The Blame Game
Trying to get pregnant can be frustrating. If you’ve been trying to get pregnant for more than a few months, it can be even moreso. It’s easy, when you’ve been struggling with fertility, to try to find someone to blame. It’s human nature to try to find explanations for tough situations, and it’s human nature to explain those situations by blaming them on yourself or others.
You might turn that blame inward, and start feeling like you’re less of a woman because you can’t seem to make a baby. You feel woefully inadequate. If you’re a person of faith, you might feel abandoned by God. You may start to lose self esteem, and really wonder what value you have in this world.
You might turn that blame outward, instead. You might get angry at your partner. After all, it’s just as likely that a fertility problem is related to a male factor, right? So you get mad. You don’t talk with your partner about this anger and blame, but instead you become almost passive aggressive about it. You start to think your partner might not be the right one for you, since he’s unable to provide you with a child.
Some women place the blame elsewhere. They blame their doctors, or they blame their parents, or they blame their childhood vaccinations.
The thing is this: struggling with infertility, in the vast majority of cases, isn’t anyone’s fault. Your partner can’t change his sperm count. You can’t correct your own tipped uterus or make PCOS disappear.
Part of really coping with fertility struggles is learning to let go of the blame. You need to free yourself from the need to point the finger, either at yourself or others. Instead of focusing on who to blame, you need to focus on specific potential causes of your fertility struggles, and on ways to go about addressing those causes.
Blame only leads to stress and other problems, including relationship problems with your partner. If you want to make it through your fertility struggle, you’re going to need to let go of the blame game.
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