Faces of ALI: The Unique Hell of Secondary Infertility

If you haven't yet, go read this lovely portrait of Esperanza over at Faces of ALI.  Jjiraffe has the words for this experience so much better laid out than anything I could say.  I'll wait.

---------

In that first paragraph, she points to the VERY popular myth that infertility is because ladies are waiting around for ages before having babies.  In addition to Esperanza's story of young motherhood doesn't magically equal super fertility, I'll chip in mine.  I still have over a year until I'm 30 and we got our most official diagnosis with secondary infertility in the fall of 2010 (the Generic Infertility diagnosis was in the fall of 2008).  Yep, we did exactly what all the "you're infertile because you're so OLD" naysayers recommended and it didn't prevent infertility.  If anything it gave us more years of heartbreak because we believed the lie that because we were young, things would just work out eventually.

Yep, we got super lucky and I'm magically pregnant, but how long would we wait from here to a next child? Secondary infertility is really ugly.

We went to this parenting class last night, and everyone is introducing themselves, and how many children and what ages are they.  We're the only ones with just one (actually there were two other very pregnant ladies, one with an almost 2 year old, one expecting her first) and nobody else had over 4 years between children.  Mostly it was neatly lined up "mine are 6, 4, and 2" and "4 and 1" and all these shiny, happy, outwardly simple to achieve families (and while one family has triplets, I didn't get to ask the ART question, and I'm not sure I would have anyway).

It stings. I was glad to hear that it's unpleasant for the spouse too, and I don't think I'd have cried (gah twice) unless I were under the influence of lots of hormones, but it will always hurt some.  It hurts to have your reality assaulted and completely altered by circumstances beyond your control.

Here's the other stuff I've written about secondary infertility, just for reference (and my reference!).  I'll seriously consider those tag deals some day (labels here in blogger-land?).