Infertility is a still a dirty word, a condition, which in many minds, can simply be cured by an expensive vacation or a bottle of the nicest Bordeaux. Those of us afflicted need to either relax or move on, consider adoption or understand that perhaps we weren't meant to have children.
We're sequestered to the back of the disease bus. It's not cancer or a missing limb, you can't see it unless you look me in the eye and realize how much it's taken away from me and you don't do that often. "Just have sex!" you spout and wink, "Practice makes perfect!" Practice gave a rash and didn't serve to make anything but frustration and heartache.
In 2003, mere months after our wedding, my husband and I set out to make a baby. We were in love, we were sexually active and we were willing to take on the responsibility of being parents to a tiny human or two. Armed with nothing but our brand new bed and endless hours to try we practiced. And practiced.
Six months later I started reading everything I could about how to get pregnant and I joined an infertility group online. Taking their advice next up were calendars, counting and my purchase of a fancy new thermometer to chart my cycles and changes in my basal temperature. So sexy right?
I didn't buy any new lingerie from Victoria's Secret or high heeled shoes to procreate. Instead I made endless appointments for Reiki, acupuncture and sessions with specialists from gynecologists to endocrinologists. I brewed Raspberry Tea, took Clomid and switched my husband to boxer shorts; I cried and rallied against the universe with every failed cycle until I felt the loss of my innocence and the joy in our sex life seep out of me. Our bedroom had become a battle ground; both of us suited and ready to wage war on our incredibly shitty luck. We tried vacation sex in beautiful hotels in Aruba and St. Maarten, we had angry sex with tears streaming down our faces, we tried to be romantic and spontaneous and we even had sex when it would be impossible for us to get pregnant that month teasing and tempting fate. But nothing worked. Our sex life had become little more than a contrived production that produced nothing.
One year turned into two, then three and four. Our friends announced pregnancies and my knees would go weak as if someone had punched me in the center of my chest. By then our intimate moments had been relegated to chaste kisses and orders to hold off until collection days or firm directions for when and where we could get busy.
John and I became pawns in a huge chess game. Unexplained infertility meant we couldn't blame one other and so we did the only thing we could. We held hands, we tried to smile through tears and we promised each other that this disease wouldn't steal our love or marriage from us.
Finally we turned to reproductive endocrinologists and began our first in-vitro cycle. Needles replaced oral medicines and again we were knee deep in daily appointments for blood draws and ultrasounds. Six weeks later a positive test and then another pushed us to happy disbelief and elated tears. We were pregnant! With twins! The irony of course being that the birds and bees way of making a baby hadn't been used at all. Our babies were miracles of modern science but not the result of good ol' fashioned sex.
My pregnancy proved so fragile and tenuous that we never found a comfortable, fun place where we could enjoy it. Like survivors on a lifeboat we clung to each other but we were terrified to tempt fate with any intimate affection. Then at 24 weeks strong contractions sent me to the hospital and bed rest was prescribed for the remainder of it. I remember the last thing the doctor said to me as he signed my release papers with instructions to go home and sit, "No sex. Absolutely none."
I laughed as I reminded him that we hadn't had sex in a very long time by then but he repeated himself and we nodded ready at that moment to trade anything with no thought of the consequence. On January 8, 2008, our twin boys arrived, five weeks early but alive and healthy. We smiled over their tiny heads whispering, "We did it!"
But from that moment on our sex life was never the same. Infertility ended up being a cruel barter, handing us the happy chance to be parents with one hand while snatching the joy of passionate lovers from us with the other, left to wonder if the cost will always haunt us.
