Sitting in the gynecologist's waiting room the other day, dreading the long overdue Pap smear I joked about a few months back, was a surreal experience. Not because someone was about to shove an instrument shaped like a stainless steel duckbill in my body and crank it open*, but because This was the room I waited in almost ten years ago for my first appointment as a woman ready to have a baby.
For the men I am fortunate enough to have as readers, let me explain. As a non-reproducing woman, the main objective of going to the "lady doctor" is for her to tell you you don't have any diseases that might prevent you from having children waaaay down the line when you are ready to have them, and for her to give you the pills to prevent you from having them now, thus putting an abrupt end to your drinking two bottles of Chardonnay every Saturday night. But once you are ready to conceive, a visit to the gyno takes on a whole new meaning. You are visiting an oracle who, you hope, will tell you that you will indeed be the mother of the 2.4 tow-headed children you have dreamed about your whole life, but put off having so you could build a life, save money, travel the world, etc.
Sitting in this peach oasis of calm, apparently the preferred, soothing color of all reproductive facilities (along with dusty rose) surrounded by pamphlets for blood cord banks and osteoporosis medication, I could feel the old desperation of so long ago, having been in the "trying" game almost year with nothing to show for it but a trash can full of used ovulation predictor strips and negative pregnancy tests, praying to God the doctor wouldn't tell me I was as barren as the Gobi. Glancing around the room at other young women, three children later, I wondered which of them was in my former reproductively-challenge shoes and, having on been on both sides of the equation, I became inspired to put a message out there. That message?
It is not OK to ask a woman with no children when she is thinking about having children or to brag about how easily you became/become pregnant yourself.
The last of my three pregnancies were all on the first try, so one would think I now sit smugly in the camp of the extremely fertile, but having suffered through twelve unsuccessful attempts, I can remember the feeling, wanting to punch someone in the head at a cocktail party/family holiday, after being told, "He looks at me and I'm knocked up", even if that person did not know the current state of my fertility. I will admit this sounds a little crazy. Are we not supposed to talk about our reproductive lives at all if we are blessed in that department? I'll borrow a line from You've Got Mail, "It's like those people who brag because they're tall".
All I'm saying is, in this day of later-in-life marriages and careers that take up so much of our time, more and more of the women surrounding you may be having a little difficulty in the baby department. And while some women may be comfortable tempting fate and announcing they are "trying" to the world, which makes me vaguely nauseous as I then immediately picture said woman having sex with her husband and then it's awkward to maintain eye contact, (she will probably send out pregnancy announcements as well), some of us play it a little closer to the vest and don't announce the increase of scheduled sex in our lives, thus making it difficult to suss out exactly who is and is not in the baby game yet.
So tread lightly, dear readers. You do not want to unintentionally hurt someone's feelings and, having been there, it is the kind of hurt that can make you feel like less of a woman, all while sitting at the Christmas dinner table. And if what my good friend told me about the fertility drugs is true, you might wind up being bludgeoned with a fruitcake.
And just for good measure, if you are lucky enough to be trusted by a reproductively challenged woman, and she shares her troubles with you, for the love of Christ DO NOT EVER utter the phrase "relax and it will happen when you least expect it". Those who do are also the same people who tell your forty-three year old cousin, who has been on twenty unsuccessful Match.com dates, she'll find love when she's not actually looking for it.
*And there is special place in hell for you if you EVER use this moniker for yourself in public, where you have to wake every forty-five minutes for all eternity to breastfeed the children you were lucky to conceive so easily .
**Is this making you uncomfortable, male readers? Too damn bad, when the FDA clears that male birth control pill and it requires a yearly rectal exam, we'll talk.
1 comment:
I was with a group of women recently and one was talking about all the fertility treatments she's suffering through. And then the woman sitting next to her, her supposed friend, says she's thankful she never had to do all that, both of her pregnancies were on the first try. I wanted to punch her in the face Jersey Shore style.
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