INFERTILITY...from a man's viewpoint

Instead, sitting at his kitchen table, Tom described the emotional roller-coaster of wanting to be a father and not being one. He and his wife, Doreen, have struggled with infertility throughout their entire seven-year marriage.

Having married right after college, Tom and Doreen always assumed they would have several children. Doreen dreamed of being a stay-at-home mother, and Tom, a construction worker, hoped to name a son after himself.

Infertility

It didn't. Tom, who calls himself "a typical macho type," admitted he soon became frustrated with the entire process: "I said, `Jesus, what now? Why us? We're a good family. I make plenty of money. We can provide for kids and spoil them!'"

What angered him most was seeing teenage parents who didn't want children, having them, while he and his wife couldn't. "Why us and not these kids who have babies and bury them in a garbage can?" he demanded.

Persevering

"I did anything I could to comfort her, to pay for what we had to go through," he said. "But other than that, I felt completely helpless. There was nothing I could do."

Infertile couples must often cope with losing their privacy to medical treatments, and Tom and Doreen were no exception. "If we had sex, it was on a calendar," Tom said. "There was no spontaneity, no passion. It got to the point where I said, `I don't want to!'"

Seeking help

Six weeks into the pregnancy, Doreen miscarried. "It was absolute disgust with the whole routine. I got completely fed up with it," Tom stated.

While he felt that his wife was more devastated by the loss, he admitted, "It bugged me for a day. Then I said, `If it's meant by God, it'll be.'"

Worries

"These doctors will pull out all the stops to get you pregnant," he explained. "In this whole thing, my whole job has been to comfort Doreen. If a doctor said, `If you cut your toe off, you might get pregnant,' my job was to say, `Hey, pal, wait a minute.'"

Eventually, Doreen began having a reaction to the fertility drug she was taking. It was overstimulating her ovaries, causing intense pain. At the same time, her body was becoming immune to its effects. After six and a half years of trying to have a child, the couple made the difficult decision to stop all fertility treatments.

Different approach

"When we finally said, `The hell with it -- if we get pregnant, we get pregnant; if we don't, we don't,' the past six months of our marriage has been bliss," Tom said with a smile. "It's the way the cards fall. I'm lucky enough to have my wife and my house and my cat. If God meant it to happen [this way], that's fine."

When he thinks about what he and his wife went through, Tom said he feels "complete disgust and aggravation, but I did it for her. It's her body that's the problem, but I don't want her to feel it's her fault."

Coming to terms with the fact that he may never be a father hasn't always been easy. "I could go through life and as long as my wife is happy, I'm happy. I can deal with not having kids," Tom noted. "But when you see these other kids having kids that don't appreciate it -- that's what bothers me."

As Father's Day rolled around, the avid hunter also admitted to "times when I'd like to give my guns to my kids, have a kid to take fishing or teach what I know. But that's the way it is -- we're not meant to have kids."

What next?

Still, they haven't entirely given up on the idea of being parents. "It's not hopeless. We have 10 more years we can have kids," Tom noted. "Maybe some medical solution will come along. You can be responsible enough to say, `I will save my money and wait for an alternative.'"

But for now, he and his wife are just trying to enjoy each other without the pressure of having to create a child.

"We're going through life as a husband and wife with a cat," Tom stated. "If God means us to have kids, you'll wake up one day and say, `Hey, there I am.'"

Father's Day

While it once bothered the couple that they didn't fit the portrait of a "perfect family," Tom said that now, "I don't care what other people think, as long as I'm happy with what I'm doing, and my immediate family and our close circle of friends is happy."

(08-05-99) [[In-content Ad]]