“What do you mean by envy?” Marissa asked.
“The envy you feel toward women who have children,” Linda said.
“The pain you might experience seeing mothers with kids in the grocery store. That kind of stuff.”
“Like the anger I have at the mothers in my practice,” Marissa said.
“Especially those who I think are neglecting their kids in some way.”
“Exactly,” Linda said.
“I can’t think of a worse practice for an infertile woman than pediatrics. Why couldn’t you have specialized in something else?” Linda laughed and Marissa laughed with her. Pediatrics was a particularly cruel field for someone in her circumstances. It probably was one of the reasons she’d been avoiding going to work as much as possible.
“Anger and envy are okay,” Linda said.
“Let yourself feel them. Don’t try to bottle them up just because you feel they are inappropriate.”
Easier said than done, Marissa thought to herself.
“Before we break,” Linda continued, “there are a couple of important points I want to make. We’ll be going over all of this in more detail in future sessions, and I hope we can get Robert in here for one or two of them. But I want to warn you against letting this longed-for child become the embodiment of all your hope. Don’t persuade yourself everything will be different if only you have this baby, because it doesn’t work that way. What I want to suggest is that you set a realistic time frame for IVF attempts. As I understand it, you are on your fourth. Is that correct?”
“That’s right,” Marissa said.
“Tomorrow I’ll have the embryo transfer. ” “Statistically, four is probably not enough,” Linda said.
“Perhaps you should think of setting eight tries as a cutoff. Here at the Women’s Clinic we have a very high success rate around the eighth attempt. If after eight you haven’t achieved pregnancy, then you should stop and consider other options.”
“Robert is talking about other options now,” Marissa countered.
“He will be more willing to be cooperative if he knows you’ve established a cutoff point-that this ordeal won’t go on forever,” Linda said.
“That’s been our experience. In every couple there is one who is more committed to the process than the other. Give him a little time. Respect his limitations as well as your own.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Marissa said. Considering Robert’s latest words on the subject, she wasn’t optimistic.
“Are there any other issues you’d like us to concentrate on?”
Linda asked.
Marissa hesitated.
“Yes,” she said at last.
“We mentioned guilt briefly. That’s a big problem for me. Perhaps because I’m a doctor, it has bothered me that I haven’t been able to find out how I got the infection that blocked my fallopian tubes.”
“I can understand,” Linda said.
“It’s natural to think that way. But we’ll have to try to change your thinking. The chance that any past behavior was the cause is infinitesimally small. It’s not as if it were VD or anything.”
“How do I know?” Marissa asked.
“I feel as if I have to find out. It’s become an increasingly important issue for me.”
“All right, we’ll be sure to talk more about it.” Opening up the scheduling book on her desk, Linda made a second appointment for Marissa. Then she stood up. Marissa did the same.
“I’d like to make one more suggestion,” Linda said.
“I’ve got the distinct impression that you’ve been experiencing a good deal of isolation as a result of your infertility.”
Marissa nodded, this time in genuine agreement.
“I’d like to encourage you to give Resolve a call,” Linda continued. She handed a card with a telephone number to Marissa.
“You might have heard of the organization. It’s a self-help support group for people with infertility problems. I think you would benefit from the contact. They talk about the same issues you and I have been discussing. It will be reassuring to realize that you are not alone in all this,” Leaving the psychologist’s office, Marissa felt pleased that she’d made the effort. She felt a hundred times better about the session than she’d imagined she would. She looked at the card with the Resolve phone number on it. She even felt positive about calling the organization. She’d heard about it before, but had never seriously thought of calling, in part because she was a physician. She had always assumed that the main purpose of the group was to explain the scientific aspects of infertility to lay people. That Resolve dealt with emotional aspects of infertility was news.