#What is Infertility?

[simswoon]

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[solargeist]

Every day we get closer to having a pregnant Grian on your page

You can only escape it for so long

(That sounds like a threat sorry)

i fear its already too late for me i've gone inthe pregnancy ao3 tag

[artdonaldsonbabygirl]

crack au where Art can't get Tashi pregnant so they decide ta get some sperm from a sperm donor so they go to this sperm donor place? Not like a super seedy one but also not like well known and in the public eye because Arts prolly embarrassed and doesn't want people knowing he couldn't get his wife pregnant.

COINCIDENTALLY Patrick has recently made a sperm donation to make some money at that exact same sperm donation place. And guess whose sperm they get. Patrick thinks It's must be just wishful thinking that Art and Tashi's kids looks kind of like him

[dxmedstudent]

Things to not say to infertile folks:

A lot of people don't really know what to say when discussing infertility, and a lot of people who are struggling with it complain that people say hurtful or triggering things to them - often unintentionally.

So I thought I'd write a guide about what not to say, taken , unfortunatelyfrom hearing or seeing people express these opinions:

You just need to relax/get drunk/go on holiday/not stress so much/not want it so much.

Telling someone to be more relaxed or less stressed doesn't work - kind of like telling someone to calm them down doesn't, in fact, calm them down. It also minimises the fact that a lot of people with fertility problems have actual medical problems causing the situation, which may require treatment or might even be untreatable.

It also comes with the (likely unintentional) implication that it's your fault for not conceiving because unlike everyone else, you're just not relaxing enough. You fail at relaxing. You're doing trying wrong.

So you can't have kids? Like, at all?

Putting aside that it is a little insensitive to say this, technically infertility means that a couple tried to have kids for a year or more but were unsuccessful. Infertility is reduced fertility, and sometimes the term subfertity is seen as more accurate.

People can be told that they have a condition that affects fertility like fibroids, PCOS or endometriosis, but they may still conceive if having unprotected PIV sex and should still use contraception if they do not wish to get pregnant.

This is also why folks on T and folks on oestrogen/progesterone HRT should talk to their team about contraception, whether they are cis or trans. Whilst taking HRT can sometimes reduce fertility it does NOT render you sterile and people often need to use an additional contraceptive.

Sterility means being completely unable to have kids - for example, if you have had both gonads removed.

Infertile couples can sometimes eventually have children unassisted, and most infertile couples manage to conceive with fertility treatment.

Have you tried having sex/tracking ovulation/insert absolutely beginner knowledge here)?

Oh crap, we've been mistakenly putting it up the ass this entire time! Silly me!

Unless you're the couple's doctor and your job is to walk them through every possible issue and make sure nothing is missed, please assume that they have done their research and have the basic stuff down.  Treat people as if they are sensible and competent. Believe people when they say there is a problem. Leave the diagnosing to their fertility team.

Because when you think about it, if a couple have been trying for like 3 years and you ask them if they've tried LH strips, it's kind of patronising.

You didn't become an expert just because you accidentally got pregnant 5 years ago or conceived first try with your second. People who have been struggling with a health problem for years have usually done a ton of reading, speaking to healthcare professionals and lots of tests - they almost certainly know a lot more than you about it.

Oh yeah, I know how you feel! I've been trying for 2 months / hope to have kids and I'm terrified of being infertile, I couldn't stand that. It would ruin my life!

There's a place for sharing your concerns, but please don't expect people suffering a condition to have to console you about how bad it would be for you to live their life. Infertile people don't want to hear that their life is your worst nightmare, it's just a rude thing to tell someone.

Don't tell people with coeliac you'd die if you couldn't eat pasta, don't tell people who are blind that you'd end yourself if you couldn't paint or watch TV. Just ... have some tact.

Ha, being a parent is hard, are you sure you want that? Would you take one of mine?

No, Debra.

Please stop making light of someone's personal grief or disability. This is like making boomer "I hate my wife" jokes to someone who just lost their spouse.

But what do I say, then? I don't know what to say!

I've legitimately seen people say the most insensitive thinfs and then turn around to say this.

But...

You don't have to say anything- believe it or not you don't have to offer an opinion or advice on sonething you know nothing about. They aren't waiting on YOU to fix their problem or give them advice on something a team of specialists hasn't been able to fix.

If someone tells you that they are having fertility issues, just tell them you're sorry to hear that and that you hope it works for them soon. Or ask them if they want to talk about it and let them know you are there to listen.

More things not to say after the cut...

My friend's aunt's cousin was about to have infertility treatment, then they just had twins! I'm sure that will happen for you, when you stop trying!

