speaking up

I am having a rare moment where I am actually capable of focusing on one thing for more than one second.  These moments are facing extinction these days so I better take advantage of it.  Over this past year there have been several moments where I have thought about how naive I was at the beginning of this journey.  One moment that sticks out is one I spent with a good friend early on in our struggle, who logically suggested that if we had problems we would have options.  These options may cost a lot of money and may not be easy but they exist.  I remember thinking that we would never need to contemplate this further, we would not need these options. 

As months went by and our prognosis worsened, the layers between myself and these so called options began to thin.  I am now so thankful that these options exist.  I have come a long way.  I have a bit of beef though.  Why is it that I thought us invincible in this area in the first place?  Why did I view infertility as something so foreign?

Why was it that no one was talking about infertility anywhere that I looked?

Our fertility clinic starts twenty couples on IVF every week.  That is over one thousand couples a year.  Where are these people?  There are hundreds of infertility blogs out there.  I am still shocked at how many people openly declare that no one outside of the blog world knows they are even trying to conceive.  I do of course respect this choice, it just is not for me.  We were at a dinner a couple of weeks ago with a woman who has had fertility challenges in the past.  She told me that she would never admit to using fertility treatments.  When asked if she conceived naturally she would always answer yes. 

How will people's perceptions ever warm to in vitro if they remain unaware of its common use? 

Maybe it is just me.  Maybe it is the fact that I am a hopeless liar and a terrible actor but I cannot imagine not speaking up about infertility to those around me.