Would You Tell Someone You Were Infertile?

There are a handful of celebrities who have been willing to divulge infertility issues, but if you didn’t succeed with pregnancy would you talk about it?

“Infertility,” my husband once observed, “is one of those topics you want to bury, and then bury the shovel.”

His perspective is hardly unique among those who have learned they are infertile or have had to confront an infertility diagnosis head on. The diagnosis packs a devastating punch and cuts to the very core of what it means to be a man or a woman. Not surprisingly, it also elicits a sense of shame.

Why? Partly it’s the taboo thing.

Sure you see plenty of breathless reporting about fertility treatment advances. The latest hard-won baby-making success stories with third party reproduction or in vitro fertilization (IVF) this past year came from TV talk show host Jimmy Fallon, actress Jaime King, and singer Sophie Hawkins. But missing from the popular media are narratives revealing a prevalent and less joyful outcome.

Today one in six couples seek treatment for infertility, and despite the breakthroughs in reproductive medicine trumpeted far and wide, the odds are low that IVF will succeed with a live birth.