Catholic Infertility

I mentioned the pre-marital counseling DH and I went through before we were married in the Catholic Church. As part of that, we also had a one day workshop for engaged couples. One talk as part of that workshop was given by a nun and focused on how important a healthy sexual relationship is to marriage. We both sat there thinking, "they have the lay married couple give the financial talk and the celibate nun give the sex talk?"

It is these types of experiences that make me frustrated with the Catholic Church. I mean, if you are going to insist on celibacy and rely on (nearly all) men, you should expect people to not want to listen to advice on certain topics where being a celibate male is not that relevant.

So I wasn't too surprised with what I read in the Catholic bishop's advice for infertile couples. The first half reads pretty much as you might expect since it was written by a bunch of men who have never been married or had sex (or at least not in a very long time). I tried to not get upset when one of their touching little statements from actual couples made is sound dangerously close to the advice of "just relax" when a couple described how they considered IVF, but then tried a more "natural" approach and had a positive, successful outcome. Good for them. Too bad it won't work for most others. If the bishops want to talk about finding peace in this struggle that is one thing, but telling us we should just relax is quite another.

My anger boiled over about halfway through when I reached the cloning section. Yes, you read that right. A document supposedly about infertile couples and ART made a direct comparison to cloning. I can understand the moral concerns with IVF (I have them myself), but to put IVF and cloning in the same breath is just not honest. It's not like cloning is an alternative considered by infertile couples and including it in a document targeted to this population just insults us, most of whom are trying to figure out the morally appropriate way to proceed.

Luckily the bishops then moved in a little light humor. At least I assumed they must have been joking when they described using locating the woman's fertile time to maximize chance of conceiving in the married couple's loving act of union. hahahahahaha! I mean, which couple actually pursuing timed intercourse while trying to conceive would call it a loving act? Timed sex is one of the most stressful and least enjoyable parts of the whole process. I felt closer to my husband praying together after our IUI than some of the times my fertility monitor said we needed to have sex that day.

I understand the teaching about procreative and unitive love in marriage. But intercourse is not the only way to have unitive love. In fact I am not sure it is even the most important way in which two people unite themselves in marriage. So why is intercourse the only way to express procreative love?

Small groups

If you had told me five years that I would be part of a small group faith sharing community, I would not have believed you. If you had told me I would be providing testimony in my church about the benefits of this small group, I would have laughed you out of the room.

But life and faith are funny in many ways and this morning DH and I found ourselves standing up in front of our church giving testimony. Our church is trying to get more people to sign up for small faith sharing groups and asked us to speak to recruit the younger crowd. I did chuckle to myself a little when the organizer spoke after us and said they will put you in whatever type of group you want. I chuckled because when we first signed up for a small group, we requested a group of young couples or young professionals. People at our stage of lives.

That is not what we got at all. At our first meeting, we both sat there thinking, "why are we in this group" and "we don't fit in at all." Over time we got to know them and the people in the group are really great, so please don't misunderstand me. There were moments of frustration when they called us "kids" and seemed surprised that we would be old enough to have a professional career and own a house. We are definitely at a different life stage of the other members and thought that we would have been better off with people more our age.

But, again, life and God are funny at times. We started this group about 18 months ago. About 6 months ago, our church started a social group of young couples. See, we don't really fit in with them, either. We are Catholic and while not everyone adheres to everything the Catholic church says about family planning (we certainly haven't), by the time couples have been married for as long as we have in the church, they transition from "young couples" to "young parents." The young couples group is filled with people who have been married for 3, 9, 15 months. There has already been a pregnancy announcement.

So maybe our seemingly misplacement in a group with older couples was just what we needed after all. Today there was also a baptism introduction during mass and it was hard for me. I wanted to be up there and wondered when/if we would ever get our turn. That's why I think our group is just perfect for us. We can talk about the sacrament of baptism and focus on our baptism, or what it means to be godparents. We don't talk about baptizing our own children. So our slightly older group is a nice respite for us. A place where we can for once not focus on this stage of life and our inability to transition out of it.

