SALON

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 1:00 AM UTC

What we gained through infertility

Trying to have our own baby made John and me miserable. Admitting defeat was a heartbreak -- and a revelation

By

Topics: Real Families, Coupling, Motherhood, Parenting, Editor's Picks,

What we gained through infertility (Credit: iladm via Shutterstock)

My body made it perfectly clear that I couldn’t reproduce. But instead of listening to it, I launched a war against Mother Nature. I was heeding some primordial desire that could hardly be expressed with words: the need to give birth and nurse a baby. Unfortunately, my husband wasn’t on board.

I grow fibroids — blobs of muscle, basically — which take up valuable space in my uterus and block my fallopian tubes. I’ve had them surgically removed twice, but they grew back. As soon as my husband, John, saw trouble brewing, he wanted to stop trying to make a baby and adopt one instead.

“I’m in my 40s,” he reminded me. “Neither of us are much of a prize, genetically.” He was right, of course — it had been more than a decade since we met on the Salon Personals, of all places — though I didn’t appreciate his rubbing it in.

“Besides,” he asked, “have you read the statistics on autistic kids born to older dads?”

Of course I read the statistics, but they didn’t matter. Since puberty, I’d been telling myself a wonderful story. It starts with the ecstasy of discovering that I’m pregnant, then moves on to feeling the baby kick and placing John’s hand on my belly. He feels it, too. We’re madly in love. I give birth in a hospital, aided by a midwife. No medication, no complications. I’m a champ. And the most fulfilling relationship of my life begins at that moment, when I’m handed my firstborn.

I spent years dreaming up this child (whom for simplicity’s sake I’ll refer to as a girl, though I remain very flexible on this point). She probably has dark hair, below average coordination and the ability to sing on key, like her parents. Good chance she’d grow up to be awkward and bright, curious and a bit chubby, like her parents too. But like a character on a long-running TV show, she never ages in real time. I’ve loved her for so long, she should be old enough to vote by now; yet I imagine her as a baby, between 6 months and 2 years old.

Meeting her in person became my sole obsession. All day at the office, I ignored my job and feverishly tracked my fertility, making charts on the computer. I took my temperature every morning, peed on ovulation predictors every month. John and I gave up all our bad habits, starting with cigarettes, caffeine and booze. We replaced all our plastic and coated cookware in the kitchen with nontoxic alternatives. I swallowed handfuls of vitamins and minerals and brewed kettles of foul-tasting Chinese herbs into “tea.”

But by far the most dehumanizing part was the baby-making sex, devoid of romance or eroticism. If I was ovulating, we were copulating — no matter what. Even during a Thanksgiving weekend with family, in a thin-walled cabin in Lake Tahoe. Or in an unheated guest room, on an under-inflated air mattress. Or when we were jet-lagged, or had an infected tooth that needed a root canal, or there was a record-breaking heatwave. My heart sank every time John heaved a miserable sigh before climbing atop me. We were like animals, being bred in captivity.

Our friends and family told me to adopt a child. (Actually, they asked if I’d considered adopting a child, which is a polite way of suggesting I do it.) Of course adoption made sense, but it felt like a betrayal to this hypothetical child I’d dreamed of for so long. An alarming number of otherwise sane people predicted I’d get pregnant as soon as I applied with an adoption agency. I didn’t think it would magically change our fate and it struck me as more than a little callous, but I began to research adoption anyway. It was a way of reminding myself that we had other options. Our friends set us up on blind dates with adoptive couples who told us their baby stories. They all said that adopting was the best decision they ever made. We met their charming children. I really wanted to want this, but I didn’t. I was thinking with my ovaries and neck deep in magical thinking.

My dreams of starting a family were crumbling. And even though I had the womb full of benign tumors, I blamed most of our misery on John. We argued almost constantly — about when to advance to each increasingly expensive medication or fertility treatment. Our marriage had become a greasy, depressing, poorly lit casino. John wanted to walk away from the Blackjack table, hire an adoption lawyer, and move forward with our lives. But I was belligerent, refusing to leave. I kept doubling down. I had to prove that all this misery wasn’t for nothing. We’ve already invested so much, I thought. Besides, I can’t give up now. That baby’s almost here.

So I threw the project into overdrive and convinced John to do three rounds of artificial insemination and two rounds of in vitro fertilization. The price for all this cutting edge technology: somewhere in the price range of a luxury convertible sedan.

Then my younger sister amazingly and generously volunteered to be our surrogate, which I thought was the sort of thing that only happens in Lifetime movies. Each month, Margot texted us when she had her LH surge indicating peak fertility, then John would pull the collection kit out of the freezer and cue up the Internet porn. My only job was to ship my husband’s sperm to my sister overnight. Once, in a rush to pack up the specimen cup into the Styrofoam shipping box in time, John spilled half of the sample on the kitchen counter and I came dangerously close to having a nervous breakdown. It didn’t work and cost another ten grand.

For over four years, our lives were on hold. Our nerves were on edge. Our bodies weren’t our own. I was more miserable than I’d ever been, and yet I wouldn’t relent. I wish I knew why it took me so long. It’s possible I was afraid of my mortality. Maybe I thought that on some level, I could stave off the inevitable if I had genetic heirs walking the planet after I’d died. But the truth was more mundane. I worried that I’d be a failure as an adoptive mother; that I wouldn’t connect with my child. That no matter how much she and I both tried, we’d always think of the other as a stranger living under the same roof.

The realization that a biological child wasn’t in the cards alighted unexpectedly on my shoulder, like a butterfly. It happened the moment my sister called to say the fifth round of artificial insemination didn’t work. The news that another fertility treatment had failed was no surprise, but I was shocked by my reaction. I was completely fine. Suddenly I had the acceptance and clarity that had eluded me for so long. With enormous relief, John and I officially decided to adopt a baby.

The unexpected bonus from all that heartache is that John and I are closer than we’ve ever been. Infertility forced us to have brutally honest conversations on a regular basis. The more we argued, the better we got at it, so we communicate much better now. That’s changed the fundamental ways we interact, and we’re having fun again. We recently moved to a little house in the suburbs, with a front yard with a porch swing and a backyard with an orange tree. We love it here. There’s a bedroom waiting for our baby, whenever he or she chooses to arrive.

I still love baby stories. I’ve started telling myself a new one, about a baby who hasn’t been born yet. A wonderful baby who was meant for us. Our baby. There are days when I feel that grim desperation at the periphery of my consciousness, flailing for attention. I worry about the difficulties ahead for our family, the frustrations and disappointments we’ll endure. But that’s parenting, I’m told. Besides, I can’t give up now. That baby’s almost here.

 

Joanna Lovinger is a writer living in Los Angeles More Joanna Lovinger.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 42 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Real Families is a personal-essay series that celebrates the surprising and ever-shifting nature of domestic life in the 21st century. If you have a fascinating, original story you'd like to share, email life@salon.com. You can also post your essay on Open Salon and tag it "real families."

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
251 points252 points | 226 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
239 points240 points | 15 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
210 points211 points | 31 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
77 points78 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
67 points68 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations