Why “Mama Nobody”?
In Africa, where I’ve been living for the past three years, married women are commonly referred to by the name of their first born. Mama George, Mama Wambui, Mama Esther… I remember going to a friend’s place and being turned out by her guard as I asked for Emily: her guard only knew her as Mama Matthew.
Women with no children, in addition to the heavy pain of infertility, face another stigma: they have no name, they are Mama Nobody.
After I got married three and a half years ago, Richard and I had similar hopes to build a family. But the baby carriage didn’t come, and instead came infertility. We were living in Kenya, I too was a Mama Nobody.
We aren’t the only ones. Infertility affects ~15% of couples around the world at some point in their lifetime — that’s one in six couples (and even 1 in 4 in the developing world, according to the WHO).
The pain can be excruciating. It last months, sometimes years. Instead of being marked by a single loss from which the healing can start, each month brings its own disappointment, and any scab of healing is torn away by the latest failed cycle. There is no guarantee that the future will bring the much hoped-for child. People who have not experienced infertility often underestimate the suffering. Risa Levine, a New York City attorney who endured 10 IVF cycles and four miscarriages, yet remains childless, captures the reality well. “Someone who had a breast cancer scare once said to me, ‘What you went through is nothing; it’s not like you were scared you were going to die,’ Levine recalls. “My thought was, Yeah, but I wanted to.”
This blog is a blend of my own story and survival techniques, mixed with philosophy and quotes from people much wiser than me. It’s based on notes to myself that I wrote over the past three years. It’s thematic and not chronological, showing life as we experience it: in kaleidoscopic format. It covers the full range of infertility “stuff”: from its impact on one’s career to its impact on one’s partner, from coping with jealousy to forgiving the time passing by. It has two goals:
- Helping those that are going through the same journey. I promise no depressing statistics have been included! This blog hopes to bring back smiles.
- Raising awareness for infertility. Breast cancer has its pink ribbon. Prostate cancer has its Movember mustaches. AIDS has its walks, multiple sclerosis its bike-a-thons. Infertility has none of that. It desperately needs the kind of awareness effort that helped bring cancer out of the shadows two decades ago. Mama Nobody is part of that effort!
A bit more about us: I am French, Richard’s English. We met 9 years ago during our master’s degree. After a few years in the private sector, I started working on access to vaccination for a NGO, which brought us to Kenya three years ago. Since then, we’ve gone through the whole infertility package, from early miscarriage to IVF. My medium term dream is to help provide better access to infertility diagnosis & treatment in developing countries. I can be reached at sleprincer@gmail.com, please don’t hesitate! — Soleine
NB: My homepage picture is “Mame” by Omar Victor Diop. I haven’t been able to credit most of the images on my blog, as many are just found on Pinterest. If you know where an image comes from, let me know!
