I told my 65 year-old co-worker about a friend of a friend who tragically lost her 4 and a half month old baby boy to SIDS. This same co-worker knows about my infertility struggles and IVF failure. She knows about a good friend that lost her baby prematurely due to early labor. She knows about another friend of mine that is going through infertility treatments. Her question was "what is it with this generation"?
I've wondered the same thing. Is there something truly wrong with our generation, or is it that more people are talking about their infertility struggles rather than keeping them a secret? Is it because of the reality television shows featuring multiples or dramas and sitcoms that feature infertility as part of their plot lines, the headlines with high-order multiples, or the many celebrities that have twins from infertility treatments? Or is it a real biological issue and change in our society coming to the forefront?
One of my junior high teachers was married and in her 40s or 50s when I had her as a teacher and she did not have any children. A married co-worker from my previous job was in her 40s and never had any children. I never asked them why they didn't have any children. I assumed that they didn't want them (which I didn't quite understand). It didn't occur to me at the time that maybe they had tried to have children biologically and just couldn't. Inftertility treatments for them were either nonexistent or relatively new for them, not to mention ridiculously expensive. As is adoption. I never asked these women why they didn't have any children, adopted or otherwise. In retrospect, I'm so glad I didn't ask them because, as I know now, that can be a hard question to answer.
I heard or read somewhere that the average sperm count of men in the early 20th century was about twice as high as it is now. How true this statistic is, I'm not sure. Does that mean that the fertility of women is half what it once was, too? Conception seerms to be more difficult to achieve, pregnancies seem harder to maintain, and little babies do not always make it through their first year of life. Does God want to reduce the over population of the world by putting these widespread biological hurdles into place? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
I definitely think that people are talking about their struggles more and thus we are all becoming a bit more in tune with how often these tragedies occur. In the past people weren't encouraged to be open about their losses and infertility, if they did suffer a loss they were encouraged to move on and society was definitely not in a place to allow them the safety or encouragement to talk openly about their feelings. The more I share about our loss and that of friends the more surprised I am at how often the lives of those around me have also been affected by these types of losses, both in the recent past and many years ago.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I wondered this on one of my very first blog posts. It seems so many more women are infertile nowadays. Miscarriages, I think they have been the same rate forever. I have all kinds of theories. First of all, I think we are talking about it more and raising more awareness, coupled with the availability of more intensive fertility treatments. Then we could also thrown in things like pollution, toxins, hormones in milk, factory farming, birth control pills, radiation, and stress. Among many others! My crazy coworker thinks it's due to the impending 2012 apocalypse. There are a lot of possible reasons!
ReplyDeleteI've thought about this from time to time and always figured that it was the "survival of the fittest" theory. Now that we have the technology to abolish that, the weak have the opportunity to live longer, reproduce, and do anything the stronger person was able to do naturally. After a few generations the situation snowballed and now more and more people need technological help to live a good quality life. Pretty soon we may see our selves dependent on technology just to live
ReplyDeleteHi - wandered over from ICLW list.... It's so interesting how you think about this once you've been through what we've been through. My parents' best friends never had children and I vaguely remember a conversation with my mother when I was about 13, maybe 14 about how Penny had gotten pregnant but lost the baby. I didn't really think about it that much at the time or even since - they're the greatest 'aunt' and 'uncle' to us and I suppose in my naive way I thought that was probably enough for them. But now I think all the time about how many years they probably tried to get pregnant and maybe had more losses than the one I know about. And I have no idea whether there was any 'help' at all for whatever they were going through (this was mostly the 70s and early 80s) and whether they had to endure lots of medications and so on. I do think people are just more aware of it now. And lost babies were not all that uncommon of an occurrence back when. Anyhow, thoughtful post!
ReplyDeleteVisiting for ICLW! I totally agree with what Christa said above...people are just now starting to talk about it.
ReplyDeleteOur TTC stories are similiar...I also tried 10 IUIs before moving on to IVF. I am scheduled for IVF#2 in January.
I think it has a lot to do with more people talking about it...I know many of our generation were adopted... it was the only option then. And losses, well, you just didn't talk about it. Maybe there are other factors, but like mental health, a lot of it is just education and openness about it.
ReplyDeleteA little late to the conversation on this one but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that our generation was encouraged to go out and get careers and find ourselves before settling down and having families. We're not old but when it comes to having babies, we're late to the game compared to previous generations of women. Women are getting married later, leading more stressful lives and waiting to have children until they're more established in their lives. This is what I did and I think its a smart thing to do, but our bodies haven't caught up yet and evolved with us. Our most fertile years are still from 18 to 22 years old.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, there is also a definite shift to talking about this stuff nowadays vs keeping it under wraps but I wonder how much of that is because so many more of us are dealing with the IF issues than previous generations.