An Open Letter to the Woman Who Called My IVF a Sin

First of all, I never asked you.

You, who were raised Catholic (like me), brought up to believe in the healing power of love and sacrifice, do you know how much I sacrificed for these children? How many needles I faced? How many procedures I endured? How many times I went to the ER convulsing in unbearable pain? Do you know how many tears I shed?

You, who conceived your first child because you “forgot the condom that one time,” have you ever even considered what it’s like to walk the proverbial mile in an infertile woman’s shoes?

Do you know what it’s like when your body breaks the very heart it harbors, refusing to indulge its deepest desire?

Do you know how it feels to cry over another negative pregnancy test, only to dig it out of the trash an hour later, praying that a second line has magically appeared?

Do you know how much love contributed to the creation of these children? That they are born of the love between a husband and wife, between parental hopefuls and an imagined family, between a mother and the mere idea of her future children?

Do you think the fact that they spent an infinitesimal portion of their lives in a laboratory before I carried them changes any of that?

Do you know that every time I felt them move inside of me, my heart was filled with gratitude?

Do you know how my body nourished them? How we shared the same nutrients, the same oxygen, the same heartbeat?

Do you know that our hearts fall into that familiar, synchronized rhythm when I hold them close to me now? That our hearts still speak to one another?

Can you imagine how much I love them? How much they love me in return?

Do you really believe something that brings more love into this world could be a “sin”?

You, who said my cyst-ridden ovaries were just “part of a bigger plan,” did you ever stop to think that maybe meeting the miracle workers at the fertility clinic was also part of that plan?

If you saw a child hit by a car while running across the street, would you neglect to call 911, chalking the accident up to “destiny”?

You, who said it was immoral to use “any means necessary” to get pregnant, do you realize that most cases of infertility are considered treatable medical conditions?

If one of your loved ones was suffering from cancer that could be cured with chemotherapy, would you urge her to decline treatment? Would you tell her it’s wrong to fight fate, and that she should die prematurely, at the hands of a tumor, even though there are gifted and compassionate human beings who could help her?

You, who accused me of tossing out “unused” or “weak” embryos like trash, do you know that I refused to discard even the lowest medically-graded embryo?

Do you know that any embryos I didn’t have transferred back to me were treated with the utmost care, and that they are safe in a medical facility, tiny glimmers of hope with the potential to gift us — or another struggling couple, should we decide to donate — a beautiful baby?

You, who accused me of “taking life for granted,” do you know that I cried over every single egg that didn’t mature?

Every embryo that formed but halted in its development?

Every transferred blastocyst that didn’t “stick”?

Every blood-stained pad that meant my womb wasn’t enveloping the child I’d so desperately yearned for?

Do you know that I lit candles? Laid out prayer cards? Wept until I no longer knew what it was to have clear vision and dry cheeks?

Look at my children — my beautiful, vibrant, born-of-love miracles. Watch them light up a room and bring a smile to even the most somber of faces.

Listen to the way the word “Mama” dances off their lips, like a precious secret, a verbal love letter addressed to the woman who gave them life.

Watch them gaze upon the world with wide eyes, finding joy in the mundane, laughter in the silence, love in the emptiness.

See their eyes sparkle when I ask them if they want to go for a ride in the wagon. Watch them point out the airplanes overhead, mimic the sound of a passing train, laugh at the dandelion seeds that float through the sky and tickle their noses.

Hear the wonder in their voices when they catch a rare glimpse of the moon in broad daylight, their cries of excitement reminiscent of a barnyard, as they turn people’s heads with boisterous outbursts of “Moo! Moo!”

See them wave to the mail carrier, shout “Hi!” to the UPS driver, and smile at the garbage man.

Watch their brows furrow with genuine concern when they see someone get a “boo boo” at the playground.

Listen to them sing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star,” out of key but full of life.

Let them take your hand in theirs. Feel their tiny, dirt-caked fingers embracing yours in a grasp of unadulterated trust.

You can call me a sinner, and I won’t deny it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no saint.

I am human. I am flawed. I have made mistakes, and I have plenty of things to apologize for.

But being a mother is not one of them.

© 2015 Samantha Wassel, as first appeared on Scary Mommy

MF, Reincarnated

Loyal Followers of Da Blog:

There is an MF3.

If you are NOT an LFoDB and have no idea WTF I’m talking about, you can read about my experience with MF1 and MF2 here.

(I apologize for all the initials, but I’m super tired of having to spell things out for people. Like how NOT EVERYBODY can get pregnant by dipping her pinky finger in a used condom.)