Everyone tells us their one in a million "miracle stories"... but they just aren't fun to hear, for many people with infertility. They may give some people hope, but they can make people feel even more isolated and unlucky because we KNOW how unlikely it is that we'll have that same luck.

Also for most of us, stopping trying would make actually conceiving and carrying to term extremely unlikely. Please don't discourage people from seeking medical help when they need it.

Well I don't think IVF/using a donor/single parent families/lgbtq families is right/natural.

It's great that you don't need it and don't have to have it, then! But your opinion is kind of irrelevant to everyone else.

Lots of modern medicine isn't natural - and as a doctor, I REALLY don't think "naturalness" or your personal comfort level with a treatment you are completely ignorant about is a relevant metric for how beneficial a medical treatment is to the people who need it. 

We've spent all of human civilisation working to give us more tools (and better ones) to help people. IVF is a tool. It's an accommodation for a disability or inability due to circumstances that lets some people overcome their medical conditions or circumstances.

Are you saying that to cancer patients? To people wearing a cast for their broken arm? To people wearing a prosthesis for their amputated leg? I absolutely hope not. Please do not do that.

Other people's medical treatments are between them and their clinicians. If you don't like it? You're free to not have said treatment. If you don't want kids, you are free to not have any. I'm a passionate advocate for access to reproductive care, contraception and abortion.

But if you're pro abortion, you cannot meaningfully be anti-fertility treatment. Because you either believe in bodily autonomy or you don't. You can't pick and choose only when it benefits you.

I just think that if you can't have kids naturally, then your body/nother nature/God is telling you something and you should just stop trying. Maybe your genes are just bad and shouldn't be spread. Maybe you just wouldn't make a great parent.

Look, nature is stupid. It gives kids type 1 diabetes and genetic conditions that kill them in infancy and gives your loved ones cancer. Do you go around telling everyone that they should just due or accept being permanently seriously ill or disabled because nature gave them an illness? Do you refuse all modern medicine because you should be listening to nature's plan for your body? I bloody well hope not, because that's dumb when modern medicine exists.

There are all sorts of dumb reasons why people are infertile - why would having a tube blocked by endometriosis or slow sperm make someone a bad parent? Why are you literally telling someone to their face, whose meducal problems you dont even understand, that you think they are just too defective to make a family?

Let's stay away from the eugenics, shall we? We could have a nuanced conversation about how genetic testing of embryos can potentially reduce or eliminate rare fatal diseases which kill children and have no hope of a life without significant suffering. And how most couples who have IVF successfully go on to have healthy chikdren who live normal lives. But no, Steve, stopping your mate with a mild varicocele from having children is not going to revolutionise the human race or fulfil some alternate divine fate.

Well, fertility is a first world problem, some people have real problems, we should be focusing on that instead.

Actually, it's a problem for millions of peole, around the world. The IVF industry is huge in certain parts of the Global south, for example India.

People think it's a white rich people problem because most of the people who can  afford to undergo fertility treatment privately or adopt...are the wealthy. But it's always been a problem - that affects people across cultures, socioeconomic groups and sexualities. And infertility has often been accompanied with shame and ostracisation. Stigmatising fertility care hurts everyone. Especially the poor.

Many LGBTQ couples need fertility care - whether because their gender affirming surgery or HRT or health complicates things, or they and their partner's combination of gametes makes things tricky. Making fertility care less taboo and more accessible helps them too. The conversation very often side tracks and ignores them but their struggle is valid too.

You people only want kids because they are brainwashed by the patriarchy. Infertility wouldn't be an issue if women were emancipated and not brainwashed by the patriarchy.

Look, I've been feminist in online spaces since before some of you were born. I'm not unaware of the patriarchy and how it colours our choices.

But we have to stop infantilising women abd removing their agency. I know single women and lesbians who have spent decades working through their issues with the patriarchy...who still want kids and are dealing with fertility treatment. Sure, we will never be entirely free from the many ways society affects us. But that doesn't mean we're all blindly falling into motherhood.

You don't want kids, that's great. But it doesn't mean that every single woman choosing to have them is brainwashed and unable to understand what she is getting into - and it's pretty misogynistic to frame it that way.

Nobody should be having kids because the economy/environment/etc

OK there's a conversation to be had about cutting our carbon footprint and being aware of how our choices affect others and the planet. We should all be trying to live more sustainably - I say as I wear thrifted clothes whilst typing this on the train.

But... are you saying that to able bodied people having kids? Are you sacrificing everything that you want for the cause? Or is the easiest thing to give up the thing that someone else wants? I'm all for encouraging everyone to be mindful of the planet but we shouldn't be restricting the rights of people with a disability to make that happen.

We make choices for ourselves, not for other people.

Why not adopt or foster? Adopt don't shop!

