A Couple Struggles With Infertility

Perhaps the most disturbing news I have ever received came to me in a hauntingly normal way, early in the morning, while drinking coffee over the morning paper and watching the cat lap the dregs of milk from the bottom of my cereal bowl. My wife came to me in her old terrycloth bathrobe, sleep still strong in her eyes and in her speech. "I got my period," she said.

That was it.

It wasn't exactly a surprise. I had expected our final try at in vitro fertilization to fail--the implanted embryos had been frail and we'd failed twice before, yet, like Hannah, I had hoped and prayed that this time we might get lucky or be blessed. In secret I'd even asked the Master of the Universe to reward our four years of trying to get pregnant--including 18 months of intense and expensive fertility treatments--with twins.

Instead, as if this were any July morning, any random cycle of the moon, the news came to me: "I got my period."

And that was it.

I had expected to greet this news, when it came, with some kind of primordial howl, perhaps the rending of a garment or two; my wife had spoken of shaving her head like Annie Lennox as an expression of her grief. But that morning we both felt a simple longing to have healthy ovaries and strong sperm, to be able to procreate, to dream of grandchildren. To be normal. In search of normalcy, I did the dishes. She took a shower and opened a box of tampons. We both went to work.

In the months since then, sadness has permeated every facet of our lives, and we've become socially nervous because our particular sadness is not one that is generally understood or respected in American culture as we experience it. Ours is a tragedy where nothing happened, a tragedy because nothing happened, and that, for most people, ourselves included, is uncharted emotional territory. As we move through this strange and unfamiliar landscape, we find ourselves having to overcome the always well-meaning but often hurtful comments and suggestions of our friends and family.

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