Listen Up! Infertility Doesn't Just Affect Women

This post during NIAW is written from my husband's perspective. Even though he is biologically "fine," infertility affects him as it does me. This is his essay he wrote for a grant we applied for. As you can see, while I am the more serious one, he definitely brings laughter into my life. He has been my rock over the past several years and has kept me sane. He's reminded me that it is still ok to laugh.

 My path to attempted parenthood started off similar to others, and for the same reasons.  Lara and I had been talking about having kids ever since I got out of the Navy and had a regular work schedule.  Our family includes two goofy and sweet dogs, but I always wanted to add children to the mix.  Every time we visited our nieces and nephews, after holding and playing with them, I always felt longing and wishing that we could have children of our own.  But since we made the decision to start trying, we could never figure out Lara’s ovulation cycles. 

“Wait, ok,” she would say while hovering over a calendar, “I ovulated last time two days early, which altered the ovulation moving average to 3.567 weeks, but my basal temperature hasn’t changed just yet so that means I’m a day late, which means I should be ovulating…let’s see…tomorrow?!”  I’d scratch my head at the charts and graphs she had sprawled out across our kitchen, not to mention the kooky equations she was using. “Why not worry? We could just try every single day!” I added with a smile.  The face melting look I got told me that my suggestion was not a viable option.

Despite repeated attempts to predict Lara’s ovulation cycle (and a chicken bone necklace on my part), we sensed something was amiss, but couldn’t really determine what it was.  Lara would watch television, and a generic nuclear family with 1.5 kids and a baby would be featured.  Lara would look at it wistfully and sigh, “I wish I had a bun in the oven.” Because I am a proud male descendant of Neanderthals, I am completely oblivious to subtlety and remarked, “Oh, buns are gross. I prefer biscuits.”

It wasn’t until I was in bed, after hours spent puzzling as to why Lara pelted me with pillows, that it hit me: “By golly, you were talking about wanting a child!”

So after months of trying, our gynecologist finally gave us a referral to a fertility specialist who officially diagnosed Lara with polycystic ovarian syndrome.  “What does this mean?” I asked. “It means it’ll be difficult for us to get pregnant.”

I was devastated. Did this mean we’d have to resort to dressing the dogs up in baby clothes? Who would I tell my awesome dad jokes to? “Stop being so dramatic,” Lara replied. “It means we’ll have to start seeing the fertility doctor to check if I’m ovulating regularly.”

As it turns out, Lara was not. Despite my chicken bone necklace, we’ve had to resort to hormone therapy with no success.  After the fifth round of therapy and numerous test, we’re slowly starting to come to the realization that we may have to resort to IUI or IVF as the end point, as well as paying for a majority of the costs out of pocket.  But as I explained to Lara, my view is that it’s just one more hoop to jump through to have a kid and totally worth it.

As most of you know, we've decided to skip IUI and to try for our first IVF round, hopefully soon! And as my husband says, whatever hoops we have to jump through, we will, because in the end, having a baby will be worth all the hoop-jumping in the world.