Anger
In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb
I ran into an acquaintance today who some time ago took to asking once a month when K and I would have children. The intent was innocent enough—It always is—, and at the time it was easy enough to rebuff. “Soon,” I’d say, and it was true enough. Kids were in the works, we thought; we could risk such hints.
In the year it has been since I last saw her, indeed, in just the past month, that hint of “Soon,” became an empty or at least very expensive promise. Of course she asked.
I smiled. “No, none yet,” and turned the conversation to her own kids, to the goings-on at her church, to anything else. Soon, I said goodbye.
I was seething. Not at her, but at the wild unfairness of her question. How normal it is to assume the inevitability of children! How natural it is to believe that, with a little sexing up, babies are destiny! I have a 22-year-old cousin who to this day swears that her second child was conceived because birth control just didn’t work. Her husband, who at 22 was a father of three and hardly more mature than his oldest son, routinely asks us why we don’t have kids yet. He has never known anything but fecundity. That’s why he never imagines that knocking a girl up might take more than a single lay. And everyone assumes that’s the truth of the matter. Fertility is the default setting of biology.
In short, I seethed because her question reminded me how far removed from natural assumptions I am.
