I love my friends, but the constant flow of baby photos is just too much to bear. Much of this feeling is due to the fact that my wife and I are having terrible times getting pregnant.
I am 40 years old and she is 38 years old – two professionals who have taken up residence in New Delhi. But for four years we have been trying, “Monica” as I will call it, has not yet designed. And to make matters worse, planning our intercourse with her ovulation period has put a knot in our sex life. Imagine not being able to caress your wife as you did because she is nervous, waiting to try to constantly weigh a small human on her. Add to that the insecurities of Monica on her body and the art of seduction become all the more complicated and paradoxical.
How to activate Monica to make love? Fortunately, I can turn it on fairly quickly thanks to a relatively high libido. But how do you get Monica interested without her feeling pressured? Do I have to wait for it to start? I tried this strategy, but weeks passed and nada. So I start to seduce her again. Monica tells me that she needs more foreplay – at least 30 to 45 minutes of touching and cuddling before she can really get in the mood.
But when I give it to him, very often I have the impression that it is I who do the work and that I do not receive much in return; the whole process begins to feel mechanical. While it is on, I am now the one who goes through the movements and the end result is hardly the full fireworks that I really miss. Rinse, wash and repeat and the whole disappointing cycle begins again, deepening the problem of intimacy between us.
Instead of a child, what we have created is a downward spiral in which we both feel wronged, passion is sucked out of the relationship, and the last thing we want to do is redo love.
It wasn’t until Monica saw a fertility specialist and had the necessary ultrasound and MRI scans that the large fibroid mass in her womb was definitively identified. Great, I thought. Now all she has to do is remove it and – hop! – she will be pregnant in no time, right? I wish it was as simple as that. The biggest challenge is that Monica is wary of removing it.
When a woman discovers that her female parts are not working as they should, it’s devastating and we men have to be as supportive and caring as possible to help our partners solve the problem. At the end of the day, it’s her body that does the heavy lifting.
Monica has long been opposed to going to the doctor and firmly believes in natural healing. So when the fertility doctor told us that the best treatment would be surgery to remove the fibroid, the recommendation scared him. Although I am skeptical of homeopathic methods because I believe in science, I fully supported his decision to try to shrink the fibroid naturally.
Monica had read a natural remedy of placing packages of castor oil on her stomach and wanted to try. I knew it meant delaying fertility treatments for months, but I couldn’t blame him for wanting to avoid surgery on his private parts. It would also scare me. Once she chose this path, she followed the castor oil packs, but not as regularly as I had hoped.
I want her to do everything possible – with a sense of urgency – to remove any physical obstacles to the birth of a baby because deep down inside me if it is not her, it maybe me. As a man whose wife is unable to get pregnant, when you see that all of your friends have children and you are the only one left, you begin to seriously doubt your own abilities in the service of child care.
While most of my childhood was spent in a Hebrew day school, thoughts of Bible work came to my mind: “Why God, what have I done to deserve such torment in my life? Why do they have children and I don’t? At other times, I seek comfort in Abraham: “He may have been 99 years old, but at least Abraham had a child! (Of course, Old Abe had to undergo the painful experience of circumcising himself as an adult. according to God’s orders; while lucky I was there, I did it and I don’t even remember it.)
I hope Monica will have her fibroid removed, which her doctor says will greatly increase her chances of conception.
But there are no guarantees. So I’m starting to resign myself to the fact that I’m going to have to find a better-paying job so that we can afford a substitute or start considering adopting.
I am not against the latter, but I want to try all the avenues available to conceive a child before embarking on this path. To do this, Monica and I must be on the same wavelength, which becomes increasingly difficult given her reluctance to accept the doctor’s advice.
Fertility treatments are always an option but the doctor first wants to take care of the fibroids. And even if Monica undergoes the operation, there is no guarantee that she will want me to stick it with a painful needle every night as part of the fertility diet. We have both heard horror stories from other couples about the difficulty of this process.
My wish is to persuade Monica to accept at least the IUI, intrauterine insemination, or what my friend calls the “turkey baster” method, where the doctor injects the sperm into the woman’s uterus. But first, we have to treat the fibroid.
So yes, making babies can be a bitch. And there’s not enough attention given to what the guys are going through in these unfortunate circumstances. I don’t want to sound too fatalistic about our prospects. I firmly believe that we will have children one day.
But for other men on a similar journey, know that you are not alone. Maybe one day, when we have overcome these difficulties, we will start a conversation at the gymnasium of the local jungle where our children play and look back and laugh.
