Labelmaker

Infertile (adj): Not fertile; unproductive; barren

Barren (adj): fruitless; destitute; bereft; lacking

Such ugly words, right? For months, I've done everything possible to avoid applying those labels to us.  That's why I want to write about this here, rather than on my 'real' blog.  We (and by "we", I mean me) have told only a handful of people that we are actively TTC: my parents; my sisters; a friend who has three IVF children; a friend who's currently going through IUI.

At first, we kept it a secret because we wanted it to be a surprise. We'd been married several years, completed grad school, established careers, built a home. It was time. We were one of the few couples without kids and I hoped we'd quickly join the ranks. Imagine everyone's shock and elation when we announced!  No one would see it coming.

But the months passed, and there was nothing. And now I kept quiet because I didn't know what was going on. Was it me? Was it him? He wasn't quite ready to spend the big bucks to figure it out. He also wasn't the one crawling all over the internet, worried about how many months it had been and what that could possibly mean.

Soon we'd been trying more months that we had fingers left to count. Announcements came left and right, new babies at a rate of at least one a month. We are now the only friends left from college without at least one. Some have two or three. One even has six.  

And now I keep quiet because I don't want everyone to know.  I don't want to be labeled. Different. Unproductive. Barren. Bereft. Lacking.  

 

Infertile.