Did IVF twice: once in March 2022 and once in April 2023. Missed the mark both times. But, throughout the course of the process, I attended a lot of appointments and sat in a lot of fertility waiting rooms. Two different clinics, in fact. I am just going to give you a couple of bullets to start. None of this is to blow smoke up my own ass, because I can easily be a terrible husband at times. (I am divorced once.)
- These waiting rooms are almost 100% women. Men do not often come to these appointments, even the bigger ones. Men usually come to these places to jerk off or deposit a sample with the clinic.
- A lot of times, you will see women in these places wearing sunglasses because they have been crying — or because they don’t want to be easily identified by social peers. (That may be a Texas thing.)
- The quote in the headline needs some context. Near the end of IVF, there is a relatively-important process called “an egg retrieval,” whereby they essentially vacuum-suck eggs from a female, and those eggs are then paired with petri dish sperm to begin the real work. An egg retrieval, which is somewhat invasive for a woman, takes maybe 40 minutes. On the day my wife had one, there was a different one scheduled, I.e. another couple. As soon as that wife got wheeled back, the husband goes up to the receptionist and says, “So, do I have time to play golf?” (Again, it takes 40 minutes. He did not.) The receptionist shook her head and told him to sit down.
- Also in this time frame, I tried to bounce the idea of “Why don’t men come to these appointments?” off my therapist then. He says to me, “They don’t have time. They are providing.” I still laugh about that today. Then, later in the process, I asked the fertility doctor why he thinks men don’t come. “They are scared of places like this and what they represent.” I would say his answer is closer. (PS that same therapist — one time I cried about infertility in front of him, and one of his responses was, “It didn’t take my wife and I very long at all.” That was fun.)
- Usually fertility clinic staff does a good job on making people feel less apprehensive and more relevant and celebrating the wins and milestones of the process. I can’t imagine how hard that job must be — to work in a fertility clinic. Is there some degree of a God complex in there? Without a doubt. Is there some degree of a God complex in most doctors? Nodding.
- If you have never had to be in one of these places, in many ways you are blessed — whether your lack of visit is due to organic pregnancy or just never wanting kids, you’re still blessed to avoid these arcs.
- At the same time as I did IVF №1, I was kinda sorta active in this men’s workout group called F3. Because I was fat and slow, often I would run workouts, just so I could pace them my own way. After you run a workout, you need to recap the workout so the attendees get credit. We did this on Slack. Long story short, I recapped any number of workouts from the waiting room of fertility clinics. Sometimes I would mention that in the recap. No one ever got it or picked up on it or anything else. One of the core problems of infertility, especially on the male side, is that no one really understands or cares that much. That can no doubt be a challenge.
If you’ve ever been in fertility waiting rooms — what are your observations/stories?
