A Guy's Perspective on Infertility: We Struggle, Too

Editor's note: Today's article is a special submission by Michael Barr, author of Swimming in Circles: A Baby Chase Odyssey.

As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, I am, or at least have been, completely, unequivocally, insane. Allow me to explain.

I remember with clarity sitting across from the Doctor when he told us we had a one in a million chance of conceiving a biological child without some form of intervention. I remember my wife calmly wiping away the tears as she asked question after relevant question. And I remember not opening my mouth. Not once.

On the ride home, she talked to her mother on the phone. She talked to her sister. Heck, she even talked to my sister. And I couldn’t think of a single person I could talk to. I could barely talk to my wife about it.

After the first round of in vitro fertilization failed, I was confused, I was hurt, and I was angry. But I surely didn’t tell anyone.

This will get better, I thought. We’ll get our baby and all of this angst will go away.

Then the second round failed. Then the third. And then the fourth.

My bottled emotions at a boiling point, I searched for resources, for an outlet. I needed someone to talk to about this, anyone, or I was going to lose my mind. I found books and blogs and magazine articles – and they were all written by and for women. And why not? We give the shots, we don’t receive them. We don’t carry the child, we don’t have a womb, we don’t obsess about baby names, baby rooms, baby bags.

But you see, men don’t talk about stuff like this, right? We talk about tools and sports and cars. You don’t crack a beer with your buddy and comment, “say Joe, did I tell you about my low motility?” Men are resilient, we’re unemotional, we don’t need to be comforted.

Hogwash.

We’re out there, lurking in blogs and scouring Twitter for information, for commonality, for friends – friends who have been through this seemingly taboo issue that can say, “you’re not alone in this.” And even if it’s a virtual one, we need a hand shake or a fist-bump or, yeah, even a hug. It’s not that we need our own community, but we at least need a shared one.

So I implore you to consider the guy. We might not say much, but it doesn’t mean we’re not struggling right along with our better halves. The entirety of what could be considered the infertility web needs a paradigm shift, or at least a little reinvention, in order to provide a lens that a man can see through in order to join in what feels like a very exclusive club.

Men can’t expect to stay silent after every piece of bad news that seems to go along with this baby-making-science and expect that things will simply get easier. Because, by definition, that’s insane.

Fist bump to my guy friends. Your boys may not swim well, but you’re not alone.

Michael Barr is the author of Swimming in Circles: A Baby Chase Odyssey. Reach him via email at michaelcbarr@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter at @swim_in_circles.