Do you wish you could deny your infertility? Seriously, I want the truth. If given a chance would you do it? If you could wipe the memory of your friends and family clean, would you reinstall the infertile status in their memory?
Would you be able to do it if you remained childless? Would you peruse the fertile card if you chanced to be able to have a biological child?
(I wish I could be THAT smug)
This year has been the family baby carnival - series of babies being handed down from the skies to waiting parents. Technically, every year is a baby carnival - some or the other person in family or friends or acquaintances is keeping the stork busy. But this year was different. I was in the queue too.
So, I meet this lady, who is telling me of this other couple (which relationship-wise plus socially is close to her) and their first-born who has arrived a short while back. And she chirped about them, telling me something to the effect of the baby having come after the parents finally decided to have a kid.
I am aware through background gossip, that the couple had issues with conception. They were trying for some *years* before the wife got on the family way.
And now that the baby is here, it is so easy to act smart and just shoo off any signs of struggle. Wow! And the added bonus for me was the new-dad's advice to the world - just relax and try. Thanks mister!
This rosy picture - we didn't want kids initially, and had one when we wanted one - is what the couple is telling the world, and their family and friends are reinforcing that great reproductive image.
Their smugness sucks!
Image Courtesy: http://images.sodahead.com/blogs/000308717/SmugAlert_xlarge.jpeg (No copyright claimed by blog author; not used for commercial purpose)
(Please note, I am no longer posting from the drafts I mentioned in the pro-post.)
(Please note, I am no longer posting from the drafts I mentioned in the pro-post.)
I'm not sure I would erase their memories of our infertility because right now I can justify my freak outs about assvice and I'm not sure I could go back to sitting silently and listening to all that "just relax" crap.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't, wouldn't erase memories of our losses and infertility. It would be a disservice to the babies I lost and it would cheat everyone out of the lessons we learned.
ReplyDelete{{{Hugs}}}
I know that it would be impossible for me to deny the last few years. The funny thing is, my family would love to just gloss over the pain and losses, and point to Ginny as the thing that makes it all all right. But in my heart, it will never be all right that there were others before her and that I continue to doubt my body.
ReplyDeletei think some might behave this way to avoid exposing their kid to all the pain and suffer they had to go through to get there... Does the child need to know how it was conceived? Maybe when it's older.
ReplyDeleteBut some friends and relatives can behave so weird around an IVF child. Perhaps they want to shield their newborn from that.
I don't think the parents will ever really forget the IF and the struggles.
It's like the WW2 veterans - they focused on the Big Day when the war was over, trying to eradicate the long years in the trenches...
No way could I forget it, and I have no problem telling people we used ART to get pregnant with RockStar. Erasing that memory of our IF struggles would change who I am as a person, and even through all the pain and disappointment, I think I'm a better person now for it!
ReplyDeleteI proudly point out how and why I have my daughter--because I am proud of how hard we worked to have her. (And oftentimes I get people saying "wow, what an age gap!" or something annoying like that about my kids)
ReplyDeleteNo, I would never want to deny my/our infertility and our struggle to have children. It's part of who I am, who we are as a couple and a family.
ReplyDeleteNope, it is part of who we are. Now, do we correct everyone who says our son looks like his Daddy? Nope, because it makes him happy. But I am VERY open about the fact that he is an IVF baby.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they just don't like explaining all the time?
Oh hell no! There is no way I would sweep anything under the rug. But, maybe it's because we Americans tend to overshare as a society. But to go around spouting the "just relax" line is beyond the pale. (I can see why it happens in different cultures, but really? Is pride so much more important than education?).
ReplyDeleteNo, it's too much a part of who I am now and because my son was conceived from donor eggs, too much of who he is.
ReplyDeleteLike Zygotta, I thought of the soldiers. Is it right to ignore all their sacrifices (ugh, makes me shudder to think of what our soldiers are going through right this second) just because the war ends and all is rosey and wonderful? No, the battle still happened, the scars are still there, comrades have seen their hopes and dreams evaporate. I would not be able to act like the past had not happened. Maybe others will hug their babies a little tighter, be a little more thankful for what they have been blessed with, knowing it isn't always so easy.
ReplyDeleteAh! People are morons.
ReplyDeleteKristin summed it up best for me. I would not, and could not even if I wished pretend that the last 4 years didn't happen to me. And certainly no way to erase what I've been through. It does send the wrong impression, and it stings, when people do that. I guess everyone handles things differently, and some would rather feign ignorance than deal with reality... but I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteWow. I would never erase my status as an RPLer. I wear it as a badge of honor. It's made me who I am today. And I like this chick much better than the non-RPLer version.
ReplyDeleteI can't erase it...it's part of who I am. And though Secondary Infertility raises different "dumbness" from strangers than Primary Infertility ("Is she your only one?" "You're happy with an only, huh?" "She must be spoiled," etc.) I still long for a sibling despite the age gap that would be there. (My daughter will be 7 in 2 weeks.)
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't erase them, but I do wish it wasn't so hard in the first place if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThis makes my stomach turn.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to erase my IF struggles - thru our journey, family, friends and extended family have learned so much and everyone knows what a miracle my child is...
