What's Wrong With Me? My Painful Struggle With Unexplained Infertility

Lisa Goldberg gets honest about her maddening and heartbreaking journey to conceive.


The wand penetrates my vagina and I'm crying again in front of a stranger.

My ultrasound tech does her best impression of concern, but it's more like curiosity. Satisfied my tears are not from physical pain but instead uncontrollable emotional anguish, she continues to rummage through my womb.

I'm 34. I have been trying to get pregnant for more than two years. It is not going very well. No one can tell me why.

I have been to four fertility doctors, three acupuncturists, one nutritionist, and a "body works healer." I've had an MRI of my uterus and had my fallopian tubes flushed—which is more painful than it sounds, but not nearly as painful as the thyroid biopsy that involved sticking needles into my non-anesthetized throat. I've taken Clomid and had two intrauterine inseminations and several stimulated monitored cycles. Next month we're preparing for IVF.

I have "unexplained infertility," which is doctors' technical term for "f–k if I know."

My barrenness is not for a lack of effort, either. I take my basal body temperature every morning at 6:30 A.M., swallow 17 pills a day, and choke down three cups of what is called Chinese herbal "tea" but what I know to be just dirt water. (I know this because I cook it and strain the sticks, bark, and other ambiguous earth stuffs myself every other day.) I use an ovulation predictor kit and cross-reference it with my temperature. Sex is timed impeccably. I cut out weed, alcohol, caffeine, refined sugar, processed foods, grains, yams, raw food, cold food, and most dairy. I exercise moderately but not excessively, practice yoga but refrain from twisting, and I meditate.

Of course I've also done none of this. I've taken breaks, lost count of cycle days, and had drunken sex on vacation. Yet still, while all my girlfriends fall onto their partners' dicks and get pregnant, for me there is nothing. I am empty.

Infertility doesn't have a viral Internet video, though on my darker days I wouldn't mind dumping a bucket of ice water on all those smug pregnant women.

This has been a difficult journey, and it's hard for people to understand what I'm going through or why it's so painful. I don't have anything, after all. It's not like there's cancer or MS or some tangible disease ravaging my body. There are no plucky awareness walks or colored memorial ribbons, either. Infertility doesn't have a viral Internet video, though on my darker days I wouldn't mind dumping a bucket of ice water on all those smug pregnant women. Instead, infertility is stigmatized. It's spoken of in hushed tones if it's talked about at all. This does a disservice to the six million women suffering from it and it makes a difficult situation much harder.


Like many, I spent most of my sexual life desperately trying not to get pregnant, popping a pill every day for 15 years to ensure it. But after I got married, had some career success, and realized I'll never know how to dance to dubstep, it felt like the right time to have children. I thought it would be a snap. I mean, I'm built for it. What else are these child-bearing hips for? Turns out they're probably just for looking awkward in skinny jeans, because it's really tough to get pregnant. There's only a 24-hour window each month where it's even possible. Yes, really. 24. It's no wonder most couples take a year to conceive. But they don't tell you that in sex ed. They don't tell you that gunk in your underwear is not only perfectly natural, but a sign of a healthy reproductive system. No, they're too busy scaring kids into abstinence with slides of "cauliflower dick." It's shocking how little grown women, myself included, know about their own bodies. That gunk? That's cervical mucus, and if you're actively trying to have a baby—or actively not—you should get to know it in all its various states and viscosities. I had no idea that those little stains in my underwear signaled different phases of my fertility. I just thought I was weird because, well, what about all those girls who don't wear underwear?  Even under the care of several fertility doctors, this wasn't discussed. No, I didn't find out about this natural, crucial fertility signal until a nice friend sent me Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. Every woman should own a copy of this. It should be given out at college graduations. I'm going to send it as wedding presents because f–k your Calphalon muffin pan: This is a real necessity.


That thoughtful gesture was one of the few examples of the right way to talk to someone struggling with infertility. Most people think my ovaries are just as appropriate fodder for chitchat as the weather or Beyonce. Granted, I've tried to be open about my struggle, but it's still not something to bring up breezily over Pinkberry. "How's the baby-making going?" is on the same level of impolite as "How much money do you make?" Yes, talking about it can make you feel better—when you want to talk. But when you're having a perfectly lovely evening out and have somehow managed to forget that your insides are poison, the question "Why aren't you drinking? Are you pregnant!?" can be a real buzzkill. It's also completely unnecessary—if I were pregnant and could tell you, you'd know.

