Jailhouse Life

Someone on a support board I frequent mentioned that when a fellow sufferer of infertility finally gets pregnant, it's like your jailhouse buddy getting out on parole.  This analogy seemed so fitting to me, but I'll take it a step further.  Take this all as a bit of a joke, certainly written by someone who has never even visited a jail (but I DID watch "Orange is the New Black," so that counts, right???)

10 Reasons Infertility is Like Jail

1) The days all blend together

This week, I spent all day thinking Friday was Thursday.  It was 7pm when my husband finally corrected me, and laughed at me.  I could never tell you what date of the month it is, and now I can't tell you what day of the week it is.  Want to know what I could tell you?  That it's my 19th cycle since we first started trying to get pregnant, that I hit the 2 year mark of being off birth control this month, and that I was 9 days past ovulation, 11 days past trigger, and day 23 of my cycle.  It's like a prisoner checking off days of their prison sentence rather than days of the week and days of the month like normal people.

2) The only people who get it are stuck there with you

I have some really truly dear friends and family who are super supportive of our infertility struggles and the many mixed emotions that go along with it, but they don't "get it".  Even my family members who have done IVF before don't "get it" because they had insurance coverage for it all - they weren't simultaneously worried about going bankrupt before being able to get pregnant because they didn't have to pay for the procedures (though, admittedly, they probably "get" quite a few of the other emotions of this process).  But they also have kids now, so they don't have that fear of being infertile forever like I still do.  Even my husband doesn't always truly understand how I'm feeling.  But my fellow female infertility sufferers do seem to "get it", though we all have slightly different experiences.  Like prison buddies, we all have different sentences for different crimes, but we're all living in the same hell on earth, and the only way to get through it is to lean on those around you.

3) You have mixed emotions when someone gets out before you do

Nobody wants to be in jail, just like nobody wants to be infertile.  But misery definitely loves company, and you create some strong bonds while under extreme stress and emotional upheaval.  So when a fellow infertility buddy gets pregnant, you're thrilled for her while in the same moment, your heart lurches and your stomach sinks.  Because while she's getting out, you're still stuck, and it was nice to have her around to lean on when you were both in it together.  So now you're even more alone than you were before.

4) When buddies who get out come back, they don't "get it" anymore

I'm not talking about miscarriages - when someone gets pregnant and has a miscarriage, that's like breaking parole and getting sent back to jail - you're worse off than you were before, and you will have to go through the same nonsense all over again.  But when someone is paroled, or rather gets pregnant, and comes back - in the case of the support group, continues to post on the board after they've gotten pregnant - it pisses you off.  It's like someone paroled comes back for visiting hours to tell you how nice it is outside the jail walls, and that you should have hope you'll be there someday!  Great, I believe you, but it doesn't make me any less miserable here in jail, so thanks for rubbing it in my face, however good your intentions are to "give me hope".

5) Your daily routine kind of sucks

Like prison food and making license plates, the daily grind of infertility sucks.  Taking hormone pills, giving yourself shots in a big old hunk of your belly fat, pushing progesterone pills up your va-jay-jay, the swollen soreness of stimulated ovaries, the violation of the transvaginal ultrasound, peeing on countless sticks, it all kind of sucks.  And then you have to wake up and do it all over again.  And again.  And again.  Until you're paroled.

6)  There's no privacy anymore

A prison shower has nothing on a transvaginal ultrasound.  I actually had to consider whether I wanted to shave my nether parts or not because I have to have relative strangers look at my hoo-hah several times a month, often several times a week.  I have sex when the doctor tells me to, and I have to tell nurses about when we've had sex.  My sex life and vagina might as well be compared to a jailhouse strip search and public showers, because there's no sense of privacy left.

7) Sex is like scheduling conjugal visits

Spontaneous?  Nope.  Sexy?  Nope.  Do it anyway because you have only a limited window to get the job done?  Yup.  And the doctor and nurses, like the prison guards, know when and how often you've done it.

8) While dreaming of the outside world is all that gets you through, sometimes it's too hard to hope for parole.

We're all going through this for one purpose - to be THROUGH it and on the other side!  None of us want to be here.  This is not what we pictured our daily life to be like.  It isn't fair, we were wrongfully accused, we don't deserve this!  But still, we're stuck here.  So while dreaming of the outside world is what gets us through our toughest days, some days it's too hard to think about sunshine and grassy pastures when you wake up every morning and go to sleep every night looking at your cement jail cell of infertility. Because it makes you all the more sad to remember where you are when you think about what could have been if you hadn't been put in this position.  Sometimes to get through it, you have to just put in the motions and keep moving, trying not to think about where you are and how you got here, and how long it might be until you get parole.

9) Every month is a parole board.  

Do I get out of this hell this month?  Do I get to see sunshine and move past this nasty chunk of my life once and for all?  You wait anxiously each month, hoping with every ounce of your body that this is finally the time you'll get pregnant.  And then when you get denied with a negative pregnancy test, your hope drops rock bottom and the despair sets in again.

10) When you finally get pregnant, you won't be the same person who entered this journey.

Infertility, like jail, changes a person.  Not always for the worse - my relationship is stronger than ever because of going through this together, and I love my husband in a way I never could have known because he's been such an amazing support and team player.  I've learned to be a more compassionate person, and I will appreciate that day so much more when I finally get paroled from infertility.  But after seeing how hard it has been to get pregnant, I will be petrified of losing the pregnancy in a way that I wouldn't have been if it hadn't taken this long.  Like a new parolee being frightened of breaking parole and being sent back, I will follow every rule and guard my freedom from infertility cautiously.  And I think I will always bear the scars on my soul from this journey.  I can't uncry the tears or turn back time to when I naively assumed it would all be easy.  I've been in this jail for awhile now, and it's part of my life story.  That's hopefully going to be a badge of pride I wear in my later years, a mark of experience and personal growth, but for the moment all I can see are the walls that keep me locked in this hell.  And dreaming of someday getting out.