Infertility Awareness Week (*Day#1)

Today marks the beginning of National Infertility Awareness week. I figured, I would start with some facts…

Interesting Fact about Me: I am 95% Infertile. This is per an HSG done in January.

Did You Know? Infertility affects 7.3 million people in the U.S. This figure represents 12% of women of childbearing age, or 1 in 8 couples. (2002 National Survey of Family Growth)

A couple ages 29-33 with a normal functioning reproductive system has only a 20-25% chance of conceiving in any given month (National Women’s Health Resource Center).

After six months of trying, 60% of couples will conceive without medical assistance. (Infertility As A Covered Benefit, William M. Mercer, 1997)

Knowing That, Infertility is something that is extremely hard to deal with, physically (with the poking and prodding and monitoring, and high risk doctors visits, and the charting and much more) but especially mentally and emotionally (Because each month you get your hope… that small little itty bit that you just may be pregnant, and then aunt flow comes… and that’s just the tiniest bit of the mental and emotional).

You honestly feel like you are broken because your body doesn’t do the most basic function it was designed to do. I feel broken, all the time. Like I’m less of a woman because my body cannot do what it was designed to do. It cannot conceive a child, and carry it to term, without interventions of medical staff, and even then, that cannot guarantee it.

It’s so hard for me to grasp how my daughter, Gabriella, was conceived at a time in my life where I was not trying for a child, used all the protection methods possible, had just experienced months before the loss of my stillborn and then the moment I want a child, I simply cannot.

It makes me love every moment with my daughter more, and consider myself lucky that I have her, and cherish every moment with her, and love her more than life, but that DOES NOT and CAN NOT take the place of the void… the hole in my heart that I feel knowing that she cannot have siblings … knowing how hard it is… knowing what I’m up against, and what I face…

I get angry with God at times. I get angry with myself. I get asked by many “Why are you still trying after so many losses” How many losses to be exact, I’ve lost 5. 6 if you count the chemical and 7 if you count my stillborn. 7 used to me my lucky number, not so much anymore.

It is so incredibly hard to go through the disappointment and heartache and depression month after month, year after year, to get something that should be so easy.

You feel like you would do anything in your power and go through anything to get that miracle that comes so easily to most people, or as I like to call them “fertile mertiles”.

This is the face of infertility, and it hurts so much to have to struggle through it. To feel broken, and to feel alone in your struggle for something you want so badly, something you would do anything in your power, even die for, to have…

Lets Not SILENCE infertility anymore, and raise awareness of this disease. It is such an emotionally, mentally, physically, financially and mentally bearing disease that affects BOTH men and woman alike.