hubby & I had to try in order to feel as if we tried every­thing in our quest to repro­duce. I’m just sim­ply say­ing that the results of that bet, that one IVF cycle, was enough for me to know that I could never place another bet on another IVF cycle ever again.

So yes … the next log­i­cal step would be to go for adop­tion, right?

Except adop­tion isn’t a sim­ple thing to just “think about.” First, there’s the process of griev­ing the fact that I can’t have a baby. That alone is noth­ing sim­ple. That process involves never being able to expe­ri­ence preg­nancy. In my case, it involved never being able to see two pink lines in a preg­nancy test.  And it involves feel­ing as if my body’s failed, not only me and my Hubby (espe­cially my hus­band), but our par­ents and our sib­lings. And our sib­lings chil­dren, too.

Then there’s the other part that I needed to grieve; which is out­lined in more detail in this recent post. It’s griev­ing the fact that we will never be able to have our own bio­log­i­cal baby.  A child that we could pass our genes to. A child to pass the Fil­ipino tra­di­tions we were taught grow­ing up; and find­ing a way to blend both our Amer­i­can and Fil­ipino sides together. A child to carry on my Hubby’s last name.

And while I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

(Part Two con­tin­ues tomor­row … )

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Related Links:

Thoughts on Adoption

Baby Pic­ture

Admin Shtuff

Other Related Strings

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