Category Archives: Childless Not By Choice

Films should come with warning labels

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First off let me say I am a bit of a cryer when it comes to movies. I don’t just cry at Love Story or the Way We Were or epics that are intended to turn you into a sobbing idiot. No, I cry at almost any film. I have even been known to cry at trailers ( I am a sucker for that swelling music that they use to hype up your hippocampus).

I frequently cry at comedies. Some comedies even bring me to the crazy face crying. You know the kind? It is the kind of crying where you don’t just have a few tears rolling down your face, but rather you are making scrunched up ugly crying faces and may have completely destroyed all the eye makeup you put on for the evening. You don’t even want to see me at the end of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. You remember when the Greek father gives the toast at the end? I am a wreck at that point. It takes me eight Kleenex and a bottle of Lancome eye makeup remover( or some Windex) to put myself back together after that scene.

This year I have cried at all of them. I cried at Zero Dark Thirty ( that beginning segment, the one in which you hear the phone calls of the people calling for help from the Twin Towers on 9/11, totally destroyed me). I cried at Silver Linings Playbook ( The moment when she tells him off and he tells her that he loves her) and Lincoln ( When the Tommy Lee character gives his lover a copy of the bill I totally lose it) and The Life of Pi (when the boat capsizes and his family is lost) and almost everything else I saw. Gosh, I even cried at Sky Fall( when Judy Dench died). As you can see, I am a bit of an easy cry.

However there are some films that took me out of the realm of ordinary cinematic sadness into shoulder shaking tears. I feel sure that these films would have a similar emotional impact on anyone who is childless not by choice. The first film that put me into a post-movie depression was This is 40

Okay, this one blindsided me. I had no idea I was going to need Kleenex for this. I didn’t even bring any. And it didn’t occur to me for a second to apply waterproof mascara for a movie starring Paul Rudd. After all this was a comedy—this was a film that I was going to laugh at and feel even a little guilty for finding so funny. This was not a film that was going to make me sob uncontrollably. Hah! If you we’re sitting next to me you would have thought I was watching my own private screening of the Bridges of Madison County. I don’t know why it hit me so hard. Perhaps I was hormonal. Perhaps it was because I didn’t see it coming—but, when I learned that this 40-something hot mess of dysfunction was pregnant I couldn’t control my tears. My boyfriend was concerned, “are you okay?” “Uh-huh,” I sniffed, “I’m fine.”

My most recent post-cinematic ennui came from the erudite English comedy directed by Dustin Hoffman and starring Maggie Smith, Quartet. I REALLY didn’t expect this one to gut me as it did. But it did. I was mostly fine during the movie. Yeah, I knew that the unmarried women with Alzheimer’s who never had children was sort of getting to me as I watched it. And, yeah, I cried a little bit at the happy ending. However, the hell of this one was more of a time-delayed deal. It was one the way home when I started to think about what would happen to me when I am old. Yes, I KNOW that having children is absolutely no guarantee against isolation and loneliness in old age. But I do have an 89-year-old mother who likes to tell me how much she worries about me being alone when I am old. So, I sort of lost it. I cried for my future self. I wanted Keith to promise to eat well and exercise and do everything he could so he wouldn’t leave me here all alone ( I made him make the same promise after we watched Iron Lady). As soon as I got home I looked into a long-term care insurance policy.

Years ago when my snake phobia was at its peak, I used to find out if a film had a snake in it before I would agree to see it. Well, I have come along way with my snake phobia. I can now even watch Indiana Jones’ movies. Snakes on the Plane is a horse of another color, that film will remain on my ‘Never-ever-ever’ list. Now, even though, I have come so far with my infertility grief, movies can activate grief that I don’t always want to have retriggered. So, now I am thinking I might want to look into films for any signs of 40-somethings who accidentally and easily get pregnant and films in which old infertile women are old and alone and sad. You wouldn’t think there would be a lot of movies with those themes in them and yet infertility sneaks up into the oddest places. Just last night on Downton Abbey there was a conversation about infertility:

Matthew: “I wonder now whether the…um…injury…might have affected my…um…I suppose I mean my…fertility, if it…may have limited my chances of fathering a child?

Sir Philip: “Well, is everything working as it should?”

Matthew: “Uh…yes.”

