This week’s Missouri Health Talks is a collaboration with Vox Magazine.
Kelly Gilion is the owner of Plume, a local gift shop here in Columbia. She also started a support group for women dealing with fertility issues called Graceful Wait in 2010.
She spoke with reporter Sarah Hallam about how she was inspired to create this group by her own desire for support during her own six-year struggle.
You can read more about Kelly and the support group in the March issue of Vox Magazine - available now around town and online: What does it cost to undergo IVF?
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words. You can view more conversations at missourihealthtalks.org.
Kelly Gilion: I think there are so many emotions. They're all very difficult, you know.
Jealousy. You're jealous of other women that you see having a very easy time conceiving and carrying a child.
Anger, you know. Angry at God. “Why me? Why? Why does this person have it so easy?”
Just extreme sadness and grief, and, you know, when you're grieving through infertility, you're grieving the loss of the ideal, the loss of your dream, the loss of a family that you dream about – you haven't experienced that family yet, but you're dreaming about it, and there's a lot of fear.
“What am I going to feel like? What is my life gonna feel like if I don't ever have a child?” [There’s] a very definite feeling of uncertainty. Any of us, not me anymore, but any of us could end up pregnant tomorrow, you know, and that could also be the case.
We've had that happen where some of our women like, have given up all hope, complete surprise, and all of a sudden, like literally, they end up pregnant and caring and delivering a healthy child, and you can't really explain it, but it’s just God's miracle and God decided to that that was the time.
But you don't know when that's gonna happen. So, you're just sitting there like… I always said, “my struggle was six years long.” If I had known from day one, it was going to be six years and on, you know, October 30, 2008, I'm going to give birth to these two beautiful twins, then those six years would not have been so heartbreaking. Because I would have known like, this is how my story ends.
And I would have, you know, obviously made a lot of different choices and had more joy and had more hope and had more… you know, I would have lived that time differently. I would have had a lot of vacations and just been like, “I'm living it up cause I'm gonna have these two kids in, you know, six years.”
But you know, it's kind of like you're just living in this period of uncertainty and unknown. You don't know how long it's going to be. You're afraid to make plans. “Do I schedule this vacation because I might be pregnant?”
Or do I, you know, spend this money on a couch because I might have to pay $20,000 to go try to have a baby? So, it's just you know, it definitely can just take over your life, your marriage, your emotional state.
