The Secret Society of The Little Black Fairies (Part I)

My cousin (who has also battled infertility) and I have had conversations about what we’ve deemed “The Little Black Fairies”. The Little Black Fairies are the imaginary things that come in and scrub people’s memories of the bad parts of an experience. For instance it allows a woman in the days following birth (the single most physical traumatic experience of her life) to say things like: “It really wasn’t that bad” or “I can’t wait to have another baby”.

It’s a good thing we have the Little Black Fairy phenomenon, or let’s face it, humankind probably wouldn’t have thrived as well. Women would hate their children because just looking into their faces would bring back a vivid reminder of being ripped open to the eyeballs. No woman in her right mind would ever have sex after that first child, would they?

As a result of The Little Black Fairies, there is now a “secret society” of life experiences. Things that happen that, unless it has happened to you, nobody seems to even know it even exists. For instance, my cousin I just mentioned gave birth a few weeks ago. After a 24 hour marathon of natural childbirth, the baby was stuck and she ended up having an emergency c-section. 24 hours later, her entire digestive system shut down in a condition called “Ileus”.

Now I consider myself at least on the upper-scale of knowledge when it comes to baby making, baby birthing and hard core scientific IVF god-playing. Of course having not experienced childbirth myself, my knowledge is strictly from an internet geek point of view. Five years on the infertility scene – paired with the fact that I work in research, has left me more time on my hands than you can imagine to read up on every ounce of information I can get hold of.

So I was a little taken aback when I got word of her hospital stay and discovered this new word I had never read on any baby-related website before: Ileus. I had to look it up. For those of you (like me) that don’t know, it’s a temporary paralysis of a portion of the intestines – somewhat common after abdominal surgery.

An apparently scary, very painful experience. Instead of bonding with her baby after surgery, she was drugged, had a tube shoved down her nose into her stomach to pump out acids, was given liquids/food by IV for 3-4 days…and well, a plethora of other horrible things that I’m sure I don’t even know about yet, and the Little Black Fairies have probably already stolen from her memory.

Now let me go back to the definition of Ileus. That’s right, you read the word “common” in there. “Somewhat common after abdominal surgery.” Do you see how the Little Black Fairies managed to scrub that word away?

Sometimes I imagine there is a midnight ceremony that takes place right after a woman gives birth. The LBF’s, or maybe a group of disgruntled government workers who are afraid of losing their jobs at the Census Bureau, bust into the woman’s hospital room, make her swear on her life that she will not divulge the scary and painful parts of the birth experience and then steal away into the night.

Maybe Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are there with that little flashy-memory-eraser thing. Who knows – the point is - by the time you get to the maternity ward to visit your friend and her new baby, the only thing she will/can talk about is how beautiful this new little bundle is. And now you’ve got Baby Fever…and the cycle repeats itself for the history of mankind.

I even think that there are Secret Society of Motherhood meetings that happen at 1am every full moon in the middle of rural cornfields. These women get together, initiate new mothers and discuss the awful bits. They then scheme against new yet-un-pregnant recruits. These are the people that ask “So, when are you and so-and-so going to start a family?” They say things like “You would just make a wonderful mother,” and then they thrust their adorable child into your hands while they conveniently make a “quick” trip to the restroom. Leaving you standing there while their darling child makes sweet little cooing noises and your ovaries crank it up to super-fertile.

The motherhood secret society fascinates me. I so want to be part of it. But I digress (a lot – my apologies). My point here is (believe it not!) there is also a Secret Society of the Infertile. Actually, it’s SO Secret that even amongst the infertile no one speaks of it….

Which leads me to my next post: The Perks of Being an Infertile….