This woman—MF3—like her predecessors, thought the middle of a crowded playground was the ideal place to flaunt both her fertility and her total disregard for what a gift it is. Why is it that these ungrateful baby-factories tend to flock to the playground like vultures, waiting to pick away at what little patience and self-control I have left? I swear, one of these days, someone's gonna get titty-twistered.

I first overheard MF3 talking to a group of ladies about her affinity for energy drinks (red flag #1), how she actually enjoyed living in Texas (red flag #2), and her sincere hope that her husband would get her pregnant and then deploy (red f***ing parachute).

I’ll spare you all the infuriating niceties of the conversation and skip straight to the kicker—that made me want to kick-HER. In the ovaries:

“The last thing I want is to get pregnant with a boy.”

Cue my jaw dropping to the rubber surface of the playground, bouncing back up, and knocking me unconscious.

Seriously? That is the LAST THING you want? Look, I understand that some people who are trying to get pregnant are kind of hoping for a specific gender, but to say that a baby boy is the LAST THING you want? I’d come up with a proper insult, but my brain cells are too busy taking kamikaze dives at the temporal bones of my skull to form one befitting the asininity of that remark (which would also explain the migraine).

Look, lady, I’m pretty sure there are worse things in life than having a boy. If you ask me, there really isn’t anything better in life than having a boy (except maybe having two). I don’t presume to know you, so maybe I’m off-base here. But just to give you some perspective, here are 15 things I’m pretty sure you want to do LESS than “get pregnant with a boy”:

1. Cuddle with a box jellyfish.

2. Spend the night in a port-a-potty outside of a taco convention.

3. Share a few eskimo kisses with a star-nosed mole.

4. Mistake the dead fly that landed in your cookie dough for a raisin.

5. Give yourself a hydrochloric acid enema. Oh yeah, feel the burn!

6. Use a leech as a makeshift tampon.

7. Have sex with Beldar Conehead.

8. Have your eyeballs gouged out and eaten by a naked mole rat, and then be forced to watch as they pass through its anal sphincter.

9. Make out with a coprophagiac.

10. Get pregnant with a girl…

      …sea urchin. Have fun pushing that out of your vagina.

11. Kiss a cockroach.

12. Eat a cockroach.

13. Poop out a cockroach.

14. Be a cockroach and have cockroach sex with another cockroach.

It's a cockrORGY!

[via Pixabay]

Oh, yeah, and, umm…

15. Deal with infertility issues.

Oh! Bonus! Set off a woman with infertility issues. I may just sick my demon male spawn on you.

The Thorn in My Ovary

Disclaimer: I plan on using this blog—in part (a large part)—to facilitate my deeply-rooted need to complain about things that irritate me. Anyone who knows me well will tell you that that’s a LOT of “things,” and that may seem superficial, but my numerous irritations usually stem from some underlying value or moral that I see violated. So! There is a purpose to my ranting, I assure you.

Let’s start with this one: women who take their ability to have children completely for granted.  

Now, admittedly, I’m likely a tad more sensitive to this issue than most other ladies of child-bearing age due to the fact that it is exceedingly difficult for me to get pregnant. I have not been terribly open about this fact to the general public because it’s a sensitive subject to me; however, the truth of the matter is that my lady parts function about as well as a jammed vending machine. That is to say, I’ve got the goods (eggs, in this case), but it’s gonna take a lot of shaking, poking (not the fun kind), and brunt force for me to release them.

I have a pretty severe case of what’s called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), and without boring you with too much medical mumbo jumbo, it basically means I’m kind of like a backed up hen. I’ve got plenty of freakin’ eggs, but I can’t just lay one, at least not with a high degree of medical intervention. I was really put through the ringer while I was trying to get pregnant a few years ago. I’m talking multiple needles a night, doctor visits every other day, ovaries the size of my head (perhaps slightly hyperbolic, but they were quite large), and a procedure that is cringe-worthily known as “Ovarian Drilling.” Granted, the cost-benefit analysis of all that puts me way on top, as it gave me these little goobers:

"Bro, Mama is not yet ready to lecture us on the dangers of weeds. I'd stop eating that if I were you."

Still, even though it was worth the physical and emotional stress in the end, there are much more—er—pleasant methods of getting pregnant I imagine I’d find preferable to the onslaught of needles, lab coats, and egg excavations I endured.

I could write an entire book on what it’s like living with infertility when you’ve dreamt your entire life of being a mom, but it would be quite long. And depressing. Not unlike its subject matter.  Perhaps glimpses of that point in my life will come up in later blog entries, but for now, suffice it to say that I can’t even begin to imagine how beautiful it must be to GET A BABY by merely HAVING SEX WITH YOUR HUSBAND. Whoa. Mind-blowing stuff here.

