Labor of Love

My morning routine is to get 2 shots of espresso, find my favorite chair, and watch the news to get a slow start to my day. This morning I almost choked on my espresso because I saw a commercial promoting a new show called Labor of Love.

Labor of Love is a new “reality” show promoted by Fox that begins, May 21, 2020 and revolves around a 41 year old female looking to start a family, this year.

This is an awfully tone deaf show that needs to be addressed by a male. Unfortunately, if I were a female and posted this same opinion I would be called bitter or dragged on social media. I refuse to let that happen and hope to get this opinion out early enough to show it is not just women who this show hurts.  I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before. My wife and I went to a cell phone provider’s store once and she had all sorts of good questions to ask. As she would ask the question, the representative would either not respond, or answer the question by looking directly at me. If they didn’t address her question I would repeat it and magically get the answer. It’s not a fair reality, but it is reality; minority voices are either ignored or diminished. I strongly believe if more white males stood in solidarity with Black Lives Matter or any other cause, it would get more positive attention. I hate that. I hate that a white male’s voice carries more weight to people than a woman or minority ethnic group. As much as I hate it, I recognize my privilege and want to use it positively for others.

Now back to this show. The overall story being told here is that a 41 year old single woman will find her perfect partner to make a baby with and they live happily ever after. Along that journey they produce dramatic moments to entertain the masses.

Have you ever hurt so hard you just groan? Your heart hurts so bad you cry until your stomach hurts. Have you ever felt true heart ache? I have experienced this and even worse, held my wife while she physically, emotionally, and spiritually melts in my arms. I’ve heard and seen so many heart breaking stories of couples attempting to start families.

A woman’s body has only so many eggs. As she grows older the quality and quantity decreases. That ol’ biological clock is a real thing. Sure, the biological clock narrative has been misguided and abused at times, but the underlying truth remains. By the time a woman reaches 41 that reality is most likely at the front of her mind. So, Fox takes a 41 year old woman and throws her into a room of men who also want to start a family with the end goal being a perfect match to make the baby. What Fox will not show, because the mass populace wouldn’t have the stomach to endure watching, is the story behind getting to 41 and wanting a child, and the long road to actually conceiving a baby after that match is made on TV.

This diminishes the difficulty of conceiving. A perfectly healthy male and female only have a 20% at conception naturally each cycle. I’m talking LeBron James & Serena Williams like physical specimens, even the healthiest of healthy only have a 20% chance. That percentage drops significantly once you introduce any variables. You have to start timing sex around ovulatory windows and then looking forward to your test results. Negative after negative pregnancy test beat you to a pulp and tear the hope of maternity from your weakly clinched fist. Your partner watches you unravel and get your heart broken repeatedly all while feeling powerless to help the person they love most. Let’s then dip our toes into the water of the psychological toll it takes on a woman to not be able to conceive naturally, what that does to her self-worth. Say she then conceives naturally, the hope soars and she glows as this cathartic instinct is fulfilled. Chemical pregnancy. Miscarriage. Termination for medical reasons. Complications hit and she loses her pregnancy. The amount of trauma is significantly more than any individual should have to ever endure, however, somehow she finds the strength to move forward and explore artificial reproductive technology (ART) which includes the main boss of fertility, in vitro fertilization (IVF). Before all the physical hardship of ART there is emotional carnage. The feelings of not being enough or not being “normal” only compound the damage to come induced by needles, probes, tests, surgeries, and complications from all the aforementioned. Thousands of shots and blood draws, hundreds of sonograms, endless hours spent lying on her back in a sterile room at the doctor’s office. Then maybe there is hope, maybe an embryo is created and implanted into her uterine lining. Then hope surges and all is well. Well, until it’s not. Chemical pregnancy. Miscarriage. Termination for medical reasons. Complications hit and she loses her pregnancy. After all the hard work and time she loses it, again.

This is a cycle that I’ve been a part of and seen up close and personal. I can’t tell you the amount of stories I’ve heard and witnessed like this. Maybe this is news to you. Maybe this seems like an exception to the norm. I assure you with a heavy heart that this cycle is the norm. More than 30% of all couples use IVF to build their families. Then throw in the complications non-hetero couples experience. What I am trying to show here is that making a baby isn’t some rose colored journey where you skip through Candy Land to your beaming baby. The journey to a baby looks a lot more like Game of Thrones for many than it should.

My outrage at this show is making light of a messy and complicated process. There are millions of silent voices out there. Miscarriages happen as often as you hear Justin Bieber on the radio, but you wouldn’t know it because it is a taboo topic. Ending a wanted pregnancy due to health complications via abortion is taboo, but there is an entire community out there with bleeding hearts. Infertility and the road to a baby is not easy, it is not something most can stomach to even read about, much less watch a television show about. Yet, here we are, tonight, on Fox, this woman’s journey to have a baby produced for all the world to see, but only through rose colored glasses.