Why I decided to be open about having fertility treatments

Published by Bethany on January 14, 2019January 14, 2019

Should you be open about having fertility treatments? In retrospect, the hardest part about IVF (in-vitro fertilization), was keeping the secret. More specifically, the angst around deciding whether to keep things a secret or just tell the world.

At first, I didn’t want to tell anyone at all.

Then the start date for my prep began to approach and that’s when things got weird.

I had to make excuses for my abnormal behavior. I got vague during future based discussions. And I started asking myself why people are secretive about it in the first place.

Here, more specifically, are the reasons that my husband and I decided to tell everyone about our ‘event’

• I couldn’t think of a great (pretend) excuses for skipping my regular activities: mountain cycling adventures, trail races, swim practice. I went from being up for any six hour bike ride or redic early morning session to being what can only be called a training slacker. And I couldn’t get past a compulsive need to come up with a passable excuse.
• Triathlon coaching, my then-current job, involves leading by example. And I’d become a lame example.
• Other female athletes were out there hunting for information about fertility treatments.

As a long-time coach, athlete, and small business owner whose entire world was wrapped up in endurance sports, I explained my decision–when my husband John and I decided to go public–in similar terms:

I have a confession to make, I’ve been secret training for an event. And not just an ordinary event,  it’s a really long one. Longer than RAAM, or ultraman, or even the Tour. Training for this event is a little out of the ordinary compared to my usual two IRONMAN races a year. Instead, it involves potentially involves skipping Saturday morning bike rides, adopting Sadie’s run pace as my semi-permanent pace, and hiding in my car injecting drugs in my stomach in a state park like I did today.

So here it goes, John and I are embarking on an IVF journey. This has been on our minds for the last several years, but it was only recently that we found out it would be necessary if we wanted to pursue the goal of having biological child(ren).  After that though there was always another event or race that pushed things off. “Oh we’ll think about it after xy or z. ”  We’re busy, there is this trip or project coming up, etc. There is always a reason not to start. Then before you know it, I am nearly up on another birthday!

The older you get, the faster time seems to go. And while I was never sure I would have children, John and I would both have regrets if we didn’t give it a fair try. And a fair try involves trying everything we’re comfortable with that’s available.

So I could either make excuses every Saturday morning I don’t feel like I should or want to go for some crazy bike ride) or I could just tell the truth and help others. There was–and is–a real dearth of public information available on the experience of female athletes during pregnancy.

At the time, when I cited “helping others” as a reason to share, it felt fake. Silly. But I’ve heard from enough women now that sharing really has helped them. So even though I’m done with the process now, I’d still like to help break the stigma of a wonderful process that’s helped ours and many others dreams come true.

To read about how things went, start with what I learned about when one should get the process started.