I betrayed infertiles

I think I betrayed Infertiles yesterday. Instead of owning up to being an infertile, I pretended that we don’t want children. When people ask the "when are you going to have a baby" question, denying any plan to have children comes so automatically that it is out of my mouth before I have a chance to rethink my response.

Yesterday a former coworker asked when I was going to have children, and I said, “No children for me.” She responded by telling me that I am still young and have time. (I’m 37, but I suppose to an older person anyone under 50 seems young.)

How do you respond to this question?

Should I have taken her, “You’re young” as an invitation to give out more information? Something like, “Since I haven’t been able to get pregnant after three years of trying, it is unlikely to happen in the next three years.” But then again, this was just a passing conversation at work, so perhaps I should treat it as the superficial conversation that it was and not delve into any personal details.

On one hand, mentioning infertility to someone who never had a problem is inviting pity and useless advice. But on the other hand, not mentioning it keeps people from becoming aware of how common a problem it is.

As a side note, two women recently told me that they were “childless by choice.” (Neither of these women had any idea of my situation.) I had always assumed that if you told someone you were childless, that the assumption was that it was by choice. Am I completely wrong on this? Why did they have to mention "by choice"? If you choose to stop infertility treatments, then are you "childless by choice" too?

Positive thoughts

I need to keep reminding myself to think positively and to believe in myself. I suppose we can all use that.

I saw a great quote on a greeting card this weekend, "What would you do if you knew that you would not fail?"

Jealousy

I am so ashamed of the way I am feeling, but I can't control it.

Last weekend I saw my cousin and her three-month old baby, and it didn't bother me at all, so I thought I was getting a handle on my emotions. I even thought about trying to restore my karma by making a baby quilt for someone else on the sewing machine that I originally bought to make a quilt for my own baby.

However, this weekend I saw a friend who is five months pregnant. I tried to avoid her at the party, but she kept standing at the doorway overlooking the backyard in a tight dress and rubbing her belly, which she has every right to do.

I thought I was okay with never being pregnant, and even feel fortunate not to be tied down with a child and have responsibility for all that brings. But why has this depressed me so much? Am I just jealous because she has something I can't have- even though I don't think I want it anymore?

Alumni

Education in California must really be getting squeezed!

The public California university that I DROPPED OUT OF called me to ask for a donation. (I guess technically I am an alum, even if I didn't graduate.) I have dreamed for years that they would call me, and I looked forward to telling them how much I hated their school. But they never called, and I mellowed with time.

This year they called! I didn't have the heart to chew out the poor student who had the misfortune to have this job. (When I was there, it was the worst job on campus but the best-paying.) Although he was completely stuck for a reply since I forced him to stray from his script, and he suggested I donate even after I told him I hated that school, he finally accepted when I said I would donate money to the school where I graduated instead.

They called me again tonight to tell me about the improvements on campus, including the new Grateful Dead archive. If they are so desperate that they are calling dropouts, they really do need the money, and I did learn a lot there, even if most of it wasn't in class.

Birth Control

I haven’t been keeping track of my cycles, but I usually have a vague idea of when my period will start. Last Sunday, I suddenly went from very happy to very unhappy in the space of a few minutes for no good reason, and this is always a sign that my period will start in exactly four days. However, when my period didn’t start as expected, I began to wonder just how long it had been since my last cycle, and could I possibly be pregnant? This did not excite me. I have wondered that many, many times during the past several years, and I never have been pregnant. I successfully resisted the urge to calculate the due date.

Was this lack of excitement because I have been let down too many times, or because I finally got my life together and moved on?

I finally remembered the white pants that I was wearing the day my last period began, and realized that I still have one week to go.

I really enjoyed this entry from The Road Less Travelled about living childless and the birth control question: The Unspoken Question About Childfree Living

How many do you want?

When I read other IF blogs, all the women seem so desperate for their first (and only?) child. When we first started trying, I too looked forward to having a child. After surgery and multiple IUIs, I looked forward to having twins or triplets and I would have been disappointed with a singleton.
The emotional stress of fertility treatment was so high that I knew I could never go through it a second time. I also had to assume that I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant naturally for a second child, since I couldn’t do it for the first. And since I think it would be lonely to be an only child, the only chance my to-be-conceived child would have for a brother or a sister would be to have a twin.
I know that multiples have lots of health problems, but that didn’t change the way I felt.
I was actually happier having zero children than having just one.

4th of July weekend

Since I started getting more exercise (biking to and from work) and running occasionally, I feel so fantastic emotionally! My body is a little sore and tired, but I expect to get used to that. The Tour de France going on now is an additional inspiration.

This long weekend was great, I got so much done! But last night A was complaining about how sore his body was after so much standing up. (He usually sits in front of a computer 60 hours per week.) We were able to not only see my family, but get a lot of house projects finished up- like suspending the tomato plants from the eaves so they don't fall over and crush each other.

4th of July is apricot-picking-time at my parents house. They have one tree, which had a light crop this year, but produced an enormous amount last year. We brought home enough apricots to make about two batches of jam (5 jars each) but ended up making only one batch and eating the rest. Since I was still in a jam-making mood, I bought a half box of strawberries at the farmer's market and made Strawberry-Marsala jam out of them, but we can't taste the Marsala at all. If you use pectin, it only takes about an hour to do the whole procedure, including sterilizing the jars. My next batch of jam will be pectin-free, which requires up to an hour of standing over a boiling pot of fruit until it gets thick.

Thinking about apricots, and wanting to buy a tree for the former sandbox spot in our backyard, we decided to buy an apricot tree. This was also a nod to the heritage of our area, which is full of housing developments like "the greenhouses" and "cherry orchard," describing what was destroyed to build the new houses. Our neighborhood used to be an apricot orchard. When we brought home this new tree, we decided it made more sense to put it in the place where the living Christmas tree was. So we pulled out the Christmas tree with its pot, which was also buried, and then dug another hole, one foot away, for the apricot tree, in a better location. No shorcuts for us, even though we are renters and will most likely never harvest any fruit from this tree! Although, if we had known how hard the earth would be, we may have found it in our hearts to compromise on location.

Next project is to buy an evergreen to put in the sandbox area- perhaps an avocado tree.