How do you explain your infertility?

  I would love to understand why things happen the way that they do. Why do some people have fertility problems while others get cancer? Why do teenagers get pregnant and you and I, who desperately want that, don't? Why do some of us struggle with alcoholism and others of us are fine with a glass of wine and then stopping?

There's an on-going debate about nature versus nurture. That piece of us that is hard-wired (nature) to behave and develop in a pre-determined fashion is hard to distinguish from that piece of us that is taught, led and even imprinted on (nurture) to understand the world in a certain way.

Some of the conversation seems designed to be able to determine blame. Or to absolve one's parents or one's self from blame. If it's nature, then there's nothing we can do about how things unfold, it's all at least partly pre-determined. There's that sense of inevitability. If its nurture, then one can blame any part of the situation that they deem responsible, whether it's parents, society, social and economic circumstances or any combination of the above.

Still, why do things happen the way that they do? Past the nature versus nurture debate, we have religion and spiritual beliefs. We run the gamut from folks who believe that everything is God's design to those who don't believe that there is a God or any other type of higher power. And absolutely everything in-between.

There's karma, thinking that things happen just the way that they should. There's fatalism, feeling that everything's pre-determined and there's no free will. There are many ways to explain how the world works and many different beliefs that satisfy different people and some people who simply don't believe any of it and spend their lives searching.

All of the above attempts to explain why things happen the way that they do. Why some of us get pregnant, why some of us don't. Why some of us feel comfortable with assisted reproductive technology, why some of us never step one foot into a fertility clinic even when we have excellent medical benefits. Why some of can manage 6 cycles of IVF while others of us stop after 1 IUI.

What explanation works for you? Do you understand your own system of beliefs? Has having had the challenges of infertility strengthened, threatened or changed those beliefs? Is there something that you've learned that you can share with the rest of us?

I would love to know.