There's a blog post floating around Facebook after HuffPost reprinted it, about the stress of being a parent of small children, even while appreciating it after infertility. In the post, he says he's going to write a post soon about infertility, and if you follow the link to the original post, he links to his post about infertility. I'm really happy to see a guy posting about infertility, there's not nearly enough of it.
At the same time, it made me cry, because I'm still struggling with a lot of this, especially the question of hope and despair.
And it also makes me a little mad, because the article on parenting is circulating far and wide, but you know the one about infertility won't. It'll get more views than it otherwise would because of the reposting, but only from people who bother to go to his blog from HuffPost and from there to the infertility post. HuffPost didn't bother to link to it, because really, who cares about infertility out there in the wider world? Not enough people to be worth posting a link for, apparently.
Thanks for posting these. I completely agree with you that a male voice on infertility/loss is often missing. Hence this post is a gem.
ReplyDeleteSo here's my thought: it's our job to start circulating this. If you don't mind, I'm going to repost this and encourage others to do so. It should definitely be posted to Promptly, Twitter and FB too.
I'd also love to hear you expand on this: "At the same time, it made me cry, because I'm still struggling with a lot of this, especially the question of hope and despair."
Absolutely feel free to repost!!
DeleteThe issue of hope and despair has been one that I've struggled with throughout my infertility story. I may do a separate post about it, but basically, to me hope feels as dangerous as juggling swords with no hilts...no matter what, I'm going to end up emotionally sliced and bleeding. Every time I've let myself hope, I've gotten hurt. And now I may have reason to hope again, since I don't know if I'll be infertile with my boyfriend (who has kids), but I'm too scared to hope. Other people hope for me, but for myself, I feel like steady despair and expectation of failure is easier, at least it's not so much of a roller coaster.
One of the curses of infertility is that it teaches us to be afraid to hope. I see this time and again with so many who steal themselves during a cycle or following a BFP. The thing is, blocking out hope doesn't lessen the pain for loss or a failed cycle. That pain is still sharp. Hence it's important to learn how to hope after being hurt so badly. FAR easier said than done (and something I'm still struggling with), but it's worth the work.
DeleteAnd I'd love to see a post.