I had a brief thought during dinner with some wonderful friends tonight about the injustice of fertility testing – how men get the fun part of that equation and women are subjected to the poking, probing and prodding, needle sticks and sometimes surgical interventions. Just doesn’t seem right.
I must be hormonal (self-created, not from any biologic or synthetic additives to my system. Remember, I’m sitting this cycle out. Instead, our Nest is dealing with that stuff.). While I’m on the topic, and now feel like ranting a bit, there are other injustices throughout the infertility journey. Probably the biggest one is the injustice of responsible people wanting a child and not being able to conceive one when there are plenty of drug addicts (and I don’t mean those of use who start going into a withdrawal without our fertility medications), deadbeats and other not-fit-for-owning-a-fish-let-alone-a-child mamas and papas out there who seem to get pregnant without even trying.
There’s also the injustice of the financial burden put on most of fertility-challenged females. Very few insurance companies will cover even one iota of fertility testing or treatments, but most will cover drug addicts, smokers and others with health issues that are self-inflicted versus those of us who can’t do anything to control our lack of procreation. Many insurance agencies will even cover abortion surgeries – so they’ll cover the expiration of a child, but not the conception, but that’s as much as I’ll say on that volatile subject.
I know there are others, but my brain is fried. I’m really not that bitter about this stuff because I’ve lived with it for the last five years and it’s just part of our daily life, but sometimes it’s good to get that off my not-engorged-from-being-pregnant chest.
IF sucks balls. No doubt about it.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. It's so funny because when we were interviewed by the social worker at the fertility clinic (part of the standard hoops to jump through for a surrogacy arrangement), some of the questions were clearly aimed at making sure we'd be good parents. That was so irritating - there are all these people who do not even want to be parents, and aren't fit to be parents, and here we were being evaluated when we would be the most grateful, loving parents, except that we require the help of a surrogate?! So frustrating! So I totally hear you.
ReplyDeleteI know. Should've added that important nugget to the posting. It's funny how you "forget" some of that stuff so easily, yet at the time you're going through it, it's so frustrating and seems so unnecessary. After all of our adoption home studies and the requisite counseling session to move forward with our gestational carrier (as well as physical checks, too), we could probably enter the FBI.
ReplyDeleteI remember feeling like so much autonomy and control were already taken away from us..now some social worker could decide whether it was the "right time" for us? I was so angry about that..a friend mentioned whether he thought it was the right time and I told him to remember that the next time he was in bed with his fertile wife :)
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