NIAW: Learning and Changing

Things that infertility has taught me:

• Making babies is not always easy.
• Infertility is a disease that causes a lot of stress and heartache.
• There are tons of different kinds of fertility treatments.
• Being infertile is really really expensive!
• Sometimes you hope for the tests to discover something, that way you can get treatment/peace of mind.
• Lots of other men and women are going through this. I'm not alone.

How I have changed:

• I now stress over things I never thought I'd stress over.
• I'm way more comfortable discussing periods, uteruses (uteri?), ovaries, etc.
• Also, I will discuss those things with literally just about anyone who will give me the time of day.
• I know more about the female reproductive system than I ever thought possible.
• I know more about my own body than I ever thought possible, even though sometimes I have no idea what it's doing.
• I'm much meaner to some than I would have been before infertility, and nicer to those that I wouldn't have cared much about otherwise.

These are just a few things. Infertility teaches you so much about yourself. Granted, I wish I could've learned these things through something else, but life isn't always easy. Sometimes I feel like it's never easy. But I think the best thing about this is that I am growing, I am learning, I am changing. Hopefully all for the better, but I guess only time will tell. The worst thing about this is feeling alone or like nobody understands you. That's not necessarily true. It's just a matter of finding those people. And I'm so grateful that I've found an amazing group of people who are compassionate, loving, friendly, and understanding. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to teach my Real Life friends and help them understand how better to support me in this. Infertility never really goes away, but my hope is that we can find some resolution, whether we have biological children, adopt, or decide to live childless, and that we can be happy with our choices.


(I know this blog is really choppy and not very well written, but my attention span is about zero right now. I have a ton of stuff on my mind and it's hard to focus on any one thing for very long. Please forgive the scattered thoughts tonight.)