Success stories

Humans aren’t born with a fear of failure. Failure is how we learn. I wish as girls we had all been taught that, encouraged to embrace it. I’ve seen girls terrified of failure, maybe instilled from parents or family or a society that holds up behaviours and expectations that are impossible to achieve. They see their mothers subjected to standards of being able to achieve and have “it all” when their fathers are not subjected to that. They learn that failure is shameful. When actually, it means that at least they tried.

And so when women start to face infertility, they have already been trained to achieve what is expected of them. People assume infertility issues are those of the woman. People judge women without children very differently from how they judge men without children. We’re expected to achieve in our careers and social lives and marriages, and part of that achievement is to have children. So when infertility looms, our fear of failure is accentuated.

I hate that fertility is talked about in such strong, success/failure terms. It's one of the reasons I refuse to use the “failure” word when I talk about IVF cycles that don’t result in a pregnancy or even a live birth. The truth is, we are not responsible for fertility treatment that doesn’t get the result we were looking for. The medical profession don’t know why some cycles result in pregnancy and some don’t. I had a specialist who once said to me, “we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about women’s reproductive systems.” So really, we should never feel as if we have failed. The treatment might not have worked. But failure is a very strong term. It’s not through lack of application, or desire, or commitment. It’s due solely to biological processes working differently than we and our doctors had hoped. To me, that’s not a failure.

I know. It’s easy to say that now. But it’s how I feel. Biology is responsible. There’s no failure. I don’t feel a failure, or even that my body failed me. It did everything it could! The only failure would be if we refused to accept the outcome and the resultant life we have for the rest of our lives. That’s why, at the risk of repetition, I think that so many of the childless are actually the true success stories of infertility. That despite not getting what we wanted, we are still prospering, living good lives, feeling contented and happy, and being decent people. Not taking advantage of the life I had would be the true failure. 

Don’t you agree?