Infertility Myth: You waited Too Long

Whenever this sentence in it’s many forms was thrown at me in an online forum, I gave a hearty laugh. If they only knew. In real life outside the Internet, no one would ever say or think this. Not at the beginning. Or even the end. Because let’s face it, statistically most 45 year old women are more fertile than I have ever been.

I was 23 years old when my husband and I started trying to conceive. He was 22. Yep, boy oh boy were we old! Surely too geriatric to be starting a family! Although, by the time I reached 25 I felt old. By that point the knowledge of my infertility had been with me for 10 years.

There is something funny about infertility. It makes people uneasy. Most of us “infertiles” look perfectly healthy. And maybe that is the rub. We don’t look disordered. At least when you look ill, people might actually believe you when you meekly offer infertility for the reason you don’t have children. Or not enough children. Or had them outside whatever tiny life-window society deems acceptable. When you obviously look fine, people do not think twice about asking. Never aware their words are painfully plucking on your heart strings.

On online forums I was the target of vitriolic posters claiming I was jealous of their youth and fertility.

*They were half right.*

In reality I was several years younger than most of them. But people don’t think of that. When they think “infertile” they see a woman in her mid to late 40’s fighting against the clock and aging eggs.

In the real world outside of the internet, people shook their heads and brushed off my concerns, diagnoses, and reality.

I went to a GP for a checkup and brought up my concerns.
I was 25 at the time.
I was young.
I was healthy.
I was the right weight.
I ate the “right” foods.
I had not had a single period in two years.I obviously was not ovulating. She told me I must be mistaken (love those silly invisible periods!) and suggested charting my basal body temperature. I didn’t see how charting cycles I didn’t even have was going to help, but I did it anyway. It didn’t prove useful until I found another obgyn and showed her my three years worth of annovulatory charts. You don’t need to be 48 years old to have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. You can be 10, 12, 20, 30, 40 and every age in between. In fact 1 in 10 women are likely to have some form of PCOS. PCOS often comes with other health issues including diabetes and thyroid disease. You don’t need to be overweight with PCOS. Sixty percent of women with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome are a healthy or “normal” weight.

I have been active in the infertility community for many years. It took me over six years to get pregnant and seven to have my first child. I met hundreds of wonderful women during that time. We shared intimate details about our lives and relationships. We supported each other during losses and ART failures.

A large number of us were under 30. Or at least we were when we started our conception journeys. Maybe there were so many of us youngsters drawn together because we couldn’t get the support we needed in our regular lives. And sometimes even in our virtual lives.

Even in the infertility community, there are occasional rifts and quarrels between the age groups. We all have specific hardships. There is definitely age discrimination in the infertility community. I have been on both ends. I see both sides. Obviously, the older women in the community see the younger members as having more time to figure it all out. To discover underlying issues, and treat them. More time can mean a more relaxed approach to treatment. And on the young end, the worry is : If I am this infertile at 25, it is only going to get harder. It will be impossible in my 30’s and 40’s. I am already running out of time.

“Too young to be infertile” is an infuriating phrase. Tell that to my decrepit ovaries. The ovaries that have been this way since I was 15. And yet, I have caught myself thinking those same words about my young, infertile companions these days. I catch and chastise myself, remembering. I too was that young and unable to conceive. I too, was scared and sad when the years began slipping away from me.
Despite being a mother now, I am still in that place. In my 30’s, I feel stuck in the middle of the age wars. My own mother spent most of her child bearing years infertile, but was luckily successful on Clomid. (Like me, she rarely ovulated or had a period.) And now at an age when most women are finishing menopause, she has started cycling with some regularity and ovulates more often than I ever do. We joke that in our family, fertility peaks at 50. Perhaps I just didn’t wait long enough.(ha) It gives us a grand and slightly uncomfortable laugh.

Eventually, the assumptions about my family planning reached my regular life. I started hearing “waited too long to have kids” from people in my “real” world. Mostly from people unaware of my infertility, but sometimes it came from people who plain forgot. Or they didn’t believe I was infertile and assumed I purposely waited. The word infertile goes in one ear and out the other. They tilt their heads curiously and ask what birth control I use.

I didn’t wait to begin. I didn’t spend the last 10 years avoiding it. I was here the whole time. Mine was a different kind of waiting. Waiting for my body to work. Waiting for everything to click into place. Waiting for that strong, sticky pregnancy.

Waiting for the waiting to end.