If you know someone struggling with infertility, thank you for considering what it might be like to walk in their shoes. That’s why you’re reading this. You’re trying to empathize and be a supportive friend. Thank you. Your friend who’s experiencing infertility is going through a tender time and it’s common for friendships to be strained. It’s likely a time of crisis while they try to have a baby and your support and understanding could make a world of difference.
This article by Julie Gallagher published in The Lily, which I had the pleasure of contributing to, provides an in-depth look at how to support your infertile friend. The piece also includes the unique crisis for women of colour and Black women facing infertility. Below is the cheatsheet (from a White settler’s perspective) for what it’s like to experience infertility and what to say to a friend dealing with infertility.
What you can do:
- Educate yourself about infertility. Then, consider offering to have an honest conversation with your friend about their experience. They may not be ready to talk now or ever and that’s OK.
- Listen. Don’t tell them Just adopt or that if they relax or try XYZ that they’ll get and stay pregnant.
- Ask if they need anything. If they’re going through treatment, consider offering: to take them to and from appointments, to pick up medication and to drop off meals.
- Accept their decline to be social. Baby showers and gender/sex reveal parties may be especially triggering and a reason they won’t join in or might only join briefly.
- If you’re announcing your own pregnancy publicly or to a group, consider telling your friend ahead of time one-on-one.
- Avoid only talking about the positive side of what they’re going through. Instead, allow them to express their concerns and fears. (Unless they request to only give a positive response!)
- Don’t say jokingly ‘You can have my kids.’
Why infertility is so challenging
Trying to have a baby and it not happening with a set of criteria (time, opportunities for insemination) leads to individuals or couples being diagnosed as infertile and is considered a disease according to the World Health Organization.
Studies have revealed the emotional anguish that people experiencing infertility and undergoing treatment it can be comparable to going through cancer. That anguish can be uniquely experience by LGBQT+ individuals and couples who are infertile due to circumstance.
Even though infertility is a disease, treatment is often not publicly funded and a lot of insurance doesn’t cover it. But fertility treatment can be extremely expensive and can prohibit many people and couples from trying the treatment that they need to have a shot at having a baby. Even if procedures are covered, medication is often expensive. For example, IVF can by $10-20K+ including medication. If you need a donor egg or sperm or surrogacy then it can run into the $100K+ range.
Reminders of the fact that you don’t have a baby can be agonizing. This makes baby showers, 1st birthday and gender reveal parties something they may not have the mental capacity to attend or will only come briefly, especially if they just had a loss or other heartbreaking news. Being around your baby or children may be too painful, even though they love them dearly. This adds guilt to the already stressful situation.
It’s a time of identity crisis where you don’t know where you fit in. They want to be a parent so badly but you’re not succeeding even though they’re doing everything in their control to make it happen. There’s so much out of their control and many, many unknowns.
Infertility is time consuming and can be all consuming. There’s endless research, appointments, potential medication side effects to deal with and often other health issues that come with fertility treatment, surgeries and loss.
People experiencing infertility are often told advice that isn’t helpful and that seems to put blame on them, such as being told to relax or adopt. If relaxing helped, they would. But infertility causes stress and unhelpful advice can add to that stress.
Infertility is misunderstood and can often be considered by many infertile to be too taboo to talk about freely and especially at work. That adds shame to the list of feelings as well as isolation of feeling misunderstood because of the lack of support.
