I went to a meeting with the support group that I talked about in my last post and it was amazing. These women have gone through so much! There were so many different stories! I never knew that infertility could be present in so many different ways. I mean, you read about different things online but to meet women who have gone through IVF and have had twins or went through IVF and it didn’t work. These stories are amazing and heart breaking at the same time. The sad thing is that there are so many women out there who may be going though the same thing but they choose to suffer in silence. I also understand why they may choose to suffer in silence. I think one of the reasons is that these women are running into people who aren’t thinking before speaking. People say so many insensitive things to women who may be having trouble conceiving or may have used assisted reproductive techniques to conceive.
Not being able to conceive is probably one of the most difficult topics to discuss. This group allows for women to be open and candid about what they are going through knowing that they are surrounded by people who completely understand. Imagine spending money to go through IVF only for it not to work or even worse, to miscarry. What do those emotions feel like? I can’t imagine but I can tell you that I know of women who have gone through that and the pain that they felt was simply indescribable. There are women who have spent thousands of dollars on multiple IUI treatments and then realized that what they spent could have possibly gone towards IVF. Or what about the women who can’t use their own eggs for whatever reason and end up using donor eggs? Or the women that decide to adopt embryos? These are just a few of the scenarios that come with dealing with infertility.
I wish that more people REALLY knew about infertility…most don’t know the half. I wish that more people would think before they said to someone “so when are you guys going to have children” or “when are you going to have #2” or “gosh, there will be such a large age gap between your children”. If you are reading this blog, think before you say anything along those lines to someone. You never know what they may be struggling with. There are many people who want children but simply can’t just “have sex and let it happen”. Some of us have to work much harder and even with that hard work, sometimes it still doesn’t happen. Pray for all that are dealing with infertility.
“The heart of the godly thinks carefully before speaking…”
Proverbs 15:28 (NLT)
Kristen D. Johnson
