Gifts of Infertility Series - #5 - Knowledge

I like learning. I have a Master’s degree in Political Science. I speak (well, dabble in) several languages. Development assistance (aid programmes) has been an ongoing career interest of mine. As a result I've learnt a lot about a lot of different topics, including areas about as different from Political Science as you can get. For example, I was once asked by a World Bank engineer if I was an engineer too, after talking to him about civil engineering and road maintenance management! And more recently I've learnt a lot about tertiary education, and about corporate governance. But due to deficiencies in my primary school education, I was never really into science. Biology was an elective subject after the age of 16, and there were other subjects that I was keen to pursue at the time. (Also, I didn't want to have to dissect a rat.)

But through infertility and ectopic pregnancy, I have learnt so much about human biology and reproduction. In fact, I can guarantee that I know more about this than most of my friends and relatives who have actually had children. I know I knew more about ectopic pregnancy diagnosis and treatment than the junior doctors or emergency clinic GPs who were dealing with my case during my second ectopic. And that was before I started volunteering, when I had access to world leading research on ectopic pregnancy, and daily I learned more from the medical professionals (one in particular, she knows who she is) I was working with. 

I know I'm not alone in this. Every woman who has been through infertility or IVF will come out knowing much more about their reproductive biology than when they went in. I've seen many cases of women having to explain to their own doctors the details of their own cycles, and the implications of these. The misnamed 21-day test to check if a woman is ovulating is a classic example. It is only accurate if a woman ovulates on cycle day 14, and many don’t. My own GP looked at my results and said “I'm sorry, I don’t think you’re ovulating.” But I was charting my cycle, and there was strong evidence that I was. A few weeks later, I printed out my charts and presented them to my fertility specialist at our first appointment. He looked at them and said, “there’s no doubt that you’re ovulating.” I felt vindicated. And I have to say that the more I learnt about my cycle, the more empowered I felt, even if I was in fact learning how powerless we are when it comes to reproduction.

Knowledge is power. In my case, it wasn't power enough to conceive or carry children, but it was power. It helped me understand why further IVF cycles would be a waste of money. It helped me understand why I had ectopic pregnancies, and how to keep myself (and others) safe. Knowledge gave me the understanding, and the freedom, to accept the hand I’d been dealt. For me, knowledge was empowering, and I loved learning more and more, regardless of the implications for my own situation, and for years after my own fertility journey was over.

It makes me wonder whether, if my education had been different, I might have considered medicine as an occupation. I’ll never know. But I appreciate that my infertility and losses sparked an interest that lay latent within me.

Gifts of Infertility Series - #3 - New talents

Grieving loss, and enduring and accepting infertility, meant that for the first time in my life, I gave myself permission to become aware of myself, my emotions, my abilities, my flaws.  I learned a lot about what I did well, and what I didn't.  I accepted both these parts, and enjoyed nurturing my skills and abilities.  And one of the most surprising gifts of infertility was the discovery and nurturing of new talents and skills. 

Participating in a messageboard post-loss was eye-opening. It helped me enormously, but I also realised that simply by writing about my own experiences, I was helping others. Something about the way I expressed myself helped.

That led to a volunteering position that I found enormously rewarding. It both boosted my confidence, helped my understanding of my own situation and of others, and – most importantly – really did some good in this world.

But I'm going to take that further. I had always had an ability to look at an issue from both sides, and to understand what another person might be feeling. Acknowledging and nurturing this ability as part of my volunteer work was important.  Even if I was still raw from learning I would never have children, or having a bad "woe is me" day, I could never allow this to affect the way I responded to women with children. I had to learn to see things from their perspective, and bring my compassion and knowledge to bear to help them. I'm no saint, and this is rarely easy. But it helped me do my volunteer job well. 

It helped in other parts of my life too. And in unexpected ways.

At the time that I was a volunteer, learning more every day about human nature, I was also the Chairperson of a consulting company (owned by NZ government-owned institutions, working internationally). Chairing the Board was a challenge. I was the youngest director, and the only woman. And so it was inevitable that I endured the sexism of my fellow directors (not all of them but most).  I gradually realised though that I could, in the end, get them to do what I wanted them to do. Sure, they ranted and raved and played their petty little political games, or ignored what I said until one of the men said it.  But because I learned to understand them, see through their bluster and learn their motivations and insecurities, I learned how to convince them to change their minds. And they probably never knew. This is one of the advantages and disadvantages of the way women learn to operate in the corporate world. Because they don’t realise that they are being convinced of a better way to do things, we avoid the aggression that is often a feature of working with men. But likewise, this means that they don’t see or recognise the skill or advantages in my (a woman’s) argument, and we don’t always get the credit we are due.

Still, it is interesting to reflect and realise that part of my personal growth in the last decade became part of my professional growth too.