Will infertility education at an earlier age have an impact? I pondered this on a recent visit to my home town.
I am a Denver, Colorado transplant; one of many. Most of us have flocked from the Midwest and East Coast. Why? To avoid the weather and immerse ourselves in nature of course!
I try to return to my homeland (a suburb of Chicago) at least once a year. I plan it around the weather. In other words, I usually visit in the summer. Despite my meticulous planning, when the plane begins descending, the sky is often chock full of clouds and rain.
My most recent visit was this past August – prime summertime. Yes, it rained, but it was brief. Tolerable.
I always stay with my brother and sister-in-law who live in the same town I grew up in. They live not even a mile from her parents, and about a mile from my parents.
I am the black sheep of the family, but that’s a post for another time.
I do my best to stay active when I’m home. This means early morning outside runs. I have been a runner since I was fifteen, and I ran my first and only marathon in Chicago ten years ago. It’s safe to say it’s the last. I assumed I had the best chance of completing it because Chicago is not only at sea level, but the course was flat. How hard could it be? It was harder than I had imagined, and I did complete it, but gosh it was challenging.
I set off for my morning run, not knowing where I was headed. I soon approached my former high school, and jogged toward the track and field.
As I rounded the corner, I glanced up at the bleacher seats.
Expect Victory.
Was that there when I was in high school?? Possibly. If it was, did I heed the advice?
In my opinion, I did.
I expected that I would be victorious when I set out to conceive a baby. I assumed that it would be straightforward. After all, nothing that I had learned in junior high and high school health class had told me otherwise.
Nothing that I had learned from my OB/GYN had told me otherwise.
Nothing about my menstrual cycle had told me otherwise.
What if back in the day, at my annual physical, a healthcare professional took a look at my ovaries and observed that I had more than the “average” number of follicles. What if he or she told me this could possibly affect ovulation?
What if I was told that my on average thirty-two day menstrual cycle technically fell into the “normal” category, but should be monitored?
What if this professional would have told me that stress can affect adrenal function, and delay or even prevent ovulation?
Maybe he or she DID, and I just wasn’t in the place to hear it. After all, isn’t the goal to avoid pregnancy when we’re in high school and in our early twenties? It was for me, and continued to be in my later twenties as well.
However, had I been educated at an earlier age, I might not have made the decision to go on birth control, and remain on it for five years. Had a professional stressed the fact that birth control prevents ovulation, and my body might continue doing so after I stopped taking it, I might have made a different decision.
Or not.
Who knows?
As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
I firmly believe that we need to educate our young men and women about the symptoms and causes of infertility earlier rather than later. We need to do basic fertility testing sooner rather than later.
So we can be prepared.
So we can have realistic expectations.
And we need to educate how common miscarriages are.
So we can be prepared.
So we can have realistic expectations.
I was thirty-one when I became truly educated about my reproductive system and menstrual cycle. It was too late when I realized that I did not have a normal cycle like I assumed I did.
It took a lot of time, money, and emotional stress attempting to discern what was happening with my body. Why wasn’t I getting pregnant?
By the time I experienced my first loss, it was too late. I hadn’t expected it. I didn’t know anyone who had had such a loss, although there were plenty of others who had.
In my humble opinion, healthcare workers, parents, and teachers need to put the bug in the younger generation’s ear at a much earlier age. Yes, this generation is not necessarily ready to get pregnant, and might tisk tisk the thought of a miscarriage, but I believe they would be better armed with the knowledge than without it.
Love and strength,
Jen
A passionate infertility advocate, Jen Noonan destigmatizes the shame and guilt surrounding infertility and miscarriage. Her debut memoir, In Due Time, can be found on Amazon at amzn.com/0996308601
