The Saddest Room On Earth
By Allyson Downey
I’ve known since I was a teenager that I’d have likely some hurdles to overcome in order to get pregnant. A doctor back then noted that some blood test results looked like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome ( PCOS ), and in the years since, various exams and tests confirmed I have a pretty textbook case. Basically, it just means I don’t ovulate with any regularity.
I consider myself lucky in that I didn’t have to go through the uncertainty and recurring monthly disappointments that lead most women to Assisted Reproductive Therapy (ART, for the indoctrinated). When I was ready to try getting pregnant, I asked my OB/GYN for a referral to an reproductive endocrinologist, and that was that.
The etiquette was what I imagine a men’s urinal must be like.
Except it wasn’t. I considered myself mentally prepped (or at least steeled) for the medical stuff: some blood work, exams, hormones. What I didn’t expect was the sense of deflation that hit me each time I stepped into that waiting room, week after week and eventually day after day. As if it wasn’t obvious enough that we were all in a vulnerable state, there was a sign reminding everyone that “Due to the sensitive nature of our practice, we ask that you make childcare arrangements for your appointments.”
I’d go in there a few times a week and sit among dozens of women who were deliberately not meeting each other’s eyes; everyone just looked at the floor or a smartphone or a magazine. The etiquette was what I imagine a men’s urinal must be like: you don’t look around. I told my husband it felt like the saddest room on Earth, waiting beside all of these people who are going through the exact pain you are, but still feeling entirely alone in it.
The only person I talked to about it with was my hair stylist.
Because people don’t talk about infertility. I certainly didn’t. With my friends and family, I was afraid I’d have to start carrying their hopes and expectations along with my own, and that was too heavy a burden to fathom. I didn’t even tell my mother. In fact, the only person I talked to about it with was my hair stylist, because she was literally the only person I knew who’d been through it. I learned a ton from her: Clomid cycles vs. Gonal F and HCG levels and monitoring. Everything else I got from the Internet, which if you haven’t figured it out already, is a terrible place to go for medical advice or understanding. For every legitimate article from an actual professional, there are 50 search results for message board posts from desperate women who know as little (or less) than you do, expressing their own anxieties and weighing in on others’.
And back to that medical stuff I thought I was well-equipped for: you can’t be. IVF can be a painfully long process, and it requires increasingly frequent monitoring via blood tests and… transvaginal ultrasounds. Even typing the word transvaginal makes me shudder. It’s all invasive, plain and simple. And enduring it day after day, week after week, month after month — while also grappling with all of the emotional baggage — feels like an assault on you.
I preferred letting my friends believe I had simply lost my mind to telling them the truth.
That emotional stuff, feeling like something about you is broken because your body isn’t doing what evolution designed it to do, is just made (way, way, way) worse by the hormones. Imagine your very worst stretch of PMS, extended for a solid month or longer, and then multiplied tenfold by the hormone cocktail you’re injecting into your belly daily. My best example of how completely out of control your emotions are: as a bridesmaid in a dear friend’s wedding, I stood half-facing the guests for the ceremony, the duration of which I spent quietly but continuously weeping. I’m a happy-crier at weddings, but this was beyond the pale and completely out of my control. I tried to discreetly wipe my eyes (and nose) with my hand, hoping to avoid drawing attention to myself, but there was no doubt that I was a blubbering mess making a spectacle of myself. I think there’s even video of it. When the bride sang a Yo La Tengo song to the groom before her vows, I had to start counting backwards in my head from 100 in Spanish to avoid breaking out into full on sobs. And I preferred letting my friends believe I had simply lost my mind to telling them the truth: that I was having a not-atypical reaction to hormones because I had just started an IVF cycle.
I’m a true believer in the power of communities, particularly for parents and parents-to-be. In fact, I built a whole company around the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. But for women (and men) struggling with infertility, there’s no real sense of belonging, because there’s no easy way to figure out who else is in your shoes.
There’s a virtual sisterhood for infertility, if you can only find the others who’ve struggled with it.
So after I got pregnant, I started volunteering my story to friends who were on track to start a family. With close friends, I just spilled the beans once I was ready to tell people I was expecting. With others, I’d find a way to drop it into casual conversation, with a reference to how an early morning gym class was even harder to get out of bed for than an IVF monitoring appointment. Sometimes I’d bring it up apropos of nothing, with friends who were nowhere near being ready for kids: “If you someday find yourself having a hard time getting pregnant, I’m the girl to talk to.” Bold, for sure — but it’s opened the door to conversations that otherwise would never have happened. And I’ve been an equal beneficiary, because the connections that grow out of that candor and shared vulnerability are downright sororal. There’s a virtual sisterhood for infertility, if you can only find the others who’ve struggled with it (or are struggling with it).
So, back to that waiting room, the one that I heard someone refer to recently as the “Sadness DMV.” When my son was about six weeks old, we had brunch with friends who’d gotten married around the same time as us but hadn’t had kids yet. I dropped my casual IVF reference, and I found out that they’d been going through the same thing. At the same time. In the same medical practice. There’s no doubt in my mind that at least once, and probably more, we were in that waiting room together. We were both there every 48 to 72 hours for weeks, giving a pretty high probability for overlap, but we never saw each other because we never looked up.
It’d be overly simplistic to say that by looking up and looking around, you’ll feel less alone. But the odds are in your favor that someone you know (with a happy, healthy baby!) has grappled with infertility. And if you’ve already been through it, you probably know someone who is now quietly going through ART. Find each other, and build your village.
Ally Downey is co-founder and CEO of weeSpring, the first social product review site for parents. She has an MBA from Columbia Business School, an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and a BA from Colby College. She serves on the board of Democracy Prep Public Schools, one of the country’s top charter management organizations.
