This week’s topic is for those of you who arrived here via the infertility route.
Do you feel you were left hanging by the fertility industry?
Okay, I know that’s a loaded question, so if you don’t feel like jumping in on this topic, or if it doesn’t apply to you, feel free to bring your own whine to the party this week.
I feel like the doctors and nurses were poor patient advocates. I now know that crucial information and education was not provided along the way. I feel that the medical world is eager to help a healthy person try to conceive, but when there is continued lack of success, there comes lack of support and understanding. I feel very isolated and guilty for having many deep, negative feelings and thoughts. I feel the fertile world does not understand and easily judges the infertile world. These barriers and judgements that I have experienced have led me to keep my infertile journey/ history private from many family and friends. I feel like I am alone on my own island watching the rest of the world.
I feel like I’m on an island watching the world of children go by as well. There are days that I ask myself “What is the point of my life if I don’t have a child?”
Michelle, I also feel isolated and am also watching the rest of the world drift by. I feel even more alone , depressed, and isolated because I didn’t get any answers to my infertility. At the time I was in my early thirties but saw women older than me get pregnant. Now have seen women my age with grandchildren and feel depressed and lonely all over again. Many times I feel I will never see any real happiness throughout the rest of my life. I worry about my future.
Its cruel isn’t it that infertility comes back to you later in life when the grand babies start arriving.
What a timely question. We’ve been waiting to get into a fertility clinic for 8 months. Last time I called the clinic the wait time they gave me was “3 weeks to 18 months”…because that’s helpful. When we were referred initially it was 8 months to a year. Their numbers don’t make sense, and they don’t explain if or how they triage.
We are slowly coming to terms with life without kids, but we have no answers yet. The doctors only did preliminary tests, which all came out perfect. Who knows how long it will take to get in to a specialist – there is a very good chance we will move on with life before that happens. Right now our discussion revolves around wanting answers, but also wondering if we can move on without answers, and if anyone really stops trying to conceive; if “moving on” is possible when the medical world tells you that technically you should be fertile. The lack of answers makes everything more difficult – if we “give up” before they’ve tried everything, we would both have to work through incredible amounts of guilt.
So yah, left hanging all right. It’s like they barely answered the phone.
Wow- Long rant! Thanks for listening.
I just want to send hugs to both Sherry and Michelle. I’m sorry you feel so sad, and hope that the camaraderie you find here (and elsewhere in the blogging community) will help you.
My infertility experience was of course in New Zealand, and our industry is quite tightly controlled. So it prevented me going on and on when there was little hope, and I am very thankful for that. That said, once I ended my last cycle, I never heard from them again, despite promises that the counsellor would call and help me through what was, for me, the hardest part of infertility. (That is, ending the journey without the baby. ) Feeling dismissed and cast adrift was at the time very hard.
I felt the doctors only wanted my money. They were pushing us hard for us to use donor sperm even though my husband said no. It took me also saying no before they would listen. Our journey to the child free not by choice was short but still painful. And the infertility clinic just didn’t care. We were not a money maker for them so they dropped us pretty quickly.
In a word, yes. I never did feel like I could get a straight answer from our RE. One visit he would be optimistic and encouraging about what the daily bloodwork & ultrasounds were telling him; another day, he would be blunt and negative. It seemed like there was always some new carrot he was dangling in front of us that MIGHT work. There was no counselling offered. After our last IUI cycle, I told them we were going on vacation & they said to call when my next cycle came… by the time we got back from our holiday, I knew I wasn’t going back. And I never heard from them again. I mean, I know it’s up to us to decide what we want to do and how far we wanted to take this — and I probably would have been equally annoyed if they’d been calling me and pestering me about coming back in. But it did annoy me a little that there was absolutely no follow up.