Dear GMA and Cassie Kelley…

I am enjoying my last couple of days of freedom before school starts again by doing things I will not (and don’t normally) do.  Things like watching morning/daytime TV shows.  Yesterday was The Price is Right–man that show is the greatest.  This morning, I just happened to turn on GMA.  Fascinating to me how a “morning news show” can be filled with mostly drivel and very little actual “news.” But I digress.
I was going to turn the TV off to go be productive when they did a teaser for a segment coming up that I JUST HAD to see.  Because they were doing a story about Lady A’s singer, Charles Kelley, who with his wife dealt with infertility.  And I find these types of stories fascinating.  Because when I think of infertility, I think of old ladies and people who are overweight, and I’ve been working hard for the past few years to come to terms with what I now know: some people who are older than me or heavier than me have conceived no problem and some people who are younger or thinner than me can’t get pregnant no matter what.  There is no rhyme or reason to it.  And Charles Kelley’s wife, Cassie, was young and beautiful and thin…and also infertile.

Except that she never went through any treatment (at least based on the story that she shared on GMA) and just “got pregnant on her own by surprise.”  The advice from GMA for other infertiles: This proves to just keep the hope alive. OK.  Go through 5 years of useless, humiliating, painful treatment, then tell me to just “keep hope alive.”  That statement irks me almost as much as “just relax and it will happen.”

So I was annoyed by the segment. Then I went to Cassie’s actual blog, because I started to wonder if maybe there was more to the story than they’d told–namely months of treatment like me.  But according to her website, nope.  It really just happened on its own.  They were told they had a 1% chance of conceiving, and lo and behold it happened.

So then I was feeling a smidge of hopefulness–maybe that would be me and Eric.  Maybe it would “just happen” for us, too.  In 5 years, we’ve tried both with and without meds.  A lot.  And NOTHING has worked.  And I’m not entirely sure if I’m more bummed that the natural way didn’t work or that they drugged up way didn’t work.  And I’m not entirely sure how many more drugs I want to inject into my stomach or catheters I want through my cervix before I tap out since nothing has ever worked.

But her pregnancy announcement was a feel-good read, until I got to this: “Our baby decided to join our family in God’s time, which is always right.”

God’s time…

You MUST be kidding me.  I have talked about this before.  And I realize it’s going to be controversial and I don’t care.  In my opinion, GOD has nothing to do with your baby.  How can he?????

Did God give the baby to the crack mom who doesn’t take care of the baby and the baby goes on to be another crack head proliferating the crack heads of the world?

Did God give the baby to the teenage girl who is terrified sitting on a toilet looking at that pregnancy test freaking out wondering how she’s going to raise it??

And most importantly:

Did God decide NOT to give us (and some of the MOST amazing couples I know) a baby???

If God GAVE you your baby “in his time,” that means he’s chosen to withhold a baby from us [and thousands of couples like us].  For 5 years.  And guess what.  I don’t accept that. I can’t accept that there is a God making the above decisions…unless it’s a God who doesn’t actually love us and care about us as people.  Do you know what I accept in place of God???  I accept that biology happens.  Science happens.  But God…God does not happen when it comes to conception.  And every time I see someone talking about how they got their miracle, how they just prayed really hard, how God will decide if/when we are ready to be parents, I want to scream.  Because you are trying to justify the incredibly painful, incredibly shitty monster that is infertility.  You are trying to explain why you got what we want.  And there is no explanation for it.  You got lucky. We have not.  Be happy.  Be thankful.  Be ecstatic. We are happy for you.  Trust me, we don’t wish what we’ve been through on anyone.  Even the people who I can’t stand, I would never want them to have to deal with this.

But please don’t tell me it’s because of God. Tell me that this sucks.  And that there’s no guarantee in this battle.  Don’t tell me to keep the hope alive.  I want to know where the stories are about the couples who decide to quit trying because the YEARS of pain and wasted time and money get to be too much.  I want to hear about how they move on with their lives, how they live childfree but NOT by choice.  We never hear about that.  It seems to me there are two types of “parenting” articles: The martyr parents who talk about how hard it is/how they have put their entire lives on hold for their precious bundles and we should all worship them because of it and the childfree by choice who talk about how everyone should choose to be childfree because kids are terrible, soul-sucking demons.  But there’s never anything from the people who don’t get to choose–they are childfree by default.  And it’s really freaking hard at first, but then they get through and they make a life for themselves.  I want to hear from the people who wouldn’t have chosen this life, but that still have incredibly fulfilling lives, even without kids to raise.  Because right now, that seems like the only hope that we have.

Side note: Rereading this I feel like I sound much more upset about childfree by default than I actually am.  I just don’t want to hear from people with kids about how God gives you what he thinks you are ready for and just keep hope alive.  Both are incredibly insensitive and rude comments. And I am over it.