Secondary Infertility and Miscarriages

3 million women suffer — why doesn’t anyone talk about it?

(May 24, 2010)--Karen*, 40, could get pregnant, but she couldn’t stay pregnant. After five miscarriages, she and her husband decided they couldn’t take it any more. So about nine months ago, they simply stopped trying.

Karen is relieved to be out of that emotionally and physically draining limbo, but part of her continues to grieve. “We'll always wonder what it would have been like to have the family we intended,” says Karen, a lawyer who lives near Washington, D.C. “The pregnancy that lasted the longest had a due date in June, and I'm guessing I'll always think of that in June.”

Karen went through the classic trauma of infertility — seesawing from hope to despair, wanting to run screaming from all pregnant women — but with one twist: she already has a five-year-old biological daughter.

Karen suffers from “secondary infertility,” defined byRESOLVE, the national infertility association, as the inability to become pregnant or to carry a pregnancy to term following the birth (without assisted reproductive medications or technologies) of one or more biological children.

“Inability” is generally measured as no success after one year of trying if you’re under 35 or six months of trying if you’re over 35, and can be caused by reductions in fertility due to age or to such things as thyroid problems, an STI, tubal blockage, or ovarian cysts. Or, more troublingly, the causes can go unexplained.

According to estimates by RESOLVE, over three million Americans are affected by secondary infertility. While they outnumber those who experience primary infertility, they are less likely to seek medical or psychological help.

“Secondary infertility is very common, but often invisible,” says Barbara Collura, RESOLVE’s executive director, in part because of the common response: “You already have a kid — what are you complaining about?”

That’s the problem, say those who’ve gone through it: They know what they’re missing and, by the very same token, don’t feel entitled to complain.

“I felt self-conscious around people who were struggling to have their first,” says Gayle Greene, 40, a stay-at-home-mother in Vienna, VA, who finally conceived her second child through IVF (and then conceived again without intervention — go figure.)

Karen agrees: “I definitely felt like, ‘What right do I have to be sad?’ I know people who were not able to have children at all.”

Experts say this could-be-worse comparison weighs one down with an added layer of guilt. “Secondary infertility patients feel like they don’t belong in the world of the fertile and they don’t belong in the world of the infertile,” says Elaine R. Gordon, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Santa Monica, CA, who specializes in reproductive issues. “When they need support, they feel like they have no place to go.”

Kelcey Kintner of the The Mama Bird Diaries blog is a mother of two who is now, after much difficulty, pregnant with twins. She recalls the time a nurse at her OBGYN’s office said, “You should be grateful you have two. There are many women who come through here who may never have one.” Kintner was speechless. “I was like, ‘Do you think I lack gratitude for my girls?’ Why can’t both feelings co-exist?”

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Source: Babble.com

http://www.babble.com/pregnancy/conception/secondary-infertility-miscarriages/