The first thing I learned after reading the introduction and first chapter of Unsung Lullabies was that I should not have read it on the subway.

This is the first time I ever opened up any kind of book about infertility. I was afraid I would read that infertility was my fault, I was afraid that I would not identify with what the wrote. I was afraid I would read the same assvice I have heard: lose weight, relax, take a vacation. But I think the overriding reason was that even after all the blogging, the tears, the talking I just wanted to keep that little bit of denial alive. Bringing this book in and reading it is the concrete proof I cannot deny. I am infertile. This book added the empahsis to that statement more than the failed IVF cycles ever could.

It had me at “hello”. More accurately, it had me at “…the wish to become a parent becomes almost primal.” I liked that they said “parent”. I like that even though they are talking about heterosexual couples (themselves included) that they use “parent” and “partner”.

For the first time I thought about the one step of infetility that I have never thought about. It’s so easy to gripe about how straight women have access to sperm “on tap”. I never thought how it is for a straight couple to have the first part of their dream dashed when they enter an RE’s office. As a lesbian, I had no illusions about making love in bed and conceiving a child.  My pregnancy journey started with temping, charting, gazing and tests with an RE. I never though how it would feel for a straight couple to let go of their dreams of beautiful sacred sex and begin the medical process of TTC. I gained some empathy that wasn’t there before. Going to the RE is the great equalizer in a way. What does it matter that I pay 420$ for sperm if the straight woman next to me has the same bruises on her arms, ass and stomach, prays the same prayers as the dildocam enters her, cries the same tears when blood appears?

All three authors have struggled with infertility. They have felt the emotions we have felt. Its all in the book. Every sentence. The jealousy, the loneliness, the feelings of failure, the craziness infertility takes us to. The first chapter title hit me hard: “This Isn’t How It Was Supposed to Be” The authors have a four part structure to the book.  They define infertility as a trauma. They write, “Often unrecognized as such, infertility truly is a trauma. A trauma is any event or feeling that goes beyond the range of usual human experience and is overwhelming either physically, emotionally or both.”

My jaw hit the floor. I am a social worker and survivor of trauma. How could I have not seen this? Maybe it’s because until I had IVF I could lie to myself that I was just unlucky or my first RE sucked. Maybe because unlike the straight women I didn’t have to shift my mindset from “normal” to “patient”. The other term that hit me was “pre-carriage”. Precarriage is the term they use to describe when an embryo decided not to implant. That to lose that embryo is a loss that goes unrecognized. So that’s what you call the feeling evry time I see Ewok I and Ewok II in my flickr set.

The second part will cover why infertility “hurts so bad” and its affects on our realitionship. Part three will cover grieiving and how to cope with an infertility insensitive world. And the last part is how to rewrite our “reproductive story”; the images and plan we had for ourselves. In each section the authors will reveal more about their journeys.

Right now I’ll just make sure not to read this on the subway.

Check out Are We There Yet? for their posts on the book