The Roundabout Analogy

Most people will never understand what it feels like to be infertile. It's one of those experiences in life that people can't understand unless they've been through it themselves. Sometimes its hard to remember that and to give people a break when I feel like strangling them. So to that end I've been trying to come up with a simple analogy that even begins to touch on the feelings that an infertility diagnosis brings into a person's life. I thought about the pause button and the elevator but I finally settled on something else. Here's what I've come up with...

Imagine for a moment that there's this place that you want to go, it's the end all be all for you whether its a concert, amusement park, museum exhibit, natural park, and its only going to be open for a limited amount of time.Everyone you know who has experienced it can't keep from telling you how it changed their life, in a good way. You get up with the sunrise, pack the car with goodies and snacks, and head out eager for what the day will bring with only your significant other for company. The first part of your trip is wonderful. Your favorite songs play on the radio. The scenery that passes by outside your window is breathtaking, and the traffic almost non-exisistent. You're excited, eager, maybe even a little tremoulous, I mean what if it isn't all it's cracked up to be, right? When you reach the roundabout you are already feeling a tad bit antsy and ready to get out of the car. The one lane road you've been traveling turns into two lanes as you enter the roundabout and due to no fault of your own your car is forced into the inner lane. You circle around one time and miss your exit. Minutes later you've missed it several more times. The people who entered the roundabout with you have already found the right exit. The people who entered the roundabout after you have found the exit. But you can't get over. The people in the outside lane won't let you in. You wonder if they just don't notice you or if they're keeping you penned in out of spite. Hours pass and you are now dizzy from all the circles you've made. It seems like hundreds of cars have entered the roundabout and found their way out, but not you. Depending on your personality you may have a serious case of road rage going on right now. Your cell phone rings and someone, most likely a family member, asks why you haven't arrived yet. Their tone is either worried or accusing, and you respond in kind before hanging up. The sun has made its way across the sky and you feel like time is running out. Some of the cars that passed you by the first time are on their way back out, balloons and streamers flying from their bumpers, whopping and hollering, estatic with how their day went. The new cars that enter the roundabout are sometimes less than polite, honking, letting the finger fly, yelling out their windows at you. It makes you feel horrible but there you are stuck going around and around with no way out, dizzy and sick to your stomach. If you have a smartphone friends and family are blowing up your feed with pictures from their trip. The pictures have cute little captions like 'Best day of my life' 'If you've never been here, you're missing out' and 'If you've never gone, you can't understand what its like', not to mention the odd 'My life had no meaning before I went'. People are calling asking where you are and giving unsolicited unhelpful advice. Some of them don't even have a driver's license, I mean how does that even work? At this point you have few options.

• A. You will eventually get over and find your exit and reach the location before its gone forever. Though at this point you're realistically skeptical of that happening. 
• B. You will take a different exit. It will eventually take you to pretty much the same place, but it's full of tolls, bumpy roads, and horriblly planned roadways that seem to double back more than they go straight, not to mention taking twice as long. 
• C. You will give up and get off on the exit you came in on, go home, and live your life resolved with the fact that you're never getting there. 
• D. You will run out of gas. Your car will sputter to a stop. You will have to wait for the tow truck who will have to take you back to the gas station to refill. And who knows how long that will take, or how much it will cost. Some of you will never get back on that road again. 

Now for just a moment imagine that this wasn't one day of your life. Imagine that it was everyday of your life for months or years on end.Those emotions you felt. Anger, bitterness, desperation, sorrow, longing and more, are there every single day and they just build and build. That's a glimpse into infertility, except its not just some place you're trying to reach, its parenthood, its a child looking up at you, its passing on traditions and memories, it's a biological right that everything from insects to oak trees has without another thought, except you.

Infertility affects 1 in 10 couples. 1 in 10 couples are stuck on that roundabout.
And in case you don't know the frustration of a roundabout...

My experience with the roundabout came in 2009 on my honeymoon to Ireland. We left each one frazzled and anxious and they were tiny roundabouts! It sucks that we seem to be stuck on one yet again.