I thought that infertility was a white woman's disease. Even though I worked in academia aka the land of infertility, where women faculty are often compelled to postpone having children to achieve tenure, I still didn't believe infertility had anything to do with me. Every time someone mentioned an infertility treatment, I nodded, and then I silently thanked god that I was a black woman and that there was at least one thing that I didn't have to worry about.
Despite having a Ph.D. and training in critical race studies, I bought into the idea that black women are more fertile than white women. Intellectually, I knew that historical myths about oversexed, fruitful black women had been at the root of racist practices and beliefs, from the institution of slavery to the image of the welfare queen. But somewhere along the way, I had come to believe the very racist ideas that I had spent my career as a professor trying to dismantle.
I grew up in the South, surrounded by a community of black women who made it their job to make sure black girls did not get pregnant. Whenever a beautiful brown girl's belly grew shiny and round until it was so high that she looked like she was about to float off the ground, they began their chorus: "No more fun for her...It's all about that baby now...That baby will be hers forever...You better stop studying them boys and get your lesson." The women who said these things loved these girls, and some of them had been these girls. They would pull out old cribs, and throw baby showers to make sure that the new mothers had everything that they needed. But the girls' round bellies had transformed these teenagers from signs of promise to reminders of a time when poor black women had few options for a future beyond reproduction. So when the women loved on the surprise babies, they still grieved what they believed these girls-turned-women had lost. And, they never stopped giving the side-eye to the rest of us, warning us about what Boone's Farm and Barry White would get you.
It was good advice. I heeded their warnings and kept my ovaries bathed in birth control hormones for much of my adult life. I waited for the completion of college, then a Ph.D., the publication of a first book, and eventually tenure at a college, to have children. But no one ever warned me that when I phoned my ovaries to tell them to wake up because I was ready, they might not answer.
Black women are actually 1.5 times more likely to experience infertility than their white counter parts.
After trying to get pregnant for months with no success, I decided to use my academic research skills to find a solution. Surely we all know where babies come from, I thought. How hard could it be? Clearly I was missing some essential secret. I was standing up too soon post-coitus or taking too many hot baths, boiling my ova like Easter eggs. I consulted internet discussion boards and began studying a book that posters referred to as the hippy bible of fertility. I took my temperature every morning and creating charts to track ovulation. I also began trying every trick posted by women who indicated their successful pregnancies with animations of bouncing babies at the end of their posts. Some claimed that they took copious amounts of expectorant to try to create more cervical mucous. When I tried it, I got a sore throat from postnasal drip and eye snot so persistent that I looked like a sad clown who was still learning to apply the make-up. Other posters repurposed menstrual cups to trap sperm and did things with egg whites that I shudder to think about now. But at the time, it all seemed strangely reasonable. It certainly seemed better than admitting that I had no power to control my own body. After every experiment, I would wait two weeks and pee and pee and pee on expensive sticks until I could urinate on a target like a well-trained beagle. And, still nothing.
I packed up my beautiful color coded temperature charts, and I went to see my gynecologist. I wanted to show her my perfect 28-day cycles that proved that I was ovulating. I planned to tell her that I was pretty sure that nothing was really wrong, but that maybe she should check to be sure. But when the black woman who had been my doctor for five years walked in, my truth spilled out: "Something is wrong. I can't get pregnant."
She laughed, "Calm down. Black women don't have to worry about that. You're not infertile. Just impatient."
Relief passed through me like warm air at first, but I didn't really understand.
"Look," she said. "I have seen some cases of black women who could not get pregnant, but they were just busy professionals who didn't have time for sex."
"Are you saying that they were trying to get pregnant, but they forgot to have sex?" I said. "Because that's not our problem."
"You don't see any poor black women with this problem, do you?" she said. "That's because they are having sex instead of trying to take over the world. Just relax and enjoy your husband."
Her diagnosis: black bougie sex deficit disorder.
According to Resolve, The National Infertility Association, black women are actually 1.5 times more likely to experience infertility than their white counter parts. While the reasons for this are many, lack of awareness is a huge part of the problem. A University of Michigan study of black women from a wide spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds found that infertile black women were also much more likely to suffer in silence and isolation.
I fired my gynecologist and ran to a reproductive specialist. It took five IVF's, four infertility treatment centers, and a host of shots in the ass, for me to give birth to a gorgeous daughter. I have not forgotten the dark days of infertility: the bloody egg retrievals, the deep ache of waiting to find out if it worked, the wavering voice on the phone that told me it did not, and the howling grief of losing someone that never existed.
Recently, a 39-year-old friend, also a black woman, mentioned to me she wanted children, but wasn't trying. I asked her if she had thought about her fertility. She promptly explained that her grandmother had 10 children; that she was the result of an accidental pregnancy; that one woman in her family gave birth at the age of 45. I said, all of those things are true for me too, except my grandmother had 12 children. When it came to my own fertility, none of it made a difference. It's time to start talking about black infertility.