Couples dealing with infertility find that their relationship is often put to the test. Friends with children may stray away from them because they have less in common. Holidays can be painful since they are centered on family and familiar questions come up like “What are you waiting for?” Some infertility counselors liken an infertility diagnosis with a cancer diagnosis, but the difference is that every month you’re on a roller coaster waiting to see if you’re pregnant only to be disappointed by a period and the darkness looms over you. Feelings of helplessness and suicide is not uncommon. Lucy age thirty-seven of Coronado says that she always thought she would adopt if she had trouble conceiving, but that changed after she fell in love, and got married. “I want to have a child that’s an extension of our love. I want to be able to look into my child’s eyes and see my husband, and my own smile and precious gifts that we’ll pass on. I didn’t know I would feel this way, but that’s how I feel. Adoption isn’t out of the question for us, assisted reproduction is also an option we’re studying, but ideally we would like to have our child the old fashioned way.” Lucy’s eyes are so full of hope. I listen to her and suddenly I have a moment of ADD. I am reminded of eighty-one-year-old Hugh Hefner’s recent announcement that he wants to have a child with his twenty-nine year-old live-in girlfriend Holly Madison.
I’m willing to accept human biology that it’s harder to conceive past thirty-five, yet not impossible, but I think women should no longer take the brunt of the pressure. Maybe men should stop ignoring the alarm and hitting the snooze button, then we would all be on an equal playing field. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama represent the dawn of a new age in America. Let’s take our opinions on women’s fertility out of the dark ages and into the twenty-first century. After all “There is no formula for being a woman.”
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