This. This has to be up there with one of the toughest parts about infertility.
When people state or ask inappropriate questions to the people who are struggling with trying to have a baby (usually because they don’t know).
When do you think you’ll have a baby?
Your turn next!
Don’t you want children?
You’ve been married for 5 years, isn’t it time to have a baby?
You don’t want children, they ruin your lives. Enjoy your freedom while you can.
Are you pregnant?
Are you sure your not pregnant?
You have plenty of time, you’re only young.
Do you think you and your husband will try for a baby soon?
Hurry up! We want you to have children.
I AM TRYING! WE ARE SO DESPERATELY TRYING!
These are the kind of questions and statements that crush me. That make me want to hide under a table and cry. And cry and cry and cry. So much I want to be able to say, “Yes! We are pregnant! How did you guess?” But sadly I can’t.
Eye roll…
Recently someone came and asked me if I was pregnant because they had an inkling that I was. They kept asking me and wouldn’t accept that I wasn’t. Apparently a few people had been talking about it. It turned out that a few people had noticed I had needed a few times off work due to hospital and doctors visits and so assumed that I was pregnant. That was painful. Painful explaining that the reasons I had to have those visits was the opposite of what they thought. That actually it was because we couldn’t get pregnant.
In the end, the only way to prove I was telling the truth that I wasn’t expecting was to tell them everything. Saying the words, ‘We are struggling to have children’ is hard. That’s why I don’t say it often. That is why so far on this journey we haven’t told many people. Because it hurts every inch of my being to say it.
But I get it. I get why people ask it and say it. I am of that age and been married that long that people expect it. I totally get it!
And I get that if you don’t know the struggle people are going through, and if you have never been there yourself, you don’t realise the hurt it causes people.
No one means to hurt people that way. In the past, I’d have asked the question without thinking. So I get it. I 100% get why people say things like that. It is out of joy and hope and excitement!
But please, if you have never been in this situation and don’t know someone’s story, think about it before you say it. You have no idea what is going on behind the smiles and the photos of the happy couple.
One of our very good friends recently said to us that when they first met us, they thought we were the perfect couple. That’s hilarious in itself! She thought that until we shared our story. Then couldn’t believe what we have been through because of how we appear.
What I am trying to say is that behind the smiles of a perfect couple could be an incredibly heart-broken pair who so desperately want to have a child. But nothing, absolutely nothing they are doing or trying will work. Because they are suffering with infertility. And then when they are asked about why they don’t have children… well, it just crushes them that little bit more.
Journeying to Family 