Not Trying , livre ebook

NOT TRYING
NOT TRYING
INFERTILITY, CHILDLESSNESS, AND AMBIVALENCE
KRISTIN J. WILSON
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
Nashville
© 2014 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2014
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Book and cover design by Rich Hendel
Composition by E.T. Lowe, Nashville, TN
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2014007695
LC classification number HQ755.8.W544 2014
Dewey class number 306.87—dc23
ISBN 978-0-8265-1996-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1997-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1998-6 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. ENTERING OTHERHOOD
2. CONCEIVING STRATIFICATION
3. MOTHERHOOD FROM THE MARGINS
4. INDECISIONS
5. ASCRIBED MOTHERHOOD
6. REALIZATIONS
7. INTERVENTIONS
8. FROM MANDATE TO OPTION
Appendix
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My name is on this book and any errors inside are my own. But many people helped me complete it. If it were a movie, the credits would roll on and on. I first have to thank the women willing to take the time to share their thoughts and feelings with me. Without them there would be no book. My mentor and dear friend, Wendy Simonds, guided and supported me from beginning to end. I extend deep appreciation to my editor, Michael Ames, for his thoughtful feedback and patient tutelage. Thank you very much to the anonymous reviewers, to Ralph LaRossa, and to Elisabeth Burgess for their comments, which helped me improve the manuscript. My home institutions, Cabrillo College and Georgia State University, provided material support. Seline Szkupinski-Quiroga, another scholar working on this topic, kindly provided some key early advice about participant recruitment. Scholars from the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California–Santa Cruz welcomed me into their writing group and read some of the chapters, providing useful insights.
At the beginning of this project, I was fully immersed in fertility treatment. My then partner and I eventually gave up and pursued adoption. After a year-long training and home-study period, we took home a baby boy through the California fost-adopt program. Thirteen months later, his birth mother relinquished another newborn, our son’s brother. Evan and Leo are now six and five, respectively, and I have been working on this book their entire lives. This was made possible by the nurturing childcare provided by Adriana Castillo and the staff of Casa de Aprendizaje, by Ashley George of Honalee Children’s Center, and by Lupe Cortes, Heather Elrick-Forbes, and all the staff at Cabrillo Children’s Center.
Many friends, family, and colleagues provided emotional support, but I especially want to thank Mary Arterburn, Anthony Garcia, Paul Conte, Meredith Marine, Allison Gonzalez, Rebecca Green, Meadow Gibbons, Karinn Pearson, Melissa Workman, Jackie Logg, Raneta Pomroy, Chuck Smith, the “Cruzmoms,” and Mom and Dad.
NOT TRYING
1
ENTERING OTHERHOOD
“How’re you doing with your plight?” asked my new fertility doctor when he entered the exam room. While sitting fully clothed awaiting this initial consultation, I looked over the thick files that constituted my fertility history up to that point (it would get much thicker in the coming years). There was much more to the experience than these papers indicated. The files included the results of the examination by an OB/GYN, who palpated my reproductive organs and performed tests for HIV, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, all State of Georgia requirements to receive intrauterine insemination (IUI)—tests not required, of course, for conventional attempts at pregnancy.
There were files from the dozen or so IUIs I underwent at a for-profit clinic, a place I eventually left as it became clear that the timing of my cycles invariably failed to match the schedule of the moonlighting doctor. (The procedure is quick and simple: insert sperm-filled syringe into the cervical os and push the plunger. Yet it is a felony in Georgia to perform it oneself—or for a friend or partner to do so.)
Several pages documented the extensive blood work and medication regimen accompanying the next three cycles that took place at a nonprofit, women-centered, more technologically outfitted clinic. Ultrasound printouts of multiple, robust, fertility-drug-enhanced egg follicles—one cycle produced nine primed eggs—and records describing the healthy, motile, “normal” donor sperm were attached to brief, scrawled notations attesting to the negative results. The medical staff omitted any mention of the 105 degree fever that spiked half an hour after the last insemination, nor did they record the prescription for emergency high-dosage antibiotics used to kill the apparent infection. I would have to relay this dramatic incident to the new doctor myself.
