I have a friend at work that is the same age as me. She is single and is currently living at home. She has an on again off again boyfriend (who is sort of in a relationship – very long story) and she doesn’t see the prospect of getting married any time soon.
We were talking about my infertility quite a while ago and something she said has stuck with me. I said something about the fact that I never imagined that something I want so much is something that my body won’t give me. I said also that I had never pictured my life without having children. You know how it was just something on the list of things that would just naturally happen for me. Kind of like, I don’t know, getting boobs or having my first period.
She said to me that she feels the same way about having the “chance” to have a child. Her ideal (like a lot of us) is to find the man she loves, get married and then have children. She’s 38 years old and hasn’t really even found the man she loves. There’s no physical reason (that she knows of) that she can’t have children. It’s just life that has happened to her.
What do you think is worse – infertility or simply having to deal with life’s whims. It seems pretty similar to me. I think that we forget about the women who go silently through life, focus on their careers while their fertile years slip by without a stable companion in their lives. Or simply, without the money to have a child on their own.
I realize now that our silent sisterhood is a lot larger than I realized at first glance. There are more reasons than just the physical for us to be pasting the smiles on our faces and soldiering on.
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4 comments:
I still feel like infertility trumps the rest of it, because we have made the effort to find our life partners and are thwarted in our very real and energetic attempts to have a baby.
If I'd made it to 38 without managing to meet the man of my dreams, and I really wanted children, I think I'd find a way to make it happen. I'd either put a lot of effort into dating (which I would have hated to have to do, since I'm shy and never really dated much), or I'd have made the decision to become a single parent by choice, and would have gone out looking for donor sperm.
Either reason for not having your dreams come true is certainly awful though.
I agree with what Kate has said 100%. Couldn't have said it better.
Sometimes, life does just happen. For me, I would not want to have a child without a partner. The first order of things was to get married, and that was hard enough for me. When you are in your late 30's and haven't found your mate yet, that's just life happening. You never know what is going to happen. Luckily, we have lots of technology now that can change infertility brought on by advanced age. Like my friend who got married at 49 and is now pregnant with twins via DE. She was told she was too old to adopt (an infant), so DE was a no-brainer for her.
I consider your friend to be infertile by situation. I would almost rather have had the chance to conceive a child and failed than to not even had the chance at all.
These situations are always hard to compare though. It is all about our own perceptions, hopes, and dreams that we have for our lives.
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