"IT'S NOT THE LENGTH OF THE GESTATION, IT'S THE EXTENT OF THE ATTACHMENT."


Friday, March 21, 2008

Infertile??? Not So Much.


I've been taking care of LD for a couple months now. The day after Jack's birthday, which was a Friday, I went to work. I was talking to A, LD's mom, while she was doing dishes and I was feeding LD his afternoon snack. I asked her if she planned on having more children and she replied, "we're trying, but I have fertility problems" then went on to say she was "infertile". I said, "oh, me too."

I hadn't mentioned anything about my losses to her before this day because I didn't know how she would respond. I didn't know if she would sympathise with me, if she'd understand, or if she'd freak out, so I kept quiet. But as she was talking about herself, I told her about my losses. I told her when they were born and how old they were, etc. and she was shocked. She said, "oh wow, you actually gave birth to them!" Well, how else are they going to come out? And yes, she did feel sorry for me, which I didn't want.

As I was talking to her that day (a month ago today) she said she had chronic pain due to Level 4 (?) Endometriosis (sp?). She only has one son, LD- 15 months, and is 32 years old. She has had 2 surgeries on her uterus and needs a hysterectomy in order to be relieved from the pain. She wants more children, so she deals with the pain. Her doctor told her it would be impossible to have children on her own without IVF. I'm not sure how long she was infertile, but she proceeded to say that it only took her 1 month to get pregnant on her own. I'm not quite sure how that makes her "infertile", but okay. So as I understand it, the doctor diagnosed her as infertile before she actually tried to get pregnant??? I 'm not really sure. But it seems weird to me that she would throw that word around so casually, if she never attempted to get pregnant, then with only trying for ONE month, she got pregnant. I understand she may have complications with her body, but her fertility hasn't been compromised.

I don't mean to say that having Stage 4/Level 4 (whatever the correct term is) Endometriosis is not a real problem, because I'm sure it is, but by no means is she infertile. How do I know this, you ask? Because she's pregnant.

Good Friday? Yeah sure.

4 comments:

Virginia said...

Oh God. Crap. I'm so sorry. That hurts like hell.

Hugs...

Anonymous said...

Oh good grief...I wonder why she is saying she is infertile??I am sorry you had a crappy day...Sending lots of prayers and hugs for a better weekend...

Becky said...

Wow.

That's all I can say. Stunned, really.

What the hell are people thinking?

Anyway, hopefully this weekend brings you some peace at the very least.

And for what it's worth, if I were in a similar position I probably would have opened my mouth by now! Even if she were my employer.

Rachel said...

I'm sorry, that must have been hard for you to find out.

I'm not sure why she thinks she is infertile either, maybe she doesn't know what it means.