My records did not include the semen tests, blood work, and surgical procedures that my partner went through. His diagnosis of irreversible sterility mentioned on all my medical forms was upsetting enough, but the subsequent discovery (pre-Obamacare) that we could no longer purchase private health insurance for him as a result was both appalling and absurd. Nowhere among the medical memos could one find any data about my or my partner’s feelings of inadequacy, the disruption of our expected life plan, and the destabilization of our gendered expectations of biological and genetic motherhood and fatherhood. Also missing from the files was my frustration at the paradoxical loss of control over my body at the same time obedient hypercontrol was prescribed. To wit, the daily pattern involved taking my basal body temperature; noting every abdominal twinge; ingesting chaste tree oil, dandelion tinctures, milk thistle caplets, and Clomid tablets (an ovulation drug); inserting progesterone suppositories; and suffering concomitant hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, and—worst of all—dry mouth. On a monthly basis, we dropped everything to race to the clinic when the urine dipstick yielded a “high fertility” readout on my Clearblue-brand ovulation computer. The clinics listed only the dosages for Clomid and progesterone. One could not discern from these documents the cyclical buildup of hope, followed by tearful disappointment and then hope built anew.
Despite all the emotional, financial, and medical trials expe rienced over the previous several years of infertility, the doctor’s question bothered me. His choice of the word plight implied victimhood, a label I rejected. Still, his inquiry suggested that he empathized with me, that he was not going to dismiss the psycho-emotional and social impact of infertility. His purpose in asking the question may have been to assess my emotional state or to solicit a summary of the relevant tests, treatments, and procedures that I already had completed or tried. I responded, “I don’t really think of it as a plight.”
“Well, journey, then,” he replied as he barely suppressed an eye roll and exhaled with exaggerated patience. Although the advice literature suggests to infertile women that they approach treatment as a journey to self-discovery and to well-earned, meant-to-be motherhood, this concept also failed to capture my experience. The daily hassles and discomforts; the monthly highs and lows; the frustrating, painful, time-consuming encounters with harried doctors, bored clinicians, and intrusive medical protocols—all felt less like a journey and more like a slog. The opposing concepts of plight and journey evoke respective images of an unwitting victim who lacks agency or an adventuresome traveler uninhibited by institutions and social structures.
Constructing the Infertile Woman
Some describe infertility as a “yuppie disease.” Women who seek fertility treatment in the United States do tend to fit a narrow demographic. Like me, they are usually white, middle class, well educated, and married. They appear to fit into a socially constructed paradigm of what may be called the “Infertile Woman,” a career-oriented woman who delayed childbearing and, now overwrought and desperate for motherhood, is able to tap into the social, cultural, and financial capital needed to make use of medically assisted conception or, perhaps, to eventually pursue adoption. For its part, the treatment industry cultivates a more positive image of a savvy consumer capable of selecting from an array of ever more elaborate fertility technologies and alternative cures like acupuncture.
Scholars, support groups, and caregivers alike portray suffering as a universal experience for infertile women. Harvard University business professor Deborah Spar writes in The Baby Business , “Regardless of the cause, however, and regardless of age, infertility wreaks inestimable havoc on those who suffer from it” (2006, 16). INCIID, the InterNational Council on Infertility Information Dissemination, is a well-known information clearinghouse and gateway to fertility clinics. The top of their webpage contains a picture of a smiling woman alongside the quotation, “INCIID [pronounced “inside”] is the one place where I can go and feel understood when dealing with the most painful part of my life—infertility” ( INCIID ). Their logo, incidentally, contains a line drawing of a man and woman in business attire holding hands. This image suggests that their target audience consists of professional married couples—that is, yuppies. Fertility and Sterility and Human Reproduction , the primary medical journals on infertility, regularly publish articles on the psychological consequences of infertility, devoting subcategories to “psychology and counseling,” services often required by clinics providing fertility treatment. These articles typically make the case that infertility is a major life disruption, and they examine fertility distress from many angles. Advertisements in these same journals tap into images of the desperate and h