National Infertility Awareness Week

This week always makes me cringe because while I'm extremely open about my journey to motherhood to those I'm closest to, I'm a complete coward when it comes to letting the whole world know. Oh sure I get my moments of I'll just out myself on FB and maybe someone out there will be helped by it, but then I think about "what if I get some comment about how my baby is illegitimate because I went through IVF to conceive" from some stupid ignorant person. Right now I don't know if I could handle that. Right now I think that would crush me. I haven't heard one stupid comment about our choice to use ART to conceive a child and I pray I never do. I know there are so many women out there who have and that is part of the reason it's so hard to "come out" about it. Now, despite the fact that I've never heard a bad comment in that way, I've heard a multitude of bad advice about how to conceive. The most popular has been "JUST RELAX!" I'll come back to that later. But here's a fun list of things I've been told to try along the way.

1. Get drunk and have sex in the back of your car
2. You sure you want kids? You can take mine for a week and see if you still want them!
3. Are you sure you're doing it right?
4. Maybe it's not just you, maybe it's your DH too and they just don't know it.
5. If you just stop trying it will happen, it always does!

I could go on but those were the most common. And the most painful. And the most irritating to try to deflect. After hearing it all for a little over a year, I got very blunt in my answers and thankfully that shut most people up. The "just relax" comment never stopped and hasn't now that I'm pregnant. I still have so many fears about my pregnancy due to IF and yet I just get told I'm over-reacting and to just relax. The people that say it to me have NO idea how it feels to try everything humanly possible to have a child and no idea what emotional baggage comes along with it.

I've talked to J about outing ourselves when we make our FB announcement about Petri's impending arrival but J made a point that I can't help but agree with. I may be in the minority with this but J says "I just want to be excited and happy about Petri and don't want Petri to become the poster child for infertility. I don't want him/her to be defined by OUR experience to conceive him/her. Yes, it's a painful experience for US to endure, but I want Petri starting out as innocently as a baby should. I don't want stupid people having pre-concieved opinions about our baby because of the things WE had to go through and the choices WE made to have him/her".

So, since I won't be letting the entire world know (call me a coward if you wish), in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week I'll be busting a few myths on my blog. Check out the Resolve Website for some awesome information on Infertility as well as Infertility awareness. If you ever feel like people are just NOT getting the hint when you tell them that "just relaxing" isn't going to do a damn thing, they have Infertility etiquette guides to pass on:) Check out the website here .

So, for the first myth I'm going to bust... Myth: If you just relax, you will get pregnant.

While being as stress free as possible while trying to get pregnant is probably good for your emotional health, in many cases it will NOT all the sudden make you pregnant. Take me for instance... I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. No amount of me relaxing was all the sudden going to make the connection between my brain and ovaries all the sudden work. No amount of relaxing was going to make my hormone imbalances balance themselves and make me ovulate each month. No amount of relaxing was going to make the sperm meet the egg and fertilize. No amount of relaxing was going to make the fertilized embryo travel down my fallopian tubes and implant. So yes, try to relax for your mental health but relaxing doesn't make you pregnant. For me it took weeks of hormone injections, constant blood draws and ultrasounds, 2 outpatient surgeries and having a fertilized embryo implanted directly into my uterus. For many others, hopefully it doesn't take such drastic measures.

That's my on schpeal on the myth but here's Resolve's more eloquent response to the myth:)
Busted!: If only it were that easy! The fact is, the vast majority of individuals who have infertility have a medical reason, not a stress-related one. Upwards of 90% of all infertility cases are caused by physical problems. In the female partner, the major causes of infertility are absent or irregular ovulation, blocked fallopian tubes, abnormalities in the uterus, and endometriosis (a chronic painful condition where tissue from the lining of the uterus migrates into the pelvis and attaches to the reproductive organs). The male partner can have issues with sperm production which can lead to too few sperm, sperm which can’t swim correctly, and abnormally shaped sperm.

Where the stress/infertility connection may come in tends to be after one has been trying for a while, and the stress of not conceiving easily may then contribute to the problem. But there has never been a study which shows that simply relaxing increases pregnancy rates. Research does show that infertility patients who learn and practice a wide variety of stress reduction techniques can have higher pregnancy rates than patients who don’t learn those techniques.


So thats my soapbox for the day. I'll be back again later in the week to continue busting myths!:)