A Brief Experience with Infertility as Told by My Mother While She Laughed

The doctor said [1] our chances [2] of conceiving were one [3] in a million, [4] [5] so I decided to go back to school, but during the first semester we got pregnant and I dropped out. [6]

[1]I have no way to verify what the doctor actually said to my mother. I try to imagine the moment. I picture blue scrubs with a white coat. An I.D. badge hanging around his neck. I can see the white walls and laminate tiled floor. The bright lights. The sterile smell. Was he sympathetic? Was he straight-faced and stoic? I try to imagine my mother. Her pale t-shirts and high-waisted jeans that I’ve only seen in pictures. Was she alone? Was my father sitting next to her, squeezing her hand tight and staring at the floor with his old, thin-rimmed, oval glasses. There’s so much of the story that is lost to time. As I reflect on it now, I wonder how much my mother remembers. I wonder how much she purposefully leaves out. All I know is that every time my mother repeats this story, I remember her laughing.

[ii] On average 80% of women who are trying to get pregnant conceive within a year. I’ve read this fact a few hundred times. So many times, that as I review it now, I don’t need to read it to know what it says. Instead, my eyes trace over the curves and sharp turns of the letters, ruminating on what it means for the other 20%.

Infertility is usually defined as the inability to get pregnant within a year of trying to conceive. Infertility was never a word I associated with my mother. I never saw her experience as infertility until I experienced it for myself. Maybe that’s why I’m writing this now. As I become part of that 20%, I am beginning to see the brief story that my mother told me in a new light. I am beginning to realize that this short, humorous anecdote may deserve more than the laughter we rewarded it with.

[iii] One in a million, the doctor said. Her chances of conception were as likely as rolling six ten-sided dice and getting all zeroes. As likely as flipping a coin twenty times and getting heads every single time. I don’t know the math, but the chances of something one in a million happening is significantly lower than 80 percent.

[iv] And she laughed. I’m not sure if it’s my memory or imagination, but when I recall the telling of this story, I hear my mother laughing. The laughter doesn’t burst out of her. It’s not loud or obvious. It’s the kind of laughter my mother performs when she’s the one telling the joke. It’s a mischievous wink she gives you to let you know that we’re in on it together. With her three children sitting in front of her, one in a million is laughable.

But looking at her laughter now it feels like its more than that. More than just the fact that she beat the odds. More than just the humour of the anecdote. Was my mother’s laughter an attempt to reach out during a vulnerable moment? Did she always laugh when telling this story?

Growing up, I think the reason I never placed my mother’s experience in the category of infertility is because she laughed. I’d heard other women describe infertility and it was always accompanied by tears. I could never connect my mother’s experience with those of other women because I never heard the pain of infertility in her voice. She never cried when remembering it. She laughed.

[v] I never questioned the space between these two phrases. It was impossible and then it happened. That was the miracle. On the page it is less than a single centimeter. The smallest of spaces that held unknowable multitudes. I never asked my mother what happened in that space. In the story, that time did not exist.

In reality, that space held about a year of my mother’s life. A year might seem like nothing compared to the thirty years that followed. One year of brutal disappointment compared with thirty years of watching your three children grow up. But then I think about my year.

When my husband told me that he wanted to start trying, something flipped in my mind. In that moment, the possibility of having children felt so real to me that it was as if the children already existed.

And then a year passed.

And when I think about it now that tiny space feels like an eternity. It feels like feigning joy that used to be real. It feels like warm tears hitting the cold bathroom floor. It feels like mourning something you aren’t allowed to mourn. To me, it never felt like laughter.

[vi] And this is when she laughed again. As a backup plan my mother had returned to school for a second degree. Upon discovering she was pregnant, she threw out the backup plan.

I only thought to question my mother’s laughter in the midst of my own tears. I read that you are thirty times more likely to laugh in a group compared to when alone. If we are more likely to laugh together, I wonder if it's more common to cry alone. I wonder if my mother’s laughter in front of us was a response to the tears she shed alone.