Sir Philip: “Then, why do you think there may be a problem?”

Matthew: “We’re anxious to start a family. We’ve been married a few months without any…um…results.”

Sir Philip: “My dear Mr. Crawley. May I point out the word that gives you away? Anxious. Anxiety is an enemy to pregnancy. Don’t, whatever you do, feel anxious.”

Keith turned to me expectantly after that interchange. “You okay?” Yeah, I was fine. Not a single Kleenex was needed for that infertility interchange. However, I needed one a little later. But those tears were objectively justifiable and not at all personal( If you don’t watch Downton Abbey you might not know what I am talking about. If you do, can you believe they killed off Sybil???).

So, what movies do you recommend that those who are Childless Not By Choice might well avoid ( or at least watch with a warning, a lot of Kleenex and only while wearing waterproof mascara)? Your recommendations might help me edit my Netflix list, and for that I would be extremely grateful. And if you have no recommendations on that front, please tell me what movie makes you cry until you need to wash your face? It’d be nice to know that I am not the only one who can cry at comedies.

Is the unlived life worth examining?

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Nothing I know matters more
Than what never happened.
— John Burnside, ‘Hearsay

9780374281113_p0_v1_s260x420 I once had a psychoanalyst ask me to write out in detailed form the way I wish my life had gone. I am not sure why he asked me to do that, and at the time I was even less sure. I do know that I was at once both resistant and energized by his invitation which I ultimately did not accept. When I think back to my work with this well-meaning analyst,I suppose many of my hours with him had sounded a lot like the following: “If we had only stayed in Seattle and not moved to Los Angeles.”; “If only I had been able to stay near Mirjam and Paul( my Nanny and her husband) and not move two states away from them.”; “If only I had been allowed to stay at Montessori and not been forced to attend Parochial school.” It’s funny to think back to that time and see the point my analyst was trying to make. He was, I suppose, trying to get me to see the impact of my unlived life and discover who it was that I longed for and what I imagined those roads not taken would have lead to. I imagine that he thought that I was marred by regrets which is strange as I don’t really experience myself as a person who regrets much. But was my analyst onto something? Was my unlived life worth examining?

Adam Phillips’, author, psychoanalyst and my latest intellectual crush, has an answer for that. “It seems a strange question until one realizes how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not. What we fantasize about, what we long for,are the experiences, the things and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad.”

In his latest book, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, Phillips explores the unlived life and how it impacts our lived life. The book jacket offers the following description of Phillips’ exploration:

All of us lead two parallel lives: the life we actually live and the one that we wish for and fantasise about. And this life unlived (the one that never actually happens, the one we might be living but for some reason are not) can occupy an extraordinary part of our mental life. We share our lives, in a sense, with the people we have failed to be – and this can become itself the story of our lives: an elegy to needs unmet, desires sacrificed and roads untaken….Adam Phillips demonstrates that there might in fact be much to be said for the unlived life. …he suggests that in missing out on one experience we always open ourselves to the potential of another, and that in depriving ourselves of the frustration of not getting what we think we want, we would be depriving ourselves of the possibilities of satisfaction.

This is, I imagine, and I imagine my old analyst would agree, is something I know a little about.

There is the me that was an only child who moved from Seattle at three and moved to Los Angeles and whose parents were career focused and not child focused. There is the me who had traumas and dramas mar her childhood. And that me that went on to marry and not have children and become who I am today. But what, I suppose, makes all of the pain of that biographical narrative so much more painful is that I hold in my mind the story of “what should have been” and ” the unlived life that I should have had”. That, truth be told, is much the pain of infertility and the resulting grief that lingers today…it is the feeling of missing out and having in my head the alternate life I would be living if I had only had the baby. I share my life with the Tracey that I have failed to be. There is the me that exists and then there is the me that went to Sarah Lawrence and who is a mother and who has a huge and loving family ( the me that doesnt’ exist).

