Not Trying: Infertility, Childlessness, and Ambivalence

6. Realizations

( 117 ) REALIZATIONS If we are to recognize and respect choice, we have to respect these choices as well: the choice to accept infertility and the choice to fight it. —Barbara Katz Rothman, Recreating Motherhood LaWanda Jackson, a forty-two-year-old nurse’s aide, tells me that five years ago she did not want children but that she did not feel definite about that decision. More recently she began wanting children, but she volunteers—rather adamantly, in fact—that she never feels “desperate” about this new desire. Several of the women I spoke with make the outright claim that they are not desperate, that default image of infertile women. Infertile, childless, or both, the women I interviewed relate their stories in ways that are ambiguous and inconsistent. Even if many of them express sadness, disappointment, or wistfulness at times, they generally describe these feelings as short-lived or diffuse. Some say they always wanted children but then go on to say that they maybe never really wanted them anyway. Some call themselves infertile but point out that there is still a chance they could get pregnant and have a baby. Some do not dwell on their childlessness; instead they declare themselves fulfilled, even as they weep during the interview for the lost opportunity to have grandchildren someday. Their feelings are complex. 6 NOT TRYING ( 118 ) Their so-called decisions are not firm ones. Their plans and their memories change even as they relate them to me. Transcending Realizations Recognizing one’s infertility or involuntary childlessness is often not a discrete event. The study participants come to an awareness about their childlessness often unselfconsciously and gradually. Perceptions of fertility vary within one’s lifetime, even within the conventionally defined fertile years (ages fifteen to forty-four). The women I spoke with discover in different ways that motherhood will not just happen for them and their reactions vary accordingly. For example, those for whom childlessness “just happened” cannot pinpoint when they realized that they were always going to be nonmothers. Two outliers among the study participants, Azra Alic from Bosnia and Zara Senai from Eritrea, represent the most “infertile identified” of the women. They actively work to transcend the label of infertility. Azra, the only one pursuing ART (in the form of IVF), points out that when she was told that fertility could be a problem for her, “I wasn’t thinking about kids at that time.” She does not worry about her fertility potential when she first realizes that there could be a problem at the age of twenty-five. She is not yet interested in becoming a mother. She focuses on the abdominal pain she has and the need for surgical intervention. Her concern soon grows, however; and by the time I talk with her about it four years later, she is beginning IVF, feeling depressed and emotionally raw, and sullenly planning her future as a childless old maid. Only Azra and Zara, among my respondents, convey unresolved emotional pain in their interviews. These two women have much in common. Both endured large ovarian cysts and multiple surgeries, and both harbor doubt that their partners will still want them, despite reassurances of love and loyalty. Both women are secular Muslims who are fairly acculturated despite ( 119 ) REALIZATIONS being first-generation immigrants. Zara keeps her uterus because , as she says, quoting her husband, “Maybe someday these people—they do a lot of research—something will come up; don’t give up.” These two women cherish their godmother auntie roles but see that as a second-best alternative to real motherhood . It took Azra a while to first realize that her fertility was in danger and that it was something she cared about. Now she is accepting medical treatment beyond her comfort level, leading me to wonder whether she is in fact getting a little bit desperate. However, she adamantly denies being “stressed” and indeed gets annoyed when doctors insinuate that she is. Both Azra and Zara clearly state that they know that there is more to life than motherhood and that they will eventually come to grips with that fact. They just have not done so yet. Ambivalent Realizations Several of the women vacillate between wanting children and not wanting children, sometimes in reaction to medical assertions regarding their fertility. They demonstrate their ambivalence by weighing the benefits and drawbacks of having children or not having them, by “wanting...