Why Does It Hurt So Much?

I found this online article and really related to what it was saying and how it explained the loss that infertility creates. I am speaking again when I return home to South Florida and am in the midst of IVF #5. I am therefore busy "thinking" about infertility again. Hope this article ministers to you.

Study by Sandra Glahn

A couple sat to eat lunch with me after I had spoken at an infertility symposium. As we began to talk, I asked the wife, “When you grieve over your infertility, what is your greatest loss?”

 

She didn’t have to think about her answer. “It’s the loss of a dream; my heart’s desire is to have my husband’s child and raise it together.”

 

I turned to the husband and addressed him. “And you?”

 

He looked at her, then back at me. After hesitating a moment, he spoke to her gently, and stroked her arm, “Don’t take this wrong, honey, but…” Then he looked at me. “It’s the loss of my wife—she is not the same woman I married. Infertility is really taking a toll on us.”

 

“You’re normal,” I assured them. After enduring a decade of infertility treatment that included multiple pregnancy losses, three failed adoptions, and an ectopic pregnancy, my husband and I had talked to numerous couples. And I recognized their stress, which—though different in each couple’s case—was still a normal response to an abnormal experience.

 

Infertility is hard stuff. In fact, “The depression and anxiety experienced by infertile women are equivalent to that in women suffering from a terminal illness,” says Alice Domar, Ph.D., director of the Mind/Body Center for Women’s Health in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School .

 

Why is it so difficult? We’re not talking about buying a new living room set here. We’re talking about having a child—someone who will throw her arms around you, even throw up on you. The idea of conceiving child as the product of two people’s love is a precious dream, and a deep longing. Thus, what a comfort it often is for couples to discover Proverbs 30:16, which tells us that a “barren womb” is among four things on earth that are never satisfied. The intense desire to have children is part of the way God structured the world. The drive, the longing, that “unsatisfied” feeling—these are part of the design.

 

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