Degrees of Infertility

I guess it's silly that I didn't realize it before, but there are so many different groups of infertiles. All infertility sucks, but you realize the deeper you move into it, that people feel completely different about each other.

I am a blog-aholic. I love to read blogs and I love to read people's stories on online forums. But don't be fooled that being an infertile in your mind means that you can be in the same group as another infertile. I noticed on one forum I belong to that people are branching off big time in different directions like never before. People who have done IVF more than a few times now cannot tolerate the conversations of people who are doing it for the first or second time. Then there are people who are using other people's eggs, and that's not even the same as the new group of people who use eggs from another country. On top of that, people who are parenting children from adoption want to be separated from people who are parenting children by birth. If you think about it there are all kinds of other groups too: people who just try for a long time, people who get pregnant by a miracle in between treatments, people who undergo a lap or an HSG and then wind up pregnant, people who decide to live child-free, etc, etc.

I can completely understand this as I have thought about the separation before too. I honestly didn't even consider people who get pregnant from using Clomid as infertile for awhile. Pop a pill and get pregnant? Sounds like a dream to me! Until I remember the day I was told I have issues and need to use Clomid. It felt awful. I cried and cried. Everytime Clomid didn't work (which was 8 for me), I was upset. So then I moved on. When I read of people who got pregnant with IUI, I think they are seriously the most lucky people and I don't want to even hear about it. Until I remember that the worst place I have ever been in mentally was with the 1st and 3rd failure of IUI. I remember thinking how awful it was that I had to resort to IVF, but then soon thinking that I am extremely lucky that it was successful the first try. I even have a little experience with adoption from when we decided we would not do IVF and got licensed as foster parents. I remember talking to a pregnant woman when we had our little foster baby that we hoped to adopt thinking we had something in common as we were both "expecting" a baby, when she made the asshat comment that at least if I didn't like my kid I could give it back but she had to keep hers. Infertility is such a rollercoaster. There is so much pain and jealousy involved, because no matter what, pregnancy is supposed to be free and easy (or so we were all told as teenagers).

I think after all the treatments I just became very desensitized to how hard it is at any phase of treatment after passing each phase. I also have to understand that I truly don't know what it's like to have had to move onto adoption because I naively thought that once you are a parent, you're a parent, and you are now all in the same club. It would be hard to listen to talk of birth and breastfeeding when you didn't experience it. I want to remember where I came from, but being in normal mommy groups without all the scars and pain is so much easier so sometimes it's sad to be a part of the infertility groups that I needed so much while in treatments. I'm trying to now work on the place where I can be sensitive to what others are going through but also not forget to enjoy without reservation every second of the bliss of having my babies. It's a weird place, but I've only been here for 3 months, so hopefully I will get it figured out someday and it did take over 3 years to get here.