In answering the question of why do we spend so much time imagining another ( or unlived life) Phillip argues that we are by nature frustrated creatures and that is because our expectations and fantasies are more than can possibly be met by the world. He goes onto explain that one of the ways we cope with that frustration is to fantasize about what we need and what is missing. It is Phillips’ assertion that fantasizing about what we don’t have is not merely an act of compensation but that it gives us insight into what we want to do with our lives. The fantasy gives us information about what we want to do and how to give our selves some sense of satisfaction. Phillips’ encourages us to use our fantasy life to seek what is truly available in the world. He goes onto say that by really knowing our frustration that comes at the intersection of lived life and not lived life that gives us a better sense of what we really want, so it is important to look at that wished for life for clues

A very interesting point that he makes and one that I need to pay special attention to is that the fantasy of the unlived life can make the lived life seem disappointing as there are no boundaries in the fantasy life and there are always boundaries, rules and limitations in the lived life. “reality isn’t disappointing, it is just reality.”In my unlived life I had that baby and I live in Lake Bluff and I write in my free time when I am not being the best mother I can be. Yes, giving space for that unlived life makes me sad. When I really walk around that life it is both lovely and horrible in the pain that it constilates, but when I really move into that fantasy there is something I wanted psychologically and symbolically, as well as literally,and some of those things can happen and some of those things can’t. In the fantasy I am the perfect mother and I have the perfect baby and I am perfectly happy. I know the reality would have been very different and I am perfectly okay with that.

Phillips argues that Capitalistic culture promises to endlessly supply things we want, that if we have a need that Capitalistm promises to produce something that will fill that need( interestingly that in the height of my trying to conceive I used to dream of going to Land of Nod or Pottery Barn Baby and buying my own perfect baby as well as all the nursery furniture). Phillips makes the case that “the effect of this forced feeding( by Capitalism) is that we never can think about what we might want.”

The surprising point that Phillips makes is that frustration is more enlivening than happiness. “I think that our frustration is one of the best things about us….at its best our frustration, for example, can lead us into the knowledge and the acknowledgment that we need other people, say, and that there is a limit to what other people can give us and we don’t have to, as it were, murder them because they are so frustrating….And if frustration were more culturally acceptable…it would be more talked about.” We are capable of more satisfaction in our life and that can looking at our frustration and seeing what is act
ually possible.

As much as I love Phillips, and I do, I find him to be a bit of a frustrating read ( and for Phillips that would likely be a compliment) he writes in a free-associative style that leaves one feeling completely unsure of what they just read( and I KNOW that Phillips would love that critique). Let me be absolutely clear, I am not in this post recommending that you rush out and buy his book ( but you might well enjoy it). What I do hope is that you might feel inclined, after reading this post and some of the scaffolding bones that make up the body of Phillips argument, to examine your unlived life and see what exactly frustrates you about it? What in the frustration offers for potential REAL fulfillment in your REAL life?

I WANTED a baby. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to create a life for myself and for the longed for baby that I didn’t have created for me. While I can’t create that baby, I can, if I chose, create a life in which I have more opportunities for love and connection and nurturing, which I imagine is at the crux of the desire for a family. I don’t have all the answers about the meaning of my “unlived life” but I do think it is definitely worth exploring further. And I can see already that just in posing the question that there is an opportunity to be somewhat less frustrated, which is strangely a bit frustrating.

“Missing Out” reviewed in the New York Times

Excerpt from “Missing Out”

Radio Interview with Adam Phillips

L.A. Review of Books on “Missing Out”

Life After Infertility ( How to Let Go and Move On)

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Last Sunday I spoke at the Fertility Planit Show held in Century City, California. I was invited to be on the panel “Letting Go of the Hope of Having Genetic Offspring”. Yeah, it was not exactly the glamour hour at the Fertility Planit conference. I imagined people from all over the South-land deciding to spend their weekend and their $40 in order to learn the latest advances that might up their success rate. The last thing, I imagined, that hopeful couples would want to hear about is a panel of people talking about “Letting go” of exactly what it is they want most. I felt like I was the proverbial skunk invited to the garden party, or perhaps more aptly the divorce attorney invited to the wedding expo. I had visions of our panel being held in the bowels of the hotel. We might have a storage closet as our meeting place. There would be me and the other “letting go” panelists and maybe a long-suffering junior-volunteer journalist who had been sent to see if there might be a human interest story in our panel of sadness. In my fantasy, when the journalist saw the lack of attendance for the panel she got up and called her editor and told him that it had been a complete waste of time.