Blessing

Yesterday I was thinking of what to post, thinking it had better be a good one since this is my 100th post. I feel like this accomplishment should not pass with just some random daily thoughts. But nothing was coming to me and I was just amusing myself with thoughts from my big present shopping trip yesterday and planning on posting about that.

Then I went to church today. This is the season of Advent, a time of preparation and anticipation. Often people will compare Advent to expecting a child, which makes sense since it is about preparing for the birth of Christ. So there I am sitting in church, when our priest makes this connection. And then he called up all couples who are expecting a child for a special blessing. I'm sure you can all imagine my reaction to that. A million things went through my mind at once. I was upset that I had yet another reminder of this struggle. Angry with yet another extra attention paid to pregnant women. Wishing I could just disappear.

But as my mind (and stomach) started churning, he did something else. He invited any couple who wish they were expecting a child up for a blessing as well. If my thoughts were swirling before, now they were in overdrive. Was this meant for me? Is this some type of sign? Should I go up? Finally, some recognition of others in this expecting journey. Validation. Confusion. We are not "out" in our church. Would everyone expect some announcement after mass? What does DH want me to do? Would it be weird if I went up by myself? Do I look like an unwed mother?*

See, DH is not Catholic. He's currently going through RCIA, which is education for adults to join the church. The people going through this actually leave mass halfway through to talk more about the readings and learn about how the church interprets them. It's great that he is doing this, but since he left mass before this blessing, he was not with me at this moment. I had no way to know how he would feel if I went up there when I knew it would solicit comments afterwards. And he wasn't there for support. Three other couples went up and there I was by myself getting a blessing for expectant mothers.

And the comments definitely came. We have coffee and donuts in our church hall and I tried to find DH quickly to explain what happened. But he was late getting out of his group and ended up seeing some people in our small group first, who of course mentioned it right away. Even a couple we don't know, but recognized each other from church as we both ate brunch at the same place after mass today took that opportunity to introduce themselves to us. It was kinda "hey, I remember you as the single woman going up for a expectant mother blessing, we'll keep you in our prayers." It was nice of them, and they meant well, but still I felt like I had a big scarlet letter on. At least DH was with me this time, so they could see there is a man in my life.

So now we are out. I hope they don't continue to mention it and don't keep asking if we have an announcement.

The blessing was nice. Although I initially felt a jumble of emotions because of the unexpectedness of it, after I had a chance to talk about it with DH, I feel some peace now.

* I don't mean to criticize single mothers (my own raised me and my sister by herself) but obviously the Catholic Church has particular feelings about premarital sex.

Down

I've been down these past few days. First my friend Ella had her beautiful baby a few days ago. I am so jealous. Ella is great and I'm happy for her, but it just reminds me of how long we've been at this so far. See, Ella and I met on ivillage before we even started TTC. I connected with her b/c we are both in academia and were trying to work out when to start trying with the academic calendar. We had both planned to start in one month and then threw caution the wind on the same weekend a month early. But from there are stories diverged, although neither has been easy. One of the things that made my niece's birth hard was the knowledge that if we had been successful our first month, we could have had a baby at the same time. That was how long we've been trying. And now, here is someone who started TTC the same time we did, who even had difficulty on the journey to pregnancy, and now she has her cute little baby. I feel like I've been lapped again.

Also, as the Christmas season is getting closer and decorations are going up (not in our house as I believe in giving Thanksgiving its due, but you can't escape Christmas in stores), I remember how optimistic I was last Christmas. We trade off spending Christmas with each other's parents, so last year I knew we would be spending this year at home b/c his parents live nearby. This will be our first Christmas as adults where we wake up in our own bed. And I was so sure that it would be our first Christmas with a baby. I thought everything would be different this year.

Last night I went to my church's women's council meeting for the first time. I should have known to avoid it when I'm feeling down, but a friend has been encouraging me to go for a while. But as she was introducing me to people, the first question everyone asked was how many kids I had, or if my kids went to the parish school.