Does the world even care?

[Kittymommy]

I've been really thinking about my infertility lately. Stuck in the not knowing stage due to the fact that my health insurance won't pay for anything infertility. And I hear of all these cases of unexplained infertility. And I wonder. Does the world care? Or does infertility make people so uncomfortable that we wish to not even acknowledge it. Let alone do more research or testing or something to raise awareness and dispose of old wives tales that leave those who suffer and those who don't confused and rude towards others.
Why in these modern days of medicane and technology is there only a handful of tests done then doctors just send you on your way saying "must be stress, try to relax." Or "unexplained" as your answer. I just feel like there's more focus on easy weight loss pills, and ED, then there are on some of these other very important matters.
Yet I get mad at myself for being to embarrassed to even tell people I'm suffering from infertility. It shouldn't be embarrassing, but it is. Why?
I don't know. This was a huge rant , but I've been troubled with this lately. Anyone else?

 

[Realisticlady]

I've been really thinking about my infertility lately. Stuck in the not knowing stage due to the fact that my health insurance won't pay for anything infertility. And I hear of all these cases of unexplained infertility. And I wonder. Does the world care? Or does infertility make people so uncomfortable that we wish to not even acknowledge it. Let alone do more research or testing or something to raise awareness and dispose of old wives tales that leave those who suffer and those who don't confused and rude towards others.
Why in these modern days of medicane and technology is there only a handful of tests done then doctors just send you on your way saying "must be stress, try to relax." Or "unexplained" as your answer. I just feel like there's more focus on easy weight loss pills, and ED, then there are on some of these other very important matters.
Yet I get mad at myself for being to embarrassed to even tell people I'm suffering from infertility. It shouldn't be embarrassing, but it is. Why?
I don't know. This was a huge rant , but I've been troubled with this lately. Anyone else?

Me too. for some reason I'm way too embarrassed to tell anyone about my infertility. The only people that know I've been struggling is my DH and one close friend. I always tell family members that kids aren't important to me because I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or feel awkward telling me they're Pregnant or talking about their children around me. It shouldn't be this way but it's how I've been living for the past couple of years. This is an important issue because I get depressed sometimes and want to leave my marriage...I even go through not feeling like a woman but it is because of forums like this I know im not alone.
They are slowly but surely coming up with new ways to treat infertility. I remember reading somewhere that the cost of IVF will eventually come down and more insurers are including some infertility treatments in health coverage plans (mine covers iui but not ivf). All we can do is pray

 

[Dazed]

I know how you both feel! I am very open about my infertility and it for two reasons: 1) it generally gets people to stop asking and 2) its become my reality. As you can see from my signature, assisted conception is my only option. What pushes my buttons is that as you ladies said, insurance doesn't cover anything. I was really excited when the talk of low cost IVF started that would bring the cost of IVF down by tens of thousands of dollars, but the more research I did into it, its only for developing countries! I get all women deserve the chance to have a child, but why can't it be all over the world? They talk about the social stigma in other countries women encounter by being infertile, but what about the US? Do we not have the same social stigma?

I totally relate! Sorry about my rant though.

 

[2have4kids]

When you get that embarassed feeling it's a whole body experience, I just read about it, it's shame. Shame = feeling there's something wrong with you. I have been speaking to people at work about my infertility and there's more women on this floor with issues that I'd ever guessed. More than 60% of the women who've had babies in the past 2 years had some form of infertility.
Why isn't it covered in Canada and the USA? Because we keep voting conservative parties in. Everywhere else in the world who have semi-liberal political structures also are in favour of comprehensive public healthcare. For some reason the women of North America have not been able to either a. make the connection that who we vote for may have low lying religious beliefs that control funding of women & children's basic social system functions ie daycare assistance, healthcare, school programs (lunch etc), and these conservative structures also b. are geared towards corporatism which props up companies and not individuals.

The UK has realised that they need more young people to support the economy (our demographics here in NA are so scary!! we need young people to support our retirement too), they understand that by funding IVF it's less expensive to the overall system than covering expensive NICU care for premature high-order births. They also have completely removed religion and therefore innate sexism from their politics and they have never believed that by propping up large corporations there will be some sort of trickle down effect to individuals as the Republicans, TeaParty and Canadian Progressive Conservatives do. Europe and the UK are old wise dogs that we could learn alot from. It's terrible to bring politics into this as I'm sure there are many brain-dead and brain-washed republicans out there who'll shout a few horrible words at me for speaking so frankly but what do we need to do to realise that publically funded healthcare has GOT to get better (and more commonplace)? It should not only be the rich who have the ability to have children.