Flotsam

I want to talk about Mare’s recent post. One thing that seems to thread through many women’s experiences with infertility is the accusation of “obsession.” Sometimes it comes from a husband or a Nearly—benignly, as in “Can’t we have a nice dinner without talking about your recent wanding or the impending beta of some blogger I’ve never met?” or not-so-benignly, as in “The girl I fell for wasn’t this angry or sad—when did your biology become your destiny?”
Just as often the accusation comes from others, in the form of uncomfortable silences or reminders of the power of “Positive Thinking”, or how there is “Always Adoption.” The subtext of these comments is that if you weren’t so focused, so desperate, so obsessed (if you would only relax!) the mess of your infertility would work itself out. Why, they seem to say, are you putting yourself through this? Isn’t there something unseemly in striving so hard towards a future that, perhaps, wasn’t meant to be?
I have written before about people’s alarming willingness to judge women’s choices about having children. I can’t think of another part of my life that people feel so free to criticize.
“Obsession” is a dangerously fraught word. And one, to be honest, that I don’t think is appropriate to most situations. I am certain that there are situations where it applies—the woman who sabotages her birth control (and her relationship) in her drive to have a child, etc. But, as Mare says, “Embarking on medical treatment costing huge sums of money, with uncertain outcomes and no guarantee of success?…I think it’s safe to say that most people would become a little preoccupied during that time.”
And that’s not obsession. If you were a painter diagnosed with a disease that would progressively rob you of your eyesight, it would be expected that you might become a smidge…concerned…with the subject of blindness. You might read books about it, join a support group, research treatments, and yes, rail about it to the people close to you. I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but I think some of the emotions would be the same—the sense of racing against time to accomplish something you want for your life, something that has ceased to be within your control. I think part of the “preoccupation” stems from something very serious: the betrayal by the body of the mind’s plans for life.
The difference between the painter scenario and infertility is the bizarre Que Sera Sera Witch Doctor-y attitude towards having children that seems to be prevalent. I’m not saying that children aren’t miraculous, only that consigning the pursuit of them (not that kind of “pursuit,” you dirty thing) to the realm of superstition– “Waiting to be blessed by God/Fate”–is not helpful to someone like…say, Polly McCysty, who has a documented endocrinological disorder that causes her not to ovulate. No one says cancer is “fate.” Cancer is a disease. And so is PCOS.
Complicating things further is that while artistic endeavor qualifies as a “goal,” childbearing, for some reason, does not. As I said in a previous post: “A boyfriend once told me he was glad I was so committed to my writing because he could never be with someone who “only” wanted to have kids…isn’t comparing women’s choices against some invisible standard what we (feminists) were all so riled up against in the first place?”
But the following excerpt from Mare’s post says it best:
“The irony is that if there was something else I wanted to pursue in life, such as running a marathon, starting a business, learning a language, writing a novel- E. would be applauding my focus. He would commend my goal-oriented behaviour. In all other endevours, he would support single-minded determination. But when we start talking about something with emotional undertones, something where he feels like the riptide of my desire might suck him in and drag him down, then it becomes a bad thing. Dangerous. Worrisome. An obsession.”
The Nearly skews much the same way. I think he still sees my quest to get (and stay) pregnant as a step away from the ambitious, driven, confident woman he met years ago. There is supposedly something retiring and backwards about a woman now, in Modern Times, who is “preoccupied” with a desire to become a mother. As I have said before, ad nauseum, the two things I want out of my life are to write a book and to raise a child–why does my active pursuit of the one make me committed and my pursuit of the other make me committable?