Well this is a whole post in itself...but basically, please assume that anyone who is trying for kids for a while... has at least considered adoption. Please tryst people to choose the right option for them and their family.

Children are not puppies, and the massive adoption industry isn't always ethical or safe, can be hugely expensive (often moreso than IVF in some places!), and also doesn't actually guarantee that they get to have a child at the end of it.

There can be a lot of trauma and complicated feelings for the adopted child and their birth family and many kids need very specialised support that not every potential adoptive parent can provide.

There are also far more infertile couples than kids who need adoption - so not every individualor couple could adopt. Many kids just need temporary fostering with the aim of placing them back with their family, which is important but very different.

I intend to flesh out this argument more in a separate post but IMO adoption should ideally be rare - because birth parents should have free access to contraception, abortion and be empowered and supported to look after and raise their kids within their communities if they want them. Adoption should serve the needs of the child, not the potential parents. And certainly not the agencies.

If you truly believe there are millions of kids out there needing a home, why aren't you adopting? Why aren't you clamouring for every fertile couples to adopt? Because on some level society still that's these kids as a consolation prize. And because many of the people judging infertile couples for having IVF over adoption aren't all that invested in actially learning about these kids or helping them.

Infertile people aren't solely responsible for solving complex societal problems on their own. This is something that we as a whole society need to address.

[karlachismylife]

Me: scrambling to finish homework before my linear algebra class

My brain: can you imagine fem!ghoap tho?

I can't, I'm my biggest fucking enemy. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE FEM!GHOAP THO?

Fem!Soap has absolutely Harley Quinn vibes, batshit crazy with a sprinkle of pyromania and several decades of unmedicated ADHD. If Soap got his haircut inspiration from some local punk band in his hometown, fem!Soap was the leader of said band, adding to Mam's grey hair every time she returned with new tattoos. Was playing football, when a new kid tried outcasting her cuz she's a girl, went on to beat the shit out of him.

That story about a higher ranking officer Soap punched? Sleazy motherfucker was harassing other women on the base and was unfortunate enough to choose fem!Soap as a target.

Walks around in tank tops and sport bras, all muscle no boobs, probably has a couple fake teeth, always is the one fellow female soldiers turn to when they need to get rid of assholes in the pubs they go for drinks to. Absolutely relishes in being called a "fucking butch" and whatever else those pathetic men try to throw at her, quickly fizzling out when they realize her biceps is the size of their thighs. She worked hard to be better than them, no matter how much some of her family wanted her to be a bit more... traditional. Not her Maw, though, Maw always said if her little Jenny wanted to be a soldier, she could be a damn good one.

Regularly participates in armrestling matches (banned in several pubs where she got carried away and broke someone's wrist) and pays for the round whenever she wins.

All those girls (and some guys) hanging off her elbows, and everyone assumes she's going home with one (or several) of them every time.

And fem!Ghost? She might have a horrible reputation, people spreading disgusting rumors about her past and what's under that mask (doesn't bother her, truth is so much more gruesome). Keeps to herself, grim sense of humour doing nothing to make her seem more approachable. A looming shadow, the personification of horrors they tell about what war and captivity do to women - and that's for those who actually know she's a woman. Most people just assume she's a big fucking guy, loose hoodies helping pass, deep, hoarse voice - never came back as it was from the time with Roba, broken by her screams with an ugly scar on her throat on top - only adding to confusion.

Too much baggage to unpack, all those things done to her easier to cut off with the dirty blond hair she buzzes to avoid the fuss. Every chance of having a family robbed of her in horrific ways, loneliness feels safer. Easier. Everyone's better off without needing to bear all those tons of crap she hoards on her broad shoulders.

Sits apart from the main company on those outings, nursing her bourbon and freaking people out - if she gets hit on, she sends everyone off with a few words. Even Soap, the blasting (sometimes too bloody brightly) sunshine, seems to fail with illuminating that shadow, all her attempts to get closer shut down. Maybe not as harsh as the others, but Ghost thinks - everything she touches is destroyed in torturous ways.

Soap shouldn't suffer because of her.

Until one day the chair in front of her lone table gets dragged back with a disgusting screeching sound, a heavy thump signaling of a huge (drunk) body plopping down across. Ghost doesn't need to look up - she can detect Soap by the stupid mutt's loud breathing, for fuck's sake. How many did she have?

Too many, thinks Ghost when a tanned arm lands on the table, resting on the elbow in a ready to wrestle stand. Must've been some kind of bet, no one else brave enough to challange big Scottish butch - so bored Soap, naturally, comes to one person she probably deems a worthy opponent.

"Not gonna let me back out, are ya?" Ghost shakes her head with a chuckle and finishes her bourbon, putting the glass down lazily and forgetting to pull the mask back down.

