The Journey to a Little One to Call Our Own

One gal's experiences dealing with IF, pregnancy, the birth of our first son, parenthood, and doing it all over again with our second son... here is our journey.


Monday, June 14, 2010

Insert Foot Here

Call it bad luck, call it coincidence, or call it plain old bad judgement of the conversations I hold. I don't care what you call it, but seriously, I can not get away from women talking about pregnancy.

Not that I mind talking to my friends about it. Truly - and I absolutely mean this when I say - excuse me, type - this... I love hearing from my friends who are expecting or already have babies. I love imagining them as mothers, welcoming their little ones to the world, buying baby gifts, you name it.

But what I can not avoid, for some reason, is women - non-friends - talking to me about pregnancy, childbirth, children, teething, pre-school, and being a mom.

Picture this one. I am sitting with one of my co-workers, C, this afternoon. She is SUPER nice - mid-to-late 30s, beautiful, great body, makes a great living. C has 4 little ones - ages 7, 5, 3, and 1. Two boys and two girls. And she's hilarious. I mean, this girl is always cracking jokes and often laughs about the fact that her life is totally crazy, driven by 4 active kids.

So, we're working on this project together, and we start talking about where she lives. Here was our conversation:

Mrs. D: I know someone who lives in your same town.
C: Oh, really? Who are they?
Mrs. D: You probably don't know them, but... [Mrs. D inserts names and references to people here]. They just had their second baby about 2 weeks ago. Their first kid is almost 6 years old, and it took a lot for them to get pregnant with their second.

Stop here. Damn it. I have no idea why I chose to spurt out that our acquaintences just had a second baby, let alone that it took them awhile to conceive him. I caught myself just as I was ending the sentence. Insert foot into mouth. What happened next was totally appropriate for C's response to my awkward comment, and I knew what C was going to say as soon as I finished my way-too-open-sentence.

Resume conversation:

C: Oh, that just breaks my heart. Why is it that people like me who want to have kids have absolutely no trouble getting pregnant? And I mean absolutely NO trouble... every time we wanted to have a baby, we tried and I was pregnant the next month. Then I hear about people who can't have babies or have a really tough time conceiving, and I feel so bad. My friend had a really tough time getting pregnant and every time I got pregnant, I felt so bad telling her. I know she was always excited for me, but I still felt so bad.

I stared at C for what felt like 20 minutes (I am sure it was about 2 seconds, but you know the feeling when you are in total shock). I have no idea if she has any clue that we are facing issues with infertility - but then I look at our situation from an outsider's perspective and think, "they've been married 4 years, always wanted kids, are in a really good place in their lives.... yeah, they must be having problems."

I kind of said a quick, "yeah, that is too bad" and moved right along in our project. I couldn't tell if C had any idea that she pretty much just described where I have been emotionally and physically for the past 1.5 years, but I couldn't bring myself to talk any more about it. I seriously bring this shit on myself. I mean, who starts talking about an acquaintence who had troubles conceiving to a co-worker? RANDOM.

It's tough for the TTC thing not to take over your life. My 2:30 p.m. e-mail to Mr. D had no subject line, and in the body said, "what time are you coming to get me from work, because we need to make sure we BD before your softball game."

No, "I love you honey and hope you're having a great day" or, "what should we make for dinner?" or even, "I know I've reminded you 10 times, but I'm getting kinda pissed, so make sure to call our financial planner with the questions we outlined."

It's all about the baby-makin.

My new vow to myself: figure out how not to talk about babies, pregnancy, etc. all the time. That even means with myself... I need to give my own head a break from TTC.

No O yet, but I felt some amazingly sharp, ovulation-like cramps today that must be O cramps. CBFM was still at high this morning, but I bet it will show peak tomorrow (here I go again, making bets with myself). I peed on two disposable OPKs today - one this morning and one after work. Both look kinda positive, but I think they are so hard to read. I'll wait until tomorrow to check CBFM. Either way, I know I felt O cramps, so we're putting it into high gear and BDing now and tomorrow.

It's amazing what you can feel when you are totally in tune with your body. I hope that's the same when I conceive some day.

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