Infertility and why is it happening to me? Allow me to start answering the question by re-phrasing the word Infertility to Subfertility.
Why? Because words influence the way we think. Infertility defines our fertility as either a YES or a NO – you are either Fertile or NOT Fertile, whereas Subfertility is more representative of the true nature of Fertility challenges – They don’t come with an On or Off switch, but they form a continuum, with many degrees, reasons and possibilities of solutions and options.
Another rephrase I would suggest, is of the question itself – Why is subfertility happening to me – The truth is that it is a common issue. I’ll share some numbers to bring the issue to life.
The World Health Organization, estimates that between 48 million couples and 186 million individuals live with infertility globally
Since 1950, the average births per woman in Europe has fallen from more than 3 to just 1.6
1 in 6 couples worldwide according to WHO face a fertility challenge at some point in their reproductive life.
And imagine that the probability of being left-handed is 1 in 10.
So, it is more probable that you will face a fertility challenge during your adult life than that you are going to prefer writing with your left hand! Wow, when I first read about this statistic it just blew my mind!
We are not Alone in this Journey – Subfertility is a crowded place, and we are in it TOGETHER.
So, a more productive question one can ask oneself might be ‘HOW is subfertility happening to me’…
By changing the focus of the question here you change the focus of your thoughts, your answers, your actions and behaviors.
It is really common to feel that struggling to conceive is so unfair when you’re comparing what’s going on with people around you . It is really important to take not of how that makes you feel and validate it, because it isn’t fair the fact that you are struggling to conceive. The sooner you allow yourself to sit in that feeling and not blame yourself, as it is nones fault when there is a struggle to conceive, then the whole process of what’s to come gets easier.
Often people when they are struggling to conceive a child they feel just really upset and distressed and they look at everyone around them that’s trying for a baby and having babies easily and quickly and they just feel: why am I not able to have a baby? Why aren’t we conceiving a child? Like everybody we know, especially for people who work in areas like teachers and nurses where they’re all females in their workplace and they’re all going off on maternity leave all the time and maybe their friends and their family members and neighbors everyone around them is having babies except for them. They just start to wonder why is this happening to me? Why me? Why us? What have we done to deserve this treatment? They feel singled out and some people feel kind of punished as if they’re being punished by god or fate or the powers. That be that somehow they’ve done something wrong and yet they know they’ve never done anything wrong to deserve this although sometimes there are women who maybe have had a termination at some point in their past and they can feel really like they’re being punished for what they did and that’s very tragic and I have to talk that through with them to try and explain that there’s nothing that they have done to deserve what’s going on and nobody does. Nobody has done anything and everybody just has to kind of try to understand that there’s no real reason. Maybe there is a medical reason that they found as to why they are struggling but there’s no reason why it’s them. They’ve not been singled out by the powers that be. Some people think this is just so unfair, it’s so unfair and then they feel a bit childish because when we’re little, we’re told: well life isn’t fair – what makes you think life is fair and yet they feel so frustrated and they feel so thwarted in their simple desire for family but they feel like: you can feel why me and this is so unfair and it is really unfair and there’s no real reason for it. What’s interesting about that sentence is that when things are going well for us we don’t actually ask: why me? When we’re having good fortune, no one says: “gosh why me? Why was I chosen to have this wonderful life? and these wonderful things are happening to me?”. To me, when you hear people say or when people find themselves thinking why me? Why is this happening to us? – it’s usually a sign that they are very very unhappy. It’s evidence of how desperate they’re feeling at the seeming injustice of all their family and friends and people they know getting pregnant and then you’re not getting pregnant. It’s just evidence of the pain and suffering of what it means to be in the situation that you’re in.
Infertility is not your fault, it is so important to know that up front. Blaming yourself for going through infertility is not helping you. Unfortunately, we don’t know why necessarily you may have a diagnosis or you may not, regardless we don’t know why this is happening to you and not to others and why for others it can be so easy to get pregnant, this is such a source of frustration, anger, jealousy, and upset, for so many people going through infertility. But unfortunately, it really is almost a bit of a dead-end road because these thoughts that you’re having are really not helping you and can often send you into a bit of a negative spiral downwards and cause other emotional effects and relationship strains, social issues, all those kind of things.
The first step really is just becoming aware of those kinds of thoughts and hopefully, you already are aware of them as you’re looking at this video today. Maybe jot them down in a journal and then you can actually see for yourself some of those thoughts that you’re having that may not be healthy for you in this area. But I want you to know that infertility is not your fault, you are not to blame for this and unfortunately, we don’t know specifically why this is happening to you and not others, but the thing to do is to really try and shift your focus away from those kinds of thoughts as they really aren’t helping or healthy for you.