My mother never told me about her own tears, until I told her about mine.

My younger sister’s due date lined up almost to the day of when, a year previous, my husband and I decided to start trying to have children. In the weeks leading up to that day, my husband and I sat in a not-completely-empty Denny’s, and I told him that I didn’t want to try anymore. Tears streamed down my face as I told him it hurt too much.

My mother described the experience of watching a movie with my father. In the movie a couple found a baby abandoned in the woods and suddenly they had a child. The tears streamed down her face as she expressed how cruel it was that it could be that easy.

In discovering my mother’s tears, I realized that she did not always laugh when telling this story. Before the laughter, there were tears. I wonder when my tears will turn into laughter. It seems so easy to look at my mother’s story, thirty years removed with three adult children, and understand why she laughs, but I’m not sure that my mother is even aware of when those tears turned into laughter.

My story does not feel brief right now. It does not feel humorous. I have no answers. I have no laughter. Right now, all I have are my tears.

As I write, I think about how we speak to one another without words: laughing to connect or crying to mourn. I’ve always thought crying was an isolating experience, but all language is a form of connection. We need connection when we cry. Someone to see the tears being shed. Someone to wipe them from our cheek and hold them in their palm. To touch and feel them. To know that they are real.

Now, as I remember the laughter my mother expressed when telling this story to everyone, I think about the tears that she told me about in private. The tears that I now reach out for. The tears that I hold in the palm of my hand. The tears that I hold up next to my own. The tears that we now cry together. I’d like to believe her laughter was meant to be shared with everyone, but her tears, her tears were meant for me.

[1] I have no way to verify what the doctor actually said to my mother. I try to imagine the moment. I picture blue scrubs with a white coat. An I.D. badge hanging around his neck. I can see the white walls and laminate tiled floor. The bright lights. The sterile smell. Was he sympathetic? Was he straight-faced and stoic? I try to imagine my mother. Her pale t-shirts and high-waisted jeans that I’ve only seen in pictures. Was she alone? Was my father sitting next to her, squeezing her hand tight and staring at the floor with his old, thin-rimmed, oval glasses. There’s so much of the story that is lost to time. As I reflect on it now, I wonder how much my mother remembers. I wonder how much she purposefully leaves out. All I know is that every time my mother repeats this story, I remember her laughing.

[1] On average 80% of women who are trying to get pregnant conceive within a year. I’ve read this fact a few hundred times. So many times, that as I review it now, I don’t need to read it to know what it says. Instead, my eyes trace over the curves and sharp turns of the letters, ruminating on what it means for the other 20%.

[1] One in a million, the doctor said. Her chances of conception were as likely as rolling six ten-sided dice and getting all zeroes. As likely as flipping a coin twenty times and getting heads every single time. I don’t know the math, but the chances of something one in a million happening is significantly lower than 80 percent.

[1] And she laughed. I’m not sure if it’s my memory or imagination, but when I recall the telling of this story, I hear my mother laughing. The laughter doesn’t burst out of her. It’s not loud or obvious. It’s the kind of laughter my mother performs when she’s the one telling the joke. It’s a mischievous wink she gives you to let you know that we’re in on it together. With her three children sitting in front of her, one in a million is laughable.

[1] I never questioned the space between these two phrases. It was impossible and then it happened. That was the miracle. On the page it is less than a single centimeter. The smallest of spaces that held unknowable multitudes. I never asked my mother what happened in that space. In the story, that time did not exist.

And then a year passed.

[1] And this is when she laughed again. As a backup plan my mother had returned to school for a second degree. Upon discovering she was pregnant, she threw out the backup plan.

My mother never told me about her own tears, until I told her about mine.

My story does not feel brief right now. It does not feel humorous. I have no answers. I have no laughter. Right now, all I have are my tears.