This year's National Infertility Awareness Week is making me feel introspective and reflective. It's probably due to my change in circumstances. Baby Boy is napping next to me. He is almost a year old and brings us such joy. He has changed our lives in small and profound ways, and thinking of not having him makes me catch my breath and feel sick. I've always felt like getting to this point was like climbing a huge mountain-uphill journey all the way. Now that I'm at the top, I feel like there is a sheer drop off just on the other side. And that has inspired my What If.
What if I lived in a time when we didn't have this knowledge about fertility and treatment options? What if I lived 100, 50, heck even 10-20 years earlier? I would have had few or no options. If I had lived 100 years ago, Husband and I would be one of those childless couples who know only that they apparently cannot have children. More recently, I might know what our specific problems were but have no treatment options. I feel so fortunate to live in a state and country and age in which there are options. That allowed us to pursue gestational surrogacy and will hopefully allow us to pursue it again in a few years. The thought of being prevented from having my sweet boy due to being born in an earlier age when medical knowledge was lacking and treatment options non-existant sends chills down my spine.
And what if women in the future never had to worry about treatment options because success rates were higher and legislation didn't get in the way of family building? We've come a long way in short period of time, and my hope is that future generations of women can look back at our time and shake their heads, grateful not to be living in such a "primitive" time medically.
That's my What If.
Yesterday I donated my leftover meds to my old clinic. I had hoped to be able to give them to someone who was cycling because blogger Samantha had done the same for me when we were cycling, and I hoped to be able to pay it forward, but I don't know anyone cycling right now. It made me feel good to donate them, though. Hopefully someone will be able to use them.
http://www.resolve.org/infertility-overview/what-is-infertility/
http://www.resolve.org/takecharge
5 comments:
Thanks for posting this. I too feel so fortunate to live in a time when medicine was able to help us build our family. My husband's own parents, who adopted him after failing to get pregnant for 7 years, had no medical options at the time. It was so nice of you to donate your meds - I hope they help bring someone their much wanted child.
I can't believe your son is almost a year old either - the past year has been such a blur!
Thank goodness for the medical times we live in! Our table of NC Bloggers is testament to that--we are fortunate, indeed.
Glad you were able to donate your meds!
A great post. I think about this too - What If I lived in a different time, when we didn't have the options of today....
I think about this "what if" all the time, wondering what options I might have had twenty or more years ago. It's baffling to think of the developments of even the last few years. I was watching a program about IVF that was filmed in 2003, and it was astonishing to see the differences that even just these few years have made. Incredible.
I cannot believe D is almost a year old! Wow! Time flies, doesn't it!
I totally think about that too. I do a lot of genealogy research (personal hobby!) and when I come across siblings of ancestors without kids I always wonder what they went through...and know that would have been me.
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