The following is guest post from Megan Kamerick, a local reporter from Albuquerque, who shares some of her OB/GYN experiences following her diagnosis of infertility.

Let’s start with some numbers.

* Number of women ages 15-44 with impaired ability to have children: 6.1 million
* Number of women who’ve ever used infertility services: 9.2 million
* Number of married couples that are infertile: 2.1 million
* Number of women using infertility services: 9.3 million

These figures, from the National Center for Health Statistics, are a bit dated, but hopefully all of you OB/GYN practitioners and staff out there get the point. A good number of your patients are likely infertile. We’re not very noticeable because many of us walk around in silence, often with serious mental anguish over our inability to conceive. But we’re here. I’d just like you to keep that in mind.

My introduction to this whole world was abrupt and painful. I was about two months shy of my 38th birthday and my husband and I had been trying to conceive.

After yet another test in a series over two months, I expected to come back with my husband and discuss the results. But the doctor decided to talk it over right there and then. It would have been nice to have a heads up so I wasn’t completely alone when she dropped the boom.

“Well I don’t believe in beating a dead horse,” she said. “I recommend IVF with donor eggs.”

It took a minute for this to penetrate my brain. Was she telling me I was infertile?

She then asked if I wanted a list of egg donors to peruse. In a daze, I said “Ok,” and they handed it to me as I walked out of the office. I felt like I’d stepped into “Brave New World” or “Gattaca.” The donors were listed by nationality, ethnic background and level of education. So I could order up a gene pool as if I were in a cafeteria? Was that supposed to console me?

I finally got to my car, called my husband, and broke down sobbing.

I won’t go into detail over my guilt about what I might have done to damage my fertility or whether I waited too long. And won’t digress about why, after many discussions, we decided not to follow the path of fertility drugs and in vitro fertilization. I’m just revisiting all this to give you a sense of how emotionally devastating a diagnosis of infertility can be.

After several years, and a move from New Orleans to New Mexico, I thought I had moved on emotionally as well. Then my insurance company dropped the provider where I got regular ultrasounds. I have uterine fibroids that my OB/GYN monitors by sending me for ultrasounds about twice a year. So I went to a different provider recommended by his office.

It’s one of those places that gives expectant mothers 3-D images of their children in utero. So yes, babies are their business. It’s their marketing niche. I get it. But it didn’t make it any easier.

As I sat in the waiting room, I gazed at the black and white photos on the walls. The pregnant women were ethereal, serenely happy, sometimes holding a baby, sometimes looking dreamily at their perfect, round bellies.

When I got into the exam room, I found several of those Anne Geddes photos of babies dressed up like flowers on the back wall. I looked in front of me. A plaster cast of baby feet was framed on the wall opposite the exam table. I turned to the side. A bulletin board was full of ultrasound images that showed babies’ faces very clearly. As I lay back on the exam table and looked up, a children’s mobile beckoned from the ceiling. There were even photos in the bathroom where I had to go to empty my bladder for the second part of the exam.

I started to feel trapped, even panicky.

As the technician ran the ultrasound over my abdomen, I watched the indecipherable images on a screen over her shoulder. She even showed me the 3-D version. I realized that most of the time, she was probably showing women and their partners their child’s heartbeat up there, or pointing out its fingers, its face, its toes. I felt a profound sense of loss. I’d never been assaulted by these thoughts before because my previous X-ray provider didn’t cram the waiting and exam rooms with images of babies and pregnant women.

I kind of lost it by the time I got back to my car. I also felt like I couldn’t really say anything. Their whole business was built on pregnancy ultrasounds and showing parents their babies’ faces rather than indistinct blobs on a black and white screen. Who was I to protest?

But I finally found my voice on a subsequent visit to my OB/GYN. (Remember, we still have to go every year, or more, even if our uterus hasn’t fulfilled the destiny society calls for.) As I sat in the waiting room, I flipped through the stack of magazines. Every single damn one had to do with parenting or children.

When the nurse took me back to the exam room, I asked why they didn’t have a wider selection of magazines in the reception area.

“You know, it’s really painful for people like me who can’t conceive to come here and find nothing but reminders of how many other people are having kids,” I told her. “Women do have other interests besides family and children.”

She actually took my comments in stride and asked me what other kinds of things I’d like to see.

“Anything!” I exclaimed. “Smithsonian, Time, People, National Geographic, whatever!”

The next time I went back, there was a whole slew of different magazines. I took it as a small victory. Someone acknowledged that I was still here, still worth paying attention to and treating, even if I would never be one of those blissfully happy pregnant women I had seen in the photos, bathed in light and completely fulfilled by their sheer ability to conceive.

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Megan Kamerick is a print reporter in Albuquerque and also does radio work at the local NPR affiliate.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 10:38 am and is filed under Childbirth, Guest Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.