I’m not a man who cries easily. My father didn’t cry. His father didn’t cry. When my uncle died in 2019 I cried at the funeral and then I didn’t cry again for four years.
I cried in my car outside the urology clinic in East London.
Let me back up.
Nomvula and I have been married seven years. We started trying for a child in year two. By year four, nothing had happened, and her mother was beginning to ask questions in that way Xhosa mothers ask questions, where they aren’t really asking, they are informing you of the situation.
Nomvula went to her gynae first. That is how it always goes. The woman gets investigated first. They poke her, they scan her, they take her blood, they ask her questions about her cycles that nobody should have to answer. Everything came back fine. Then the gynae said, “It might be him.”
It might be him.
I knew before I went. I think most men know. We just don’t want to know.
The semen analysis is — listen. I’m not going to describe it in detail. There is a small room. There is a magazine that someone else has touched. There is a cup. You walk out of there a different man than the one who walked in. I gave the sample and I went to work and I sat at my desk and I shifted papers around for six hours and I went home and I didn’t tell Nomvula I’d done it because I wanted to know the result first.
The result was bad.
Severe oligospermia, the urologist said. Very low count. Poor motility. He used the word “concerning” three times in five minutes. He talked about ICSI. He talked about specialised IVF where they inject one single sperm directly into one single egg. He talked about cost.
Around R100,000 per cycle.
I make R18,000 a month.
I sat in the car for forty minutes before I could drive. I didn’t cry the whole time. I cried for about five minutes and then I sat staring at the steering wheel because I didn’t know how I was going to tell my wife that the reason we don’t have children is me. Not her. Me. The man. The one whose job, in my mother’s house and in her mother’s house and in the house I grew up in, was to do this one thing. To make a family.
I told her that night. She didn’t cry. She held my face and she said, “I’m so glad we know.”
I don’t know what I did to deserve her.
We’re saving. Slowly. My brother in Cape Town offered to lend us money and I said no the first time and yes the second time because pride is a luxury I cannot afford anymore. Nomvula picked up extra hours at the school. I’m doing weekend security work that I do not want to talk about because it embarrasses me to say it. We have R34,000 saved. We need three times that.
I’m telling you this because nobody talks about us. The men. We are the silent half of every infertility story. We don’t go on the Facebook groups. We don’t tell our brothers. We sit in our cars and we cry once and then we go back to work.
If you are a man reading this and you have not yet done the test — do the test.
It is not your fault. It is not a failure of manhood. It is a sperm count. It is a number. It can be worked with. There are options. The first option, though, is knowing.
I wish I had known sooner. I would have stopped blaming her in my head. I would have stopped wondering. I would have started saving four years ago.
We are not at the end yet. We may not get there. But at least now we are walking towards something, instead of standing still pretending the ground isn’t moving under us.
Inspired by real journeys — names and details changed.
Anonymous | East London, Eastern Cape | Male Factor Infertility
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