What IF?

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

I found this video on another blog that I have just started reading


I like the way this addresses some or all of the feelings that couples, and especially women feel when they are faced with infertility. I have to say, I have accepted the fact that I cannot have a baby without help, and I have been fine with that for a number of years now. In fact, when faced with the option of going through IVF, which is very costly and it may not even work, I began to entertain the option of adoption. Now I have never seriously considered adoption before. I had always thought that wasn't something that fit with my personality. Meaning, as someone who can be very private, I didn't think the idea of some other entity deciding I was ok to be a mother was something I wanted to go through. Which is why I was somewhat surprised by this new openness to the idea. After discussing this with Adam, and doing research, we found that we just wanted to be parents. We just wanted to add to our family, it didn't so much matter if that addition was biologically connected to us or not. So, for us, we didn't think that even trying IVF first was the way to go. And now, having gone through the home study, I can say that I felt that our social worker is on our side, and is not sitting there judging every little thing that we say or do. The system just wants to make sure that these children are placed in safe homes.

Having said all that, this video brings up valid points in how society looks at infertility and adoption. I think a lot of women feel like infertility somehow makes them less than a woman. To me, I have always just kind of thought of it as one of those things that you have to deal with. By that I mean, everyone is not perfect, some people have asthma, some people have poor eyesight, some people have learning disabilities,some people are infertile, and everyone has to learn how to live with these obstacles. I am not trying to belittle anyone's feelings on this, it is just how I look at it. The one point of the video that I really related to was the facebook login "what if." It did seem as if everyone was having a baby at the same time, and that does make you face the fact that you are not having one.
Ok, I kind of went off on some tangents there, but I hope the video brings some attention to the fact that there might be some of your friends or family that may be feeling some of these things, and hopefully you can see where they are coming from.