I am trying hard not to call myself infertile until I no longer have oocytes in my ovaries or a uterus in my body. As a sub-fertile doula in Jacksonville I have found several similarities in the journeys of pregnant women and infertile women.
The answers they seek are rarely answered definitively. Their experiences are completely unique and there are no two women with the same exact experience. The end of their journeys’ lead to change.
Expecting couples often engage their doulas (what is a doula?) in discussion that includes unanswerable questions. I don’t know of any doula in Jacksonville that can definitively predict what day and time your child will be born. When a birthing women’s partner wants the doula to give them an itinerary for exactly how labor will progress (so he/she can plan accordingly) the doula can share story after story and educate the couple on the stages of labor, but she has to explain that every birth is different and there is no way to predict exactly what will happen. I would LOVE to give my clients definitive answers to every question they ask, but I cannot tell a Mom that she will be one of the “lucky ones” who has a short 4 hour pain-free labor or that she WILL be completely dilated by lunch time.
Couples struggling with fertility issues often ask their Reproductive Endocrinologists (RE) what it will take to get pregnant. RE’s are great at spouting off statistics and explaining the different test results, but they cannot tell a couple “you will get pregnant”. There isn’t a way to know if you will get pregnant with your first IUI or your fifth round of IVF. The question of “will we be able to parent our biological children” cannot be answered until you achieve pregnancy (and I know firsthand pregnancy does not equal getting to parent a living child).
The local (Jacksonville & St. Augustine) doulas I know have all shared many birth stories with me, and I have yet to hear of two births that were exactly the same. One of the benefits of being a doula is that our job is always different. We may only get to use our “doula bits” a few times a year. At some births our role might be to help dad support mom at another birth we way end up wearing the hat of “family peace keeper”, and at others we might be the primary support for mom. Our role (always within our DONA Scope of Practice, which is a whole other blog entry) is always different.
Every couple I have talked to that experienced sub-fertility has a different story. Most couples experienced similar testing, but once the results are in there are many different treatment options. Some women will become pregnant after swallowing a few Clomid pills and having timed intercourse, others try more advanced treatment cycles when the Clomid doesn’t work. Then you have me: I won’t bore you with our whole story today, but we went straight to injectable IUI cycles after I had surgery. The first IUI worked, but sadly we lost the baby (miscarriage). We had genetic testing done on the baby which led us down a crazy 6 month long side street. Now after trying several more IUI’s and an IVF cycle, we have started our adoption journey.
When a woman gives birth her entire life changes; she is now responsible for a living breathing little human. She sacrifices for her little bundle of joy and puts all her energy in to giving her little one the best life has to offer.
Similarly when a woman comes to the end of her struggle to conceive she is changed. Not every journey ends with a pregnancy, or adoption. Some couples run out of money and or hope and end up living childless (not by choice). However their fertility journey ends, they no longer see the world the same. Many who end the journey harbor feelings of anger and jealousy towards “fertile Myrtles” and somehow feel like they are not “whole women”.
My heart goes out to those who can’t see past the hurt, jealousy and anger of infertility! (I had my days when those emotions raged within me, before my heart was healed.) I feel the need to educate the fertile Myrtles on how to tenderly and compassionately reach out to their infertile sisters. We are all women, we all have love with in us to give, we just don’t all end up with babies of our own to love. I sometimes wish we could go back to more simple time in history when all the women went off to the Red Tenttogether once a month and cared for each other through infertility, pregnancy, childbirth and child loss. In those days the women who didn’t have their own children spent their time loving on all the babies in their tent. I know this sub-fertile doula treasures every moment I share loving on other women's’ children.
Hillary Berger is a birth doula in Jacksonville, FL and is a part of the Doulananda Birth Services doula group. See Hillary’s Bio.
The answers they seek are rarely answered definitively. Their experiences are completely unique and there are no two women with the same exact experience. The end of their journeys’ lead to change.
Expecting couples often engage their doulas (what is a doula?) in discussion that includes unanswerable questions. I don’t know of any doula in Jacksonville that can definitively predict what day and time your child will be born. When a birthing women’s partner wants the doula to give them an itinerary for exactly how labor will progress (so he/she can plan accordingly) the doula can share story after story and educate the couple on the stages of labor, but she has to explain that every birth is different and there is no way to predict exactly what will happen. I would LOVE to give my clients definitive answers to every question they ask, but I cannot tell a Mom that she will be one of the “lucky ones” who has a short 4 hour pain-free labor or that she WILL be completely dilated by lunch time.
Couples struggling with fertility issues often ask their Reproductive Endocrinologists (RE) what it will take to get pregnant. RE’s are great at spouting off statistics and explaining the different test results, but they cannot tell a couple “you will get pregnant”. There isn’t a way to know if you will get pregnant with your first IUI or your fifth round of IVF. The question of “will we be able to parent our biological children” cannot be answered until you achieve pregnancy (and I know firsthand pregnancy does not equal getting to parent a living child).
The local (Jacksonville & St. Augustine) doulas I know have all shared many birth stories with me, and I have yet to hear of two births that were exactly the same. One of the benefits of being a doula is that our job is always different. We may only get to use our “doula bits” a few times a year. At some births our role might be to help dad support mom at another birth we way end up wearing the hat of “family peace keeper”, and at others we might be the primary support for mom. Our role (always within our DONA Scope of Practice, which is a whole other blog entry) is always different.
Every couple I have talked to that experienced sub-fertility has a different story. Most couples experienced similar testing, but once the results are in there are many different treatment options. Some women will become pregnant after swallowing a few Clomid pills and having timed intercourse, others try more advanced treatment cycles when the Clomid doesn’t work. Then you have me: I won’t bore you with our whole story today, but we went straight to injectable IUI cycles after I had surgery. The first IUI worked, but sadly we lost the baby (miscarriage). We had genetic testing done on the baby which led us down a crazy 6 month long side street. Now after trying several more IUI’s and an IVF cycle, we have started our adoption journey.
When a woman gives birth her entire life changes; she is now responsible for a living breathing little human. She sacrifices for her little bundle of joy and puts all her energy in to giving her little one the best life has to offer.
Similarly when a woman comes to the end of her struggle to conceive she is changed. Not every journey ends with a pregnancy, or adoption. Some couples run out of money and or hope and end up living childless (not by choice). However their fertility journey ends, they no longer see the world the same. Many who end the journey harbor feelings of anger and jealousy towards “fertile Myrtles” and somehow feel like they are not “whole women”.
My heart goes out to those who can’t see past the hurt, jealousy and anger of infertility! (I had my days when those emotions raged within me, before my heart was healed.) I feel the need to educate the fertile Myrtles on how to tenderly and compassionately reach out to their infertile sisters. We are all women, we all have love with in us to give, we just don’t all end up with babies of our own to love. I sometimes wish we could go back to more simple time in history when all the women went off to the Red Tenttogether once a month and cared for each other through infertility, pregnancy, childbirth and child loss. In those days the women who didn’t have their own children spent their time loving on all the babies in their tent. I know this sub-fertile doula treasures every moment I share loving on other women's’ children.
Hillary Berger is a birth doula in Jacksonville, FL and is a part of the Doulananda Birth Services doula group. See Hillary’s Bio.
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