Infertility in Women - Dorsi's Book Chapter 13

So by now I was in my mid 20's and starting to rebuild my life after the horror of suffering from almost non-stop panic attacks. I had quit my job because of my severe panic and for the first time in my life I found myself unemployed.

Being on unemployment for a year wasn't so bad - in fact I kind of liked it after working since I was 16. It gave me a chance to reassess my life and decide where I wanted to go to from there. Now drug and alcohol free, my mind was clear and I could actually think logically about my life and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Having a child had always been important to me. Even though I had had an abortion at a very young age (15), the desire to be a mother now burned brightly within me. I watched as all my friends around me started having babies and now it seemed like I was the odd one out. I was about the only one who had no children. But this was not by choice - although I had gotten pregnant very young, I had never taken any birth control since the abortion. So by now it had been almost 10 years since I had been pregnant.

Becoming pregnant became almost an obsession for me now. I had decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life - I wanted to be a mother and I could not understand why I was not getting pregnant. I thought at the time that maybe I was being punished for having an abortion - that perhaps God was punishing me because I had murdered my own baby. Every time I went to a friends baby shower or played with my friends babies, I got a terrible aching and sad feeling that I would never have a child. My friends felt bad for me because they knew that I adored their children. And it wasn't that I was jealous of my friends "fertility" - I was just deeply disturbed about my own "lack" of it. They didn't understand why I could not get pregnant either. They just didn't know what to say anymore except to console me when the tears would flow.

I pretty much kept my infertility a secret except with my very close friends - and when well meaning friends and family would poke at me and say, "When are you going to have a baby?" I would just shrug and mumble something about "not being ready" or "it's just not time". Inside though my heart was breaking because I knew that was a lie. Somehow admitting my infertility would be too embarrassing. I felt I had to take my "punishment" in silence because after all, I had been given a chance to be a mother - and I had blown it in the worst way.

So I just stayed silent and waited.

I finally got tired of waiting and decided to ask my doctor why I wasn't getting pregnant. From then on a whirlwind of tests were done. After the Dr. ran the tests , he said there was nothing more they could do - that I probably would not get pregnant or be a mother. No EXACT reason was given though.

I was crushed by this and I started to fall into a deep depression. I could not imagine never- ever being a mother. It seemed so cruel - that now that I was drug free, alcohol free and healthy I could not have a baby. I was sure this had to be punishment from God. In fact, I was convinced this was the reason.

Seeking a second opinion, I found a Dr. that gave me some encouragement and I decided to fight for what I wanted - and to get to the bottom of this. I needed to know why I was not getting pregnant. Like I said, it had pretty much become an obsession for me. The new Dr. that I saw started putting me through another battery of tests - some of them VERY humiliating. And my husband also had to be involved in some of these tests - adding to further humiliation.

In one test he had to go into the bathroom to provide a sample of you-know-what, and I can remember standing outside in the hallway feeling a deep sense of embarrassment (and BTW this was the man I had gotten pregnant from at the age of 15, so I knew we had gotten pregnant before) He had been my one and only - and I had no other sexual partners besides him. I know, rare in that day and age, but true.

My Dr. finally asked if I would be willing to have a "laparoscopy" done - surgery which would enable them to see my insides close up to see if they could find out what was causing my infertility. Afraid of surgery, I agreed even though I was scared to death. The thought of being put under was extremely fearful for me. I was sure I would have some type of terrible panic attack and die on the table.

After the surgery the Dr. told me that I had cysts the size of eggs on my ovaries. Thank God they were not malignant but he decided not to remove them because they would have scarred my ovaries. He opted instead to put me on birth control pills to shrink them (yes I know that sounds odd that they use birth control for that - but it worked)

A few months after surgery I figured that I would get pregnant but no, nothing.

One more test was left - my husband and I had to have sex and then I had to go into the doctors office to get scraped and have his sperm activity checked. Another humiliating test but necessary if we wanted to get to the bottom of this. The results were devastating. Within one short hour almost all the sperm were dead. The Dr. even showed me the little deceased sperm on the microscopic petri dish. The few sperm that had managed to survive were in their last death throes - barely moving, sluggish and struggling. They could not even survive long enough to reach my egg!

This newest news was not good at all. Basically my Dr. said that this meant that my body was hostile to my husbands sperm - and that there was really not much they could do.

I wanted to die at this point. Life just didn't seem worth living anymore.

Life without children was unimaginable.

@Copyright Dorsi Diaz 2011

(Dorsi Diaz is a freelance writer/publisher, photographer and artist. She writes on a variety of topics. Please feel free to leave a comment, subscribe to her RSS feed and be updated on new hubs and articles that she publishes)