Even though I had that fantasy, I had another one too. In fantasy number two there was a huge crowd and they wanted hard data and facts and figures and they wanted to know exactly how, why and when I got over my infertility issues. They wanted me, in my fantasy, to answer their question in full and complete sentences that lacked “ums” and any other verbal ticks that I turn to when I am nervous. They wanted me to solve their problems in the ten-minutes I would be allotted on the panel. I feared that whatever my answers were that they wouldn’t like them. I imagined that they would be like the 1000+ commenters on Huffington Post who were filled with hostility towards almost everything I had to say about being infertile. As a counterpoint to that anxiety, I had the knowledge or hope that people tend to be nicer in person than when they are writing anonymous comments. I suppose it is harder to say mean and hateful things when standing in front of person who is spilling their guts out about how hard infertility was and how harder still it was to let go of—-only that knowledge only slightly comforted me—especially when that someone is crying).

You see, dear reader, my fantasy life is, as demonstrated in the aforementioned fantasies, often masochistic and full of unreasonable expectations. Hence, I was, to be completely candid, terrified. I was prepping for the panel in a way that I hadn’t done since studying for the GRE exams. And even as I crammed on topics that I KNOW I found myself marveling at the ridiculousness of prepping on what I am in fact an expert on.

The first question I was to be asked by the moderator was: “Who am I am and what is my relationship to the topic? Okay, well who am I? I should have that down, after all I know who I am. However, I wanted to succinctly explain the depth of my relationship to the topic which is not easy to do in three minutes.

What I planned on saying was:

I am an expert on “Letting Go of Trying to Conceive”, not so much because I am a MFT and that I work with patients who are struggling with infertility. Nor am I an expert because I have written about Infertility for Huffington Post or on my blog, La Belette Rouge. I am an expert because I spent five-years trying to conceive on my own(with my partner’s help) and another five-years and over $100,000 trying to conceive via the help of a Reproductive Endocrinologist. I did four and a half rounds of IVF, 21 rounds of IUI. I did ICSI. And we moved on to do IUI with a sperm donor. I didn’t stop there.

I did Feng Shui, Acupuncture, Yoga, and Chi Gong. I took flower essences, vitamins, and herbs. I saw healers, energy workers and Maori Tribal chieftains that supposedly had the power to heal even the most profoundly infertile couples. We were assured by healers, psychics, astrologers, and all who loved us that there was a baby in our future. Even thought I am agnostic, I had friends and families saying prayers, rosaries and masses for us. We were on prayer chains at over 100 churches. We built a baby shrine in our home—friends and family gave us symbols of fertility that would assure us our baby. I meditated, got massaged and got into therapy to manage my stress. I looked at my psychological resistance to pregnancy and mothering and everything I could possibly be resistant to and might be making my womb inhospitable. I ate more yams than one human should. My ex-husband ingested more pumpkin seeds than you could find in an entire pumpkin patch. I affirmed, “I easily and effortlessly become pregnant”. And instead I become uneasily and with great struggle, not pregnant.

I let go of the hope of having biological offspring on December 17, 2008. That was the last time I tried to conceive with the help of medical technology. I was shopping at Target in Highland Park, Illinois. I went into the bathroom and saw that after another round of treatment that I wasn’t pregnant AGAIN. I went home and called the doctor’s office and instead of scheduling ANOTHER round, I told them I was done. The nurse told me, “Okay” and that was it. I knew that day in a way that I had never known before that I could keep doing this over and over and I knew that I would not get pregnant. I knew that all the kings horses and all the kings men weren’t going to get me pregnant, no matter what kind of success rate they advertised or what kind of Chinese herbal supplements I choked down. That was the day that I quit trying to conceive and I started to move on with my life. It is my hope that today I will give you some tools that will allow you to move on, if that is what you want to do.

Well, I have no idea if I said anything like that. I am guessing I didn’t, as I had only three-minutes. I suppose if you want to know what I ACTUALLY said and what all the wonderful people on the panel said you can check this link out and look for my panel ( look for Sunday at 3 p.m.)

The second question that I over-prepared for was: What helped you let go? And do you think it is possible to ever really move on?

