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Tuesday 14 February 2012

Damned Fertile Family

I know that some of you are in the same boat as me on this one... Any help on how you deal with this would be helpful.

I called my mother last night. I had no plans of talking to her for about nine months or so if possible, but I didn't have a choice. I got an email from my cousin that my uncle is back in the hospital again. He's my godfather and favourite uncle. He's my father's immediately older brother (my dad is from a family of 7 kids), and the brother that he was always the closest to. Anyway, he's been in and out of the hospital for years and he's back in now.

Since my mother checks her email about once a month, I thought I better call her. Turns out she already knew (someone called them), but she had another piece of news...

My uncle's daughter (the one who emailed me) is pregnant and due at the end of July.

I nearly lost it. I managed to hold the tears back but was hit with a sudden wave of anger. My response was something like this...

"good lord! seriously??!! If one more person in this family announces a pregnancy, I'm out. I'm just leaving the family for good".

My mom was a bit snarky and said "well would you rather not know?". Now, understand that this is not said with sympathy, it was complete harsh.

I responded that no, I wanted to know, but it was really upsetting and frustrating that all these people who already have two kids each are getting pregnant AGAIN and all I want is one and can't have it! It hurts.

She actually had a sliver of sympathy at that point. She said "yeah, it must be hard. I can't imagine". And that was the end of her being sympathetic... she changed the topic to talk about... yup, you guessed it, my nephew. Yes, because when someone is upset about their infertility, the best thing you can do is to talk about someone else's kids.

sigh.

Seriously?? How did I get blessed with such a fertile family and get stuck in this hell hole of infertility?

On the upside, I"m now down a total of 16 lbs since January 9th. The better part is that I've lost 6 inches off my waist, 3 off my hips, and five off my thighs. My bust has only lost one, but really, I"m good with that. :) The last two weeks have a been a struggle because I was on the progesterone pills - one of their nice side effects? Weight gain. So I figure the fact that I only lost 2.2 lbs over the past two weeks is still a bonus. Thank goodness I only have one more month of the pills left (hopefully).

5 comments:

Evelyn

I don't have any advice on the family. It's frustrating and it would be nice if mom would just say that.

Good on the weight-loss. Keep it up.

Sunflower

Families can drive one nuts :-( It would be nice if your Mom was more sympathetic. Great news on the weight loss!

Anonymous

Doing great on the weight loss! I'm trying but the pounds and inches are not moving. As for families, I'm not one to give advice since I have not spoken to my mom in over a year in a large for this type of insensitivity. :-(

Jenny

I've been lucky in not having to deal much with fertile family members. My brother finished his family 12 years ago and definitely won't be adding more children to his brood, so I don't need to worry about that. And I'm not really close enough with my cousins to have their pregnancies affect me much. Nevertheless, I still have IF hanging over my head and the only way I've learned to cope (and I'm not sure it's a good coping mechanism) is to not talk about it with my family. Even the most sympathetic person in the world can't truly understand it unless they've been through it, and I find it too frustrating and painful to try to get them to understand how I feel. My mom tries to understand, but there's just no way that she can, so I get the cliched feedback: "Don't lose hope." "It could still happen." "You just need to relax about it." "So-and-so had her first baby at 41, so I'm sure you can, too." Well intentioned, but not helpful.

So...I don't know. I guess that my advice, such as it is, would be to protect yourself from that lack of understanding, and that might mean limiting contact and/or changing the subject with pregnancies/children are mentioned. It's probably crappy advice, but I just don't know how to get someone to understand the pain of IF when they haven't experienced it.

And on a positive note...congrats on the weight loss!

ADSchill

Yep. I get it. My sister is fertile myrtyl. Everyone else who is pregnant around me are friends. Pretty much everyone I know.

I'm sorry your mom was so insensative about it. People who haven't been infertile will never really understant. They can't.

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