ReplyDeleteThat being said, in a small perverse way I can understand why when faced with the annoying comments the world throws us, how the couple in question would want to just pretend that they were "normal"... I don't agree with their stance at all, but can see why they would want to gloss over their battles...
Love to you and Season (and remembering Lola always)
xxx
Not sure about the 'denying IF' thing, its through them that Mr Stinky and I have reached a new level in our relationship that I'm not entirely sure would have been breached without our miscarriages and diagnosed chromosomethingies. To deny that is to deny a part of our relationship, not that it is really the business of friends and family.
ReplyDeleteI'd like the innocence back, but to be honest, I was always aware that it was hard for 'other people'
Oh and yes, one of my (ex) best friends was in a relationship where her partner apparently did not want kids at any cost. Now, he proudly posts pix on fb (I think. Is on hide) most weeks.
Mmmmn. Hard to watch. I don't know if the prior stuff is ever really talked about, I don't deal with them too much now
if i could wipe it clean from my own mind, i totally would.
ReplyDeleteI am here from Mel's Blog Round-up. I recently found out that my neighbors' son and his wife went through some IF struggles. The way their parents described it, they were married 13 years before deciding to start a family and they lost their first baby. Alarm bells were going off in my head that this was not the whole truth and that they likely suffered from some type of infertility problems. But, that is not the story that their parents chose to tell and I've been wondering about that ever since.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me think about how my being in the closet might affect other people. We did postpone TTC for a long time, a lot longer than our families would have liked, and then were hit with the sad reality of unexplained infertility for another 3 years on top of that. My parents know about our struggles but not my in-laws. I just don't trust them not to judge me. So they will never know, if I can help it. Therefore our story gets rewritten as one of choice to delay parenting rather than difficulty. While it was a self-preservation move for me, now I'm thinking that it might also be a disservice or perhaps even something worse than that towards other people struggling to build a family.
ReplyDeleteI could never erase my past of struggling with TTC and pregnancy loss even if I wanted to, it colors almost everything I think and do, in some way or another. If I were denying that to the outside world I would be denying a huge part of how I feel and process things. That doesn't seem very fair or honest to myself or others.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised someone would want to do that, but everyone is different.
Thinking of you, Lola and your rainbow baby now and always. (((hugs)))
I'm not to the other side yet, so I can't speak for that angle. But I will say this...this past year, especially, has made me a stronger person. And I've learned SO much about being a more patient, compassionate person on EVERY LEVEL from the ALI community on the whole...I don't think I would erase this.
ReplyDeleteIt would, however, be nice to not see life through IF glasses constantly. But...
I'm doing the opposite. When we were ttc, my husband and I told everyone that we weren't fond of children. That way, we weren't being asked painful questions all the time. Now that we have children, I'm slowly filling in my friends and family what exactly we went through to have them. It is easier for me to deal with pain in the past than pain in the present. If we had never had children I may have told people "we wanted children, but it didn't work out for us." A lot of the unwillingness to share on some infertiles part is the privacy of the issue. My husband sperm is no good, and it isn't my place to be telling his parents, friends, and siblings about his wonky sperm if it makes him feel uncomfortable. Infertility, like all medical issues, IMHO, is a private medical condition, and how much ppl choose to share is completely their own business...even if it may seem smug.
ReplyDeleteOver here from the blog roundup. There's no way I could erase my infertility and I wouldn't want to. In another sense, I couldn't. We had our son through surrogacy and since everyone knew I wasn't pregnant, there's no hiding our infertility. When I meet new people, I don't necessarily tell them how my son came to be, but it's not a secret and I wouldn't lie.
ReplyDeleteI can understand that this couple wants to pretend everything is normal when everything about IF is dealing w/ an abnormality of some sort, but to start spouting off about relaxing and trying? That's taking it a bit too far.
Came over from the roundup. And no, there is no way I would erase the infertility from the memories of my friends and family. Even if they still make stupid comments from time to time (or at least twice a week, if you're my MIL), I'd like to think they've learned a tiny bit of sensitivity. If what I've gone through and shown them helps other people in their lives then I'm all for it.
ReplyDeleteI'm here from the roundup.
ReplyDeleteMy sister conceived her first child on her 3rd round of IVF after at least two years of infertility. She and her husband told nobody but me. Then six months after my nephew was born, she was pregnant again, and less than a year after nephew #2 was born, she was pregnant AGAIN. While she didn't tell anyone about the infertility or the IVF, she made sure to tell anybody that would listen that #3 was an oops--the same #3 that was conceived two weeks after my failed IVF #3. I still feel furious about her denial of infertility coupled with her public flaunting of her newly-discovered fertility. I had to endure MONTHS of listening to her complain to people not "in the know" about what a burden this third child would be as I was trying desperately to come to grips with my own grief. It was maddening.
I have always been fairly open about my infertility, and I can't imagine being anything else. I can understand just being a private person and keeping your business to yourself, but to then turn around and brag about your fertility? Ugh. I have done my best to forgive my sister for misleading the rest of our family in a way that so directly impacted my happiness, but it still makes me sad when I think about it.
I wouldn't deny it. No way. If I did, what would it all have been for?
ReplyDeleteBea