My over-prepared answer (and likely not the one I gave to the incredible Fertility Planit audience ) was:

I feel that I was lucky that I started the infertility treatment process knowing that at some point if the treatment wasn’t working that I would stop trying. I remember taking a walk the night before I began treatment and the thought came to me, that clearly was coming from a smarter and wiser part of myself, and that voice said, “At some point, if this doesn’t work, then you will stop treatment. “ For me, knowing that there was a limit to what I would do in order to conceive was vital. I knew there would be a point when I could no longer endure the pain and disappointment of failed infertility procedures was a strange comfort to me. I would ask myself after every round of IUI, “is this my limit?” If my answer was no I would go on. I know that many couples have the mindset when they begin treatment to continue until they have their baby, no matter what. However, infertility treatment doesn’t work for everyone and knowing that and having reasonable expectations around treatment is, I believe, vitally important. I wanted desperately to have a baby, but after all my heroic efforts failed, it was a comfort to me to have that question in order to check in with myself and see if I could take anymore. I am so grateful that I didn’t continue and do more and more and more even though I knew I had reached my personal limit. I would advise anyone to continue to check in with themselves and not to feel pressure to do more than their body, soul, relationships or bank account can handle.

The final question I was going to be asked was: What is the single most important thing a person can do for themselves, once they’ve made the decision to let go of becoming a parent entirely?

The single-most important thing, I believe, at least for me, and for many patients that I have worked with is to grieve it fully. When giving up on having a baby one is giving up so much: the grief of never having the biological experience of pregnancy; the grief of not having a family, in this way; the grief of not having a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent; The grief of not relating to your peers or going through the developmental markers that come through being a parent: The grief of not being a mother. To give up on having genetic offspring leads to MANY losses. And it would be my personal and professional advice to allow yourself to grieve fully and completely. I know it isn’t easy to do and I KNOW that through personal experience.

At the height of the pain, everyone told me that it would get easier and that I would get through it, but I didn’t know if I would. I thought the pain and the grief of it might kill me. But I did get through it. The day came when it hurt a little less and then a little more and there were days when I wouldn’t cry when I saw a pregnant women. Overtime it hurt less and less. With even more time, I was able to see babies and not wish they were mine. Slowly it stopped being the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about before I went to bed.

And mostly now I am happy with my life and even grateful for how it all worked out…The Truman Capote quote, “more tears are cried over answered prayers” even comforts me on occasion, but there are times when I am taken over by the fact that I will never be a mother or a grandmother. I never know when or when it is going to hit me but when it does it is not uncommon for me to cry with the same amount of depth of feeling as back in 2007 when I first let go of the hope of having a child of my own.

The hope I have to offer today is that I am here to say that life can be meaningful without children and that even though I didn’t get what I wanted in my infertility treatment I did learn a lot about myself though the treatment. I learned how strong I am and how much endurance and tenacity I have. I learned to tolerate ambiguity and not knowing, something I was lousy at before enduring infertility. I learned the very hard life lesson that doing all the right things and working hard doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get what you want. It also hurt like no other loss I have known and it is a wound in me that I will have all of my life, even as I have moved on.

Every time my period comes I am reminded of my inability to conceive, even though I am in no way trying to conceive. Recently I had my period show up a week late and I found that my “letting go” of hope to be challenged. I KNEW that I wasn’t pregnant. But what if I was? What if? I tried to keep the fantasies at bay. I tried to remind myself of the reality. And then my period came and I grieved again. I know my grieving it isn’t over, but neither is my life. I don’t think I will every let go completely, it is a process. Moving on, no doubt, is possible. It just takes time and it isn’t a straight line. That said, I continue to pick up and put down and let go and hold on again to the idea of a biological child. Shelagh Little writes that infertility is like a low level lifelong bio-psycho-social syndrome. My physical inability to produce children has emotional and social consequences that I struggle with at least to some degree every day. Her definition of infertility helps me to understand why it still hurts and that, to some degree, it always will—even as I move on. I am extremely grateful to Shelagh for that way of conceptualizing infertility.

Finally, I want to share what I believe is/was my personal recipe for moving on and letting go:

1. Getting to my personal limit

Knowing that I had tried as hard as I could to have a baby and that I could try no more. That was the first step in my letting go. I have no regrets about how hard I tried to get pregnant. I know I gave it my personal best and that is all I can ask of myself.

