I know something of missed opportunities, stunted and miswoven cells, futures undone. I know relendess, raging optimisms, babies not yet wished into being. Yes, I know all too well these trying, trying times that so many face, because, for almost five years, my partner and I have watched younger women with buoyant, hopeful energy push double strollers through fertility clinic doors and flip the pages of glossy magazines while we wait for blood draws and ultrasounds, and a successful pregnancy. We've celebrated friends and family as they gave birth to their second children, while we experienced miscarriages and continued trying for our first. They are everywhere, the fresh, naive faces. They don't look haggard, weary, defeated. How I've hated them for their blind privilege, and especially for their optimism. Not being able to bear a child will break your heart, but hopes raised and dashed, month after month, will bleed all joy from living.
Flesh of my flesh,
Blood of my blood, who will I be without you?
Who would I have been if youd stayed?
More than a decade ago, at the University of Toronto, I concentrated my graduate studies in the areas of women's reproductive and mental health, researched the history of various cutting-edge drug treatments and pored over recommendations made by the Royal Commission on New Reproductive And Genetic Technologies. I wrote papers on the ethics of anonymous sperm and egg donation and argued, from a feminist point of view, for regulation. I investigated potential long-term side effects of pills like Clomid, both on women who took them and on the offspring produced. I learned that very little research had been done in the area. There are still no long-term studies-which is why doctors are able to tell me, with great assurance, that there's no link between the fertility drugs so many of us now swallow and inject, and the cancers all women fear.
So, when I decided, on my 35th birthday, to have a child, I wasn't naive about the history of the Western medical model responding to women's health. I knew other drugs deemed safe had later been proven dangerous and taken off the market. I believed our bodies, especially our hormonal bodies, are routinely perceived and treated as defective, Blancpain Watches or in need of control and management, and that childbirth itself has become a state of emergency in North America, with C sections and early interventions fast becoming the norm. I also expected that, because I was old, reproductively aspeaking, and because my partner was a woman, I'd find myself in a doctor's office. At the very least, I had a sperm access issue. What I couldn't envision then, and swore I'd never do, was to give over control of my body. Of course, that's exactly what I ended up doing.
I conceived without drugs on our first attempt, using frozen sperm from an anonymous donor. I was optimistic, with no visible stress in my life. I knew it wouldn't be long before I was pregnant. The procedure was a simple, noninvasive insemination (sperm deposited in the vagina, at the opening of the cervix) and not, as it would be for years subsequendy, the highly touted, invasive and more expensive intrauterine insemination (IUI). I was certain I was pregnant within hours, though people told me it wasn't possible to know so soon. Two weeks later, the pregnancy was confirmed with a blood test. Unfortunately, I miscarried at eight weeks. Despite reassurances to the contrary, I wondered whether my hypothyroidism was a factor.
Roger Dubuis FakeMy thyroid, previously regulated with a prescription medication, had spiralled out of control the instant I became pregnant. I searched for answers online, in bookstores, and at the library as to why this might've been and how to prevent it happening again. Though I can never know for certain what caused that miscarriage, the doctor doubted it was my thyroid. (Another fertility doctor was adamant that it probably had been the cause.) What exactly is the relationship between hypothyroidism and miscarriage? I still don't know. I was told to grieve and move on, because miscarriage is common, and an easy first conception is a sign of fertility. I tried for another year without success.
That first doctor had many lesbian patients, yet her receptionist routinely asked for my husband's health card number. The doctor, a walking infomercial who answered our questions before we had a chance to finish asking them, never spent more than 10 minutes with us. She told us she wouldn't speak with my partner, as I was the patient, so that's how it was for almost a year-both of us at morning ultrasounds and blood draws (10 days per month), both at scheduled information appointments, and both at two monthly inseminations-but only one of us invisible. I only understood this to be discriminatory after a straight couple I knew began seeing the same doctor and, though they were also using anonymous donor sperm, the male partner in that couple was actively involved in conversations and decisionmaking. That first doctor was a gynecologist and reproductive specialist, but not an endocrinologist, which is the reason I finally left. I was willing to put up with discrimination because I wasn't sure the situation would be different at another clinic, and finding a new doctor meant being on a waiting list for months.
