mom stories
Shame and Infertility By Cris Pearlstein
M
y daughter just turned two years old, and so for two years, I’ve been someone’s mom. Surreal, because it took so damn long to happen. For four years becoming a mom was all I thought about. I was so desperate to be one and I did everything I could to make it happen. I was a frequent flyer at the fertility doctor, received repeated acupuncture treatments, ate a gluten-free diet, and was on a constant roller coaster of hormones. The details of my journey with infertility may have been shocking (the shots! The pills! The everpresent bruises all over my body!), but the fact that I was on the journey was not. Before the constant negative pregnancy tests, the countless doctor’s appointments, and the realization that having sex with my husband wouldn’t yield a child, I had a prescient fear that I would never be a mom. It was a fear that felt more like a vision—something that was destined to happen—and I was always sure, more than I was ever sure about anything, that having kids would be very difficult for me. This fear was deeply rooted in the belief that my body would one day fail me when I needed it most. I don’t know how I was so certain of my infertility, but I can definitely guess why. The assumption that my body would fail me was only a short leap away from the fact that I was always ashamed of my body for one reason or another (as I think most women who came of age in the 90s are). Let’s think for a second about the way girls were taught to view their bodies when I was growing up. The “Body Positivity” movement sure as hell didn’t exist back then, and the term “self-love” was a double entendre for masturbation, not the wellness mantra it is today. When girls hit puberty, and the curves first appeared, they were made fun of by their classmates. When they got their periods, they were taught to hide the evidence, and worse, pretend it wasn’t happening. When their puppy fat didn’t fall off by the age it “should” have, they were introduced to dieting. And if eventually, too much weight came off, then they were told to eat a sandwich. The female form was only celebrated if it was beautiful, but
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NewYorkFamily.com | April 2020
society’s version of beauty was an impossible standard. Basically, if you were a girl in 1994 loving your body wasn’t even an option because you were too preoccupied with trying to change it all the time—and too ashamed of it. Fast forward to 2015. I learned quickly that the shame associated with being a woman didn’t stop after puberty. It didn’t calm down in my 20s, nor did it subside in my 30s. When, at 31, my infertility was confirmed by our specialist I may not have been surprised, but I was devastated—and so ashamed. The vision I had came true. I felt like less of a woman, I felt it was my fault, and
above all, I felt guilty that my husband was stuck with me. I was a lemon, a faulty model, with a body that couldn’t do the one thing it should have been programmed to do. The shame was so great that we didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. For months we hid this huge part of our lives from our family and friends, and though it felt like torture, in my mind there was no other option. How could I tell people that I’ve failed as a woman? That we’ve failed as a couple? But I slowly found myself sharing my story with professional acquaintances, people I’d meet while filming TV segments or on set for a styling job. It somehow felt safer to confide in these