2. Therapy

Having a therapist to go to twice a week and sob to was essential for me in my recovery from the active grief that comes from letting go. My therapist gave me a safe space to grieve. I felt like friends of family could only take so much of my grief. My therapist could take all of it. And his taking it and allowing me to leave my grief with him was huge for me in moving through it and making meaning of my pain.

3. Finding other people who had gone through the pain I had and seeing evidence that they had moved on

Reading Silent Sorority and Life Without Baby was profoundly helpful. The first place I turned to after deciding to let go was to Google. I queried, “what to do after failed infertility treatment?”. At first I found nothing helpful, except a few posts about how to stay away from Disneyland and Chucky Cheese’s. Finally I found Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos and then Lisa Manterfield (whom I was lucky to be on this panel with and FINALLY meet) and other bloggers who knew my pain, even though I didn’t know them. It made me feel less alone and it helped to see people who were surviving and thriving without children.

4. Giving voice to my experience

Having my blog to write about my experience. I made friends. I found even support for my experience. I had an outlet to process what felt unprocessable( to coin a term).

5. Time

It takes time. Time may not heal the wound of infertility, but time, and all the other aforementioned tools,does offer a kind of unexpected medicine that does allow for peace and happiness and meaning to sneak back into your life in unexpected ways .

***

Well, I don’t know if I said all that. I do know that speaking at Fertility Planit was healing for me and that I am extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful event. In talking about my process of letting go I got to see how far I’ve come. And it was incredible for me to have the opportunity to share my experience with those who are in the process of hoping, holding on, praying and, maybe, letting go. I was deeply touched by the courage of the those who attended. Letting go of the hope of genetic offspring isn’t easy and I admire the men and women who were in the audience, it is courageous to be in the trying to conceive phase and to conceive of not conceiving.

Looking out into the audience and seeing all the people suffering the pain of infertility, I am left with a new fantasy. I truly hope that something I do or say or share is helpful to someone suffering the grief of being unable to conceive—even if it is only one person. Maybe this last fantasy can become a reality.

Infertile in Heels ( Andy Cohen this post is for you)

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Okay, I admit it, sometimes I am guilty of some Bravo TV watching. I do know the names of most of the Real Housewives and I also have been known to watch a marathon or two of Flipping Out. Well, just yesterday I learned that Rosie Pope, the star of Bravo TV’s “Pregnant in Heels” is also to be a presenter at the FertilityPlanit Show( where I will be on the panel discussing “Letting Go of Having Genetic Offspring”). In case you haven’t caught it, “Pregnant in Heels” features fashion designer/ maternity concierge/pregnancy coach, Rosie Pope. Rosie helps ultra-privileged moms to be, ( the kind of moms who seem to have spent more time shoe-shopping than reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”) arrange their pre-labor Brazilian waxings, and organize envy producing baby showers. Rosie also designs luxury maternity wear for her clients who want to chicly optimize their baby bump.

And, it got me thinking…if Rosie is “Pregnant in Heels” maybe I could be “Infertile in Heels”? I mean, really, why do the pregnant women get to have all the fun? Maybe I could create a line of clothing that would make it easier and chicer to go in for endless ultrasound procedures? Perhaps I could create match-stick jeans that had with easy accessible injection sights so you don’t have to get undressed every time you need a shot of egg stimulating hormones. Really, I would have enjoyed not taking my pants off every time I needed a bruise inducing shot of progesterone in my derriere. It isn’t the worst idea I have ever come up with( I have some doozy ideas that I will refrain from sharing in this post).

While I am writing most of this post with tongue firmly planted in cheek, it really would have been nice, if I could have afforded it, to have had an infertility concierge help me with all of the scheduling and organizing and heartaches and headaches of infertility. I certainly could have benefited from having an infertility coach/concierge to schedule my ovulation and injection cycles for me and manage my life for me while I/it was falling apart due to the extreme hormone levels and stressors of another failed round of IVF. I would have likely signed up for a boot-camp on infertility, in order to learn everything that I had to learn on my own.