Okay, enough with the prattling, woe-is-me, borderline-uncomfortably-personal exposition. Let’s get back to what (or, rather, who) prompted me to start this blog in the first place.

Let’s just call her “Mrs. Fertile,” or “MF,” for short (pardon the serendipitous abbreviation).

It was an unseasonably warm (even for TX) afternoon back in late January, and I’d taken the boys to the playground to get some fresh air and exhaust themselves so they’d pass out later burn off a little energy. The playground was pretty packed. The scads of kids skittering up and over all of the various equipment kind of reminded me of a particularly bad roach infestation we experienced while living in our crap-hole military house in Georgia (aside: Did you know that a group of cockroaches is called an “intrusion”? Apropos, yes?).

But, I digress: I will save my theories on how cockroaches are the sperm of Satan himself, sent to impregnate this world with evil and general repulsiveness, for another time. So, anyway, the playground was pretty saturated with the buzz of human interaction, and it made it rather difficult not to involuntarily listen in on some of the conversations going on between fellow moms.  I was spotting my kids on what I refer to as The Stairway of Death (seriously, the thing is set at like a 70° angle), when I overheard the exchange that put me on such a tirade.

This woman to whom I’ve alluded, MF, was engaged in a conversation with who I can only assume was a second MF, based on the inordinate amount of head-nodding and “Mmhmmm”-ing that I witnessed from the latter. The conversation went more or less like this:

MF 1: “So I already have one born in December, and one in August, so I want this one in April.”

MF 2: “Mmmhhhmmm.”

MF 1: “That way they’ll be spaced exactly four months apart.”

MF 2: Head nod.

MF 1: “Because, really, that’d be the easiest thing to do.”

MF 2: “Mmmhhmmm.”

MF 1: “So I figured we’ll just try to get pregnant in July.”

MF 2: Head nod.

Now, as annoyed (read: jealous?) as I was of this lady’s ability to space the birth of her children out in the most convenient fashion possible, this is not what sent me into a fit of infertile rage. No, what bothered me most was the exasperated sigh that followed, accompanied by MF 1’s utterance of:

“And then we can just be done.”

(This was followed, of course, by an adamant head nod and exuberant “Mmmhmmm!” from MF 2.)

Excuse me, but, “JUST BE DONE”? As in, “Let’s just get it over with”; as in, the proverbial ripped-off Band-Aid? Is there some sort of linear equation out there that I’m unaware of, where x = the months apart your children’s birthdays must be, and y = the total number of offspring you must produce before you can “just be done”? 

To speak of the beautiful blessing of your body’s ability to create LIFE as an obligatory chore is just downright disrespectful. I’m sure not everyone shares my sentiments, but I can think of plenty of women that do, particularly those in my infertility support groups. It can be hard enough for us to be genuinely happy for our friends and family when they announce yet another pregnancy in the midst of our own struggles, and then we have the accompanying guilt to deal with. But to hear someone speak of having a child as a necessary evil? It makes me want to eat one of those squeezy stress balls that are recommended for people with high blood pressure.

I know that I have plenty to be grateful for, that I’m blessed in many ways this lady may not be, and that I’ve probably taken things for granted in my life as well. I’m no saint. I’m not saying this woman doesn’t have a right to feel the way she does, or that she shouldn’t be allowed to talk about those feelings with a friend at the playground. But, in my opinion, it’s kind of akin to delivering a detailed play-by-play of your latest excursion to The Cheesecake Factory in front of a diabetic. Wrong? Not legally. Insensitive? Obviously.

I just wish that people would be a little more cognizant of their surroundings and take into consideration the effect their words might have on others. Granted, I’m probably overreacting a tad and making the whole thing sound worse than it was for entertainment value. But, at the end of the day, hearing someone speak so flippantly about her own ability to have children proved to be a real thorn in my side ovary—another reminder of what I can’t have. It’s still bothering me more than a week later. I know it sounds ungrateful of me, because I have two BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING toddlers, but I can’t even begin to imagine what a miracle it would be to go from “I want a baby” to “I’ll just skip birth control this month” to “BAM! Bun in the oven!”  MIRACLE. Not something to “just be done with.”

So, Super Fertile Moms, if your baby-making ability is something you take for granted, that’s your own—regrettable—business. But please don’t disrespect the privilege of pregnancy at a playground full of kids and fellow parents. Some of us are there trying to enjoy a stress-free playdate with our own—not-conceived-out-of-convenience (or a deluded sense of duty)—children.