And for those who have experienced pregnancy but not infertility, your meager three months of trying does not entitle you to dole out unsolicited advice. Winning the reproductive lottery doesn't make you an expert. Saying things like, "You have to do a headstand after sex," "You need to eat pineapple during the luteal phase," or the absolutely infuriating "You just have to relax" are not helpful. One friend had the utter gall to opine, "I think that when you're ready, like really ready, your body just knows and it just happens. All you have to do is open yourself up to it." As if my problem is that I just don't want it bad enough. Maybe I should make a dream board or wish upon a shooting star instead?

You can't "just relax" and hope for the best.

No, you can't "just relax" and hope for the best. Twenty-four hours, remember? Anyway, that warming platitude "If it's meant to be, it will be" has always struck me as ethereal laziness. Nothing is meant to be. Only fools sacrifice their lives to fate. See I'm convinced that there has to be something I'm missing. It's like each month I'm playing a very tedious video game: Eat sugar one day or do too much yoga another, and I see Mario walking into a Koopa Troopa, shrugging and being jettisoned into the air. GAME OVER. NOT PREGNANT. One friend said she turned down free tickets to a Drake concert because she feared the vibrations might dislodge the embryo. After my second intrauterine insemination, I walked into a wall carrying a pizza box then sobbed for an hour convinced that when its sharp corner jutted into my belly I had just lanced my unborn child.

And it's not just the missteps, but also finding that one magic ingredient that will finally unlock my body. Is it femoral massages? Seed cycling? Tinfoil hats?? I cling to the idea of some panacea as a means of wresting control back from the "it's meant to be" camp. All my life, there has never been a problem I couldn't hard-work my way out of. But my body—the shell of my very own consciousness—has proven itself nothing more than a stranger, incapable of being controlled or even understood.

Each month I start out feeling hopeful, sure that this time we'll succeed, but 27 times (and counting) I've gone to the bathroom and a bloody wipe drops the bottom out from under me. Disappointment. Another month's worth of sacrifice and effort wasted. All those ultrasounds, hormonal injections, acupuncture, and utilitarian sex sessions—that is a lot of needles and vaginal penetration for nothing. And what about all those mornings you white-knuckled it without coffee? Or the dinner they brought out every dessert "on the house" and you sat on your hands and watched everyone eat? And lest we forget your husband's miraculous ability to summon an erection and ejaculate after a 15-hour night shoot, just to fail inside your broken womb. Another child down the toilet, and it's my fault. I let them die. Or more accurately, I couldn't make them live. I grieve for those babies—the ones with my husband's eyes, the ones with my cheeks. And I'm not above self-pity—I cry for myself, too. What's wrong with me?


While I've always been hard on myself, this brand of self-flagellation is particularly isolating. All those well-meaning people can't understand. Not the women who have never tried, or the ones who have never struggled, and certainly not any men. Not even my ever-loving and supportive husband, whose own deepest desires are also tied up in this endeavor. They cannot understand the ache that comes from being physically unable to fulfill your biological destiny and have a child—that most human of all experiences. It's one of the few things that ties our varied and warring species together and, in evolutionary terms, the only reason we exist. If this is our life's purpose, am I completely worthless? Despite all my non-reproductive accomplishments, am I a total failure? Now, of course, carrying your biological child is not the only way to have a family. Adoption is certainly an option, and one that we are looking into, but nurturing life inside you is a precious and empowering aspect to being a woman. It's something I don't want to miss. If I cannot carry a baby, will my female experience be incomplete? Am I less of a woman?


These are the wrong questions to ask. At least that's what the wise women on the other end of this chasm tell me. They tell me that this situation is temporary. That this will end. I do believe them. It will end. But it might end without a baby.

I'm trying to make peace with that. In doing so, I've returned to that banality "If it's meant to be, it will be." I've realized this isn't the thin veil of laziness I used to deride, but the warm blanket of acceptance. It's not the weak's way of explaining failure, but the wise's way of living in chaos. I'm not giving up, of course, but I'm getting close to being ready to surrender. I will either get pregnant or I won't. Despite my best efforts, clearly I have no control over this. The only thing I can control is my reaction. And I choose not to "relax" but to release—to let go of my expectations, desires, and dreams. From now on, that's all I'll grieve.

Growing up, I was always told that no man can make you complete. Well, neither can a child. It's not like I'm Anne Boleyn or something—my life doesn't literally depend on producing an heir. No, I am already whole. I am already enough. And I already have so much love in my life. All those questions about being less of a woman or a human failure distracts from the fulfillment I can have, either as a mother or as an incredibly well-rested world traveler. Anyway, the real question I should be asking myself is, "Will I have a family?" The answer already is yes.

Lisa Goldberg is a writer living in Los Angeles.

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