A Celebration of Who I’ve Become

By Carrie Carriere

Winter 2007

It’s been 655 days since my husband and I “decided” to go ahead and have a baby. I remember it well because we had just come home from a family reunion at Thanksgiving where there were babies and expectant mothers everywhere. We were on the outside looking in.

 

The “decision” was a clear one. After a couple of years making sure we were financially and emotionally ready, we decided to give it a go. I remember struggling with the notion that my career might be jeopardized if we got pregnant too soon, or I might not climb the ladder as quickly as I wanted to. I thought about all the things I might miss out on along with all the things I could gain; experiencing a pregnancy, motherhood, the chance to have a little guy who looks just like my husband… a little version of him running around.

 

Having made our “decision”, we expected to have a Christmas announcement later that year.

 

We are fast approaching our third Christmas since that decision, and still no present.

 

I spent the first year of our efforts tracking my cycles, eating as healthy as possible and religiously taking my folic acid. I spent more money on ovulation and pregnancy tests than I did on hair cuts and makeup. I tried a naturopath, an acupuncturist and I took yoga for relaxation. I worked out more, I worked out less, trying to optimize my fertility. I relaxed (because that is what everyone told me to do) and I blamed myself for not timing our cycles right. I tried everything I could try to help us in our struggle and when that didn’t work, I blamed myself some more.

 

Then we received the results of my husband’s semen analysis… and everything changed. After the initial shock of this tragedy, I was flooded with overwhelming relief. Relief because I could stop blaming myself, relief because we knew what was wrong and relief because we could get some help and move on.

 

After the results of my husband’s test, we were referred to a fertility specialist right away. The counts were so low that even if another sample was analyzed, the averages between the two would still be off the radar. That is when we began our waiting game.

 

We waited months to get in with the specialist. We waited hours in his office while he ran late. Our tests took time; because of the demand, and at the mercy of my cycles. After almost a year of waiting, we finally got our news.

 

During this period of waiting I drove my husband crazy at times. We all know that men and women deal with things differently, and I wanted to talk about our problem all the time. I wanted him to hold me when I cried. I wanted him to listen, to analyze with me, and to take care of all my needs. I wanted him to be Superman. I forgot about the fact he might feel helpless because he can’t control his own body. I forgot that he might be blaming himself for our despair. I even forgot that he could be affected at all, because he didn’t show it the way I did.

 

They say infertility has a way of either driving couples apart or bringing them together. It can go both ways and I truly believe it depends on how you approach the situation. At some point in our insanity I had the realization that I needed to talk with someone other than my husband. I needed someone who could listen and understand (because quite frankly none of my girlfriends did). Sure they tried, but they could not truly comprehend how I was feeling or how to help me.

 

So I found a support group. I remember stumbling across the IAAC site when I was browsing the web and found a contact email for a support group in my area. I remember my email quite clearly, because it was a desperate one. I was at the end of my rope and didn’t know what else to do. Fortunately, the lady at the other end did.

 

What I found in the support group was not a structured group of individuals all competing for the “saddest story”. I did not find a group of people who tried to give advice and tell you what to do either. There was no judgment of my choices, because they all realized that these are very personal ones.

 

I found caring individuals who understood and actually cared about how I was doing. The women I communicated with became friends – sharing things that I could not share with others. They showed me the positive side of this struggle and taught me more about perseverance and compassion than I could ever have imagined. I found strength in others that I did not know existed.

 

I saw sadness, but I saw more hope and faith than could be fathomed. And somewhere in the process, I saw myself passing on this hope, passing on this faith and passing on this compassion. And in doing so, I found strength in myself to carry on. And the relationship between my husband and I grew closer.

 

I remember the days before our struggle, when I looked at couples, knowing they were having problems getting pregnant and thought “that’s too bad”. Then I carried on my day without another thought. Part of it probably came from the secrecy of the whole thing. People don’t talk about their struggles as they should. 1 in 6 couples struggle with infertility. Can you find them? I had no idea how much sadness and loss I would feel from that one little word… infertility. They say depression rates among women experiencing infertility are as high as those diagnosed with cancer. I can understand this, because I’ve been there.

 

It’s hard to comprehend why we must go through something as heart wrenching as this. We are good people, we don’t deserve this. Nobody does. It would be so easy just to throw our hands in the air and blame the world, blame each other and blame God. It would be so easy just to give up.

 

But we’re not like that, we trudge on. We endure the embarrassment, the invasive tests, the painful procedures and everything else we put ourselves through. We try, we fail, and we try again. Each month we mourn for a dream that is lost. A dream of having something that we once thought would be so easy.

 

So what is the point? Why do we have to experience this at all?

 

Aside from everything I’ve already mentioned… because if it isn’t this, it would be something else. Which brings us back to compassion; understanding that every human being goes through heartache. Because in order to get where we need to be, we need to go through some rocky roads. You can’t write a love song if you’ve never had a broken heart.

 

Faith and trust go hand and hand. You need to trust that you are where you are supposed to be, right here, right now. You need to have faith that you are not going to go through more than you can endure, and that your strength, and God’s, is going to carry you through. You need to understand that even if you’re here a short while, you can do something to make it all worthwhile. You can encourage and support the rest of us that are going through the same thing. We will all move past our infertility. It may never go away completely, but we all move on. We might as well make our time spent here count for something.

 

My husband and I recently found out that he has a chromosomal translocation – which means our infertility is genetic. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it. This also means that our chances of ever achieving a healthy pregnancy together, even through the most advanced assisted reproduction, are minimal. The risk of passing on a genetic problem to our child is increased and our odds of carrying to term would be low. The chances of success are not worth the money spent.

 

We are at a crossroads of finding out what our path should be, and we have to trust in God that his guidance will bring us to where we are headed. Our child is out there - we’ll find him.

 

At this point, we have all realized that society does not teach us everything we need to know. We’ve all grown up being told that we will be mothers or fathers, and we’ve all been told how that should happen. We also all know that this is not always set in stone and some of us just don’t follow the rules.

 

Faith and hope keep us going; our minds take us to where we need to be. Disregard everything you’ve been told. When one door closes, look for the one that’s open. Who says things have to happen in a certain way? Who says one way is the only way? And whose business is it, but yours and God’s?

 

If nothing else, this journey should teach you to think; to solve problems, to assess yourself and to trust your beliefs. And at the end of the day, because of faith, hope and a lot of strength, you’ll end up right where you were supposed to, with a new dream… a better dream.

 

My husband and I are taking a risk. We’ve decided to think outside the box. Our dream of having a baby, and a family, will come true… and so can yours.

 

Carrie and her husband are experiencing "male factor infertility" and are currently undergoing fertility treatments. Carrie is the contact for the Edmonton IAAC support group and believes that infertility is something you should not have to go through alone. Carrie works in the bio-detection field as a Project Manager and lives by Edmonton with her husband and little dog Denali. Carrie can be contacted at Carrie.iaac@gmail.com.