The Loneliness Of Infertility

I never felt more isolated than when I talked to other women about trying to have a baby.

- Alexandra Kimball

The summer after our third miscarriage, Jeremy convinced me to go to a fancy party for his work. He thought that dressing up and eating a nice meal in a ballroom with other dressed-up people might distract me. I sat in my cocktail dress — too tight on my postIVf bloat — and held my husband’s hand under the table. Occasionally, a waiter would pass by with canapés and I’d grab one with my free hand. The table was buzzing with wine-leavened conversation, with introductions and interruptions and compliments, especially for the women, who wore a lot of modest necklines and black and navy — the assured unchicness of women who do not need to impress. They generated an air of capability and confidence, of success.

I desperately, desperately did not want to talk to any of them. Over the previous four years, socializing had become my biggest problem, second only to infertility. If you had asked me about my social life, I would have said, ‘It does not exist,’ though, in fact, all I did was talk to other people — in support groups on Facebook and the forum sections of infertility websites. I’d wake up in the morning and log on and read and write all day with hundreds of infertile women, sharing details of our miscarriages, our IVF results, our searches for surrogates, and replying to one another’s queries and stories in turn. But as soon as I logged off, I’d forget all about these women. Not to say I found these groups useless: though I wasn’t happy about my condition, I was certainly grateful to have a place I could discuss it. But the circumstances of these conversations left them feeling ghostly and unreal, in a way that talking with other women, even about other shitty and gendered topics, never had.