(This is not me on the cover!) I'm going to contradict myself within this post. Let me explain. Just call me Dr. Jekyll/Mrs. Hyde, (or Dr. Gonal/Mrs. Screwed-Up-Insides), though I don't know which side is my secret self and which one is my "putting my infertility out there self."
For some reason, I've kept my profile private on my blog, not disclosing my identity. Originally, that was because when I started my blog, it was following our journey of working with a gestational carrier and we only told a few people about the fact that we were doing that. As many of my fellow infertiles can attest, we didn't want to have to give daily updates to friends and family following her progress (or lack thereof).
Flash forward a bit. Our trial with our "Nest" didn't work, and yet I remained anonymous.
In the meantime, I agreed to do an interview with a local magazine reporter about my quest to find the lighter side of infertility and how writing about it has been cathartic. The article came out this month, and I'm officially the face of infertility for Indianapolis. No hiding it anymore!
All in all, I was pretty pleased with how the article turned out. The irony of the whole thing is that the article just below my "INFERTILITY" header, is about, of course, "HEALTHY PREGNANCY". I showed my grandmother the magazine, and she only saw my photo and the word pregnancy and, bless her sweet heart, she thought it was my way of telling her I was pregnant.
I just laughed and said, "No grandmother. My article is the one on infertility." She smiled and said, "Oh that's right dear, you can't have babies."
I totally understand what you are talking about. I entered a love story competition and won and had mentioned about our quest to have children. As the winners, We were invited to be special guests by our local tv station and the story was read on air. I thought well there is no hiding this now, our story is out there. We were also pregnant and sadly lost the baby 2 months after. Can you imagine, everyone knew we were having infertility issues and was finally pregnant then only to lose this baby.
ReplyDeleteI was glad the opportunity came to migrate and that I did.
It was ofcourse a very difficult time.
Gotta love the kindly words of grandmothers. : )
ReplyDeleteI could never show my face in regtards to IF. I'm a closeted IVFer. Some close friends and all my family know about IF, but not the general public. I just couldn't do it. More power to you for being open about it.
Wow! How very brave of you to come forward like that and tell of your struggles in the magazine. I admire the courage that took. Sorry that your grandother misunderstood!
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Kudos to you for coming out the closet :) We need more ppl like us so that we don't feel like such freaks in the world!
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(ICLW)
That must have took alot of courage to do what you did ! How has it been for you since you did that ?
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IF is nothing to be ashamed of and yet we still can feel that way. So if can stand up proudly and let other women and men know that they are not alone, then bravo to you!
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