Soap's arm hits the table so hard it nearly cracks the wood - mere seconds.

Disarmed by a crooked, scarred smirk her big blue eyes are so obviously glued to.

"What now? Buy me a drink?" Ghost tilts her head. There's a shocked crowd around them, someone collecting a hefty win.

"Buy ye two and ye owe me a rematch."

Stupid mutt with blue eyes. Ghost wonders if she'll whine like a puppy riding her burly thigh.

i have somewhat a part two here

[whenmuldermetscully]

It never fails to amuse me that Scully— a woman clinically unable to conceive a child and fails IVF — finally has like what ONE summer of sex after years of not having it… and boom she gets pregnant naturally like that.

The syndicate are all in awe over this medical anomaly that is Scully when it’s Mulder who’s got some Michael Phelps bionic swimmers. Homeboy even got her pregnant a SECOND time in her 50s…

Like I need Secret Season of Sex as canon bc it looks so stupid making it a key point that she can’t have kids for how many seasons, just for it to fly out the window with a cute lil romp in Mulder’s bed.

[mrmeepsmadmind]

traumatized dickweeds turn to torturing each other so they can distract from the fact that they both need therapy

[breesperez139]

Dc x Dp Prompt #5

Demon Twin AU only Damian never had a blood son phase and has “biological siblings” (how absurd):

Damian would like to start by saying he is not at fault for this… miscommunication. Truly, how was he to know sharing the same blood as Jasmine and Danyal would make them “siblings”? Not once has anyone mentioned such absurd claims. He has never and will never treat either of the two the way he would Richard or any of his other siblings, but apparently sharing the same donors when being created automatically makes people siblings.

Worse, father is upset at him and mother for “hiding away” two of his “children” from him. Richard and Thomas will not stop staring at him. Todd, Brown, and Drake will not stop laughing. Cassandra has not stopped looking at his body language since this whole encounter started. Alfred is giving him his patented disappointed face he oh so hates but what is he to do?

Damian was not hiding anything or anyone. Jasmine and Danyal have not nor will they ever be his siblings. They are the children of Jack and Maddie Fenton just as Richard and the rest of them are Bruce’s children. Blood has nothing to do with family. They are at best “god-siblings” or “cousins” if father refuses to believe they are simply childhood companions.

There is barely a hint of emotion as father purses his lips while his siblings continue looking on at him in disbelief. Damian is not understanding why they are having trouble comprehending such simple logic. It is common sense to know that siblings are the children at least one of your parents have raised other than yourself. Parents are the people who raise you. Talia raised him therefore she is his mother. He lives with Bruce who is now raising him and therefore he is his father.

Neither Talia nor Bruce raised Jasmine or Danyal, therefore they are not siblings. It is merely coincidence that he shared blood with both Bruce and Talia. After all, every time he’s visited Amity Park, most children look nothing like their parents. How can it not be coincidence when it is clearly far more normal to raise children who don’t share an ounce of blood with you, than those who do.

How can it not be normal when Jack Fenton took Jasmine in so easily knowing he didn’t share any dna with her? Even more so with Danyal who doesn’t share even a drop of blood with either Jack or Maddie. Look at yourself father. Out of all your children, only one shares your dna. Do not try and pin this on Damian for being the only sensible person in this family. Blood siblings, ha, don’t make him laugh.

[bluehairedspidey]

i can't believe the boss and big boss have matching c-section scars parenthood is so beautiful <3

[mintmatcha]

lmao i need an extra where it’s aizawa trying to buy condoms and runs into that hoe mic who is on a resupply run

....aizawa doesn't use condoms....

[v-arbellanaris]

do you guys every think about how kal was supposed to get married and she was actually kind of excited about it even if she wasnt sure about WHO she was marrying bc she'd never met nelaros before because she actually did want to be a mother and a wife she actually wants a family and having one is so deeply important and precious to her and then her entire story unravels and in trying to save the family she has, nelaros is dead and she's conscripted has to give up any hope of having a family she could have had because blighted wardens can't have kids. now can you imagine her reaction in my... second? playthrough? where i tried to make it right by having her kill loghain and make alistair be king only for him to break up with her with the logic of how she couldn't give him children? and can you imagine that at the end of the day she doesnt even know if it was ever even possible for her, or if it was something that was taken from her by her conscription or maybe if she was never going to get what she wanted and was like this all along. and then do you think about the reveal about the broodmothers. can you guys hear me

[zhoudadudugongjin]

good luck with that meng dage

[ivanhoe-dont-do-it]

me abt Severance:

me abt the implications of Severance:

[xlcovo]

[settle-down-frohike]

“It didn’t take did it?”

Is the most heartbreaking line in the entirety of all 11 seasons and 2 movies of The X-Files.