According to the CDC there would be a big audience for “Infertile in Heels”:

Number of women ages 15-44 with impaired fecundity (impaired ability to have children): 6.7 million
Percent of women ages 15-44 with impaired fecundity: 10.9%
Number of married women ages 15-44 that are infertile (unable to get pregnant for at least 12 consecutive months): 1.5 million
Percent of married women ages 15-44 that are infertile: 6.0%
Number of women ages 15-44 who have ever used infertility services: 7.4 million

Infertility is not rare. You know someone with infertility, and if you don’t, then you know me—at least through the blog. But we infertiles don’t really have a show of our own, all the shows are about pregnant women and babies and weddings. Andy Cohen are you listening? There is, I believe, an audience for “Infertile in Heels”. And I bet the Childless Not By Choice community has more cash to blow on cupcakes, manicures, cashmere, designer shoes and trips to Saks than her pregnant counterparts. Kids cost money, a lot of it. Last I read it was $235,000 for the average middle-class family to raise a child from birth to eighteen, and that is not including college. So, Andy Cohen, and all you other TV executives and advertisers, you might want to keep that in mind when you do your programing. Another statistic that those in programming might want to consider is that, according to the most recent U.S. Census data report, 1 in 5 women aged 40 to 45 don’t have children. That’s a lot of women with a lot of buying power with a lot of shoes.

Okay, so maybe it would be harder to make a show on infertility feel like a combination of an indulgent Sprinkle’s cupcake/ episode of Sex and the City and a new pair of Jimmy Choos than it is to make pregnancy seem like a Disney fairy tail covered in marabou, sequins and cashmere—but I believe in you Andy Cohen, and I believe if you can make NeNe a star then you can put infertility into heels. That said, I suppose more people tune into baby/wedding/reality shows for escape and a failed round of IVF hardly offers the kind of escapist joy that “Say yes to the dress” does.

A little side note, on my worthiness of being “Infertile in Heels”: When I was going through infertility treatment I wasn’t buying clothes as I was convinced I was going to be pregnant any moment and so every time I needed a sartorial spirit lifter I would turn to shoes. I figured I would likely be able to wear the shoes through most of my pregnancy. Well, I never got the baby, but I do have lots of shoes.

Still not pregnant

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I just came from a favorite blog and this lovely girl, whose blog I have secretly admired, has just announced her pregnancy. And the truth is that I am really happy for her; I am REALLY happy for her. I tell you twice so as to convince you as I know you may not really believe me, but I am. I want her to be pregnant and happy. I am, as I mentioned a moment ago, happy for her. And I am happy for me too. I am. I am happy that, at 47-years-of-age, I am NOT pregnant. Again, I mean that. You’ve got to trust me on this. The last thing I want to be is 47 and pregnant. Wrinkles and morning sickness are two not-great-things-that-don’t-go-great-together. You can probably tell by how little I blog that I am happy. I am busy and happy and grateful for how my life has turned out. I am. I am good. Life is good.

But all that said, I still can’t hear about a pregnancy without all the pain and disappointment at my permanently child-free state. It just comes up. I tried to read this blogger’s happy post and I couldn’t. I had to leave her blog and come back to my blog, my blog that has no surprise ending of a miracle baby.

In January I am going to be part of a panel at the Fertility Planit Show in L.A. and the topic of my panel is “Letting Go of Having Genetic Offspring”. And, it seems, that I am still in the process of letting go. Each month when Aunt Flow visits I discover I am still dealing with letting go of having genetic offspring. Some months are better than others. This month ain’t so good. This month I had my mother tell me that I will never know the real joy of the holidays because I didn’t have children. This month my mother also told me that she worried about my old age as I will have no children to take care of me. This month I felt kicked in the ovaries again and again when I had more than my share of baby dreams and woke to discover that they were just a symbol that my psyche sadistically chose.

This month I am not sure why I am on that panel and/or what I have to say on the topic other than it is hard to let go of having genetic offspring and that it is a process and that somedays are better than others. Okay, that last sentence isn’t entirely true. I do feel like I have something to teach on the topic of coping with the life -long grief that comes from being childless-not-by-choice. I know that it gets better and life gets better and that sometimes its worse than others and that silver-linings can be found, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt a lot sometimes. It does. And if you are hurting because of your childlessness, don’t let someone tell you should be over it by now( I think I wrote that last sentence for myself).

Anyway, congratulations to the beautiful blogger with the baby on the way. And thanks, dear blogger, for inspiring me back to my blog. It’s nice to be here again.