"I know exactly how you felt"

A small group of us gathered together for an evening of pizza, wine and gossip.  The conversation ranged from the situation in Crimea to who we thought should go through to the next round on "The Voice", the wine flowed, the pizza was guzzled and a jolly good time was had by all.

At the end of the evening I found myself in the kitchen with the hostess.

"This has been a lovely evening" I said.

"Just what I needed, really," the hostess replied.  "Husband and I have been going through a really difficult time lately and this has taken my mind off things for a while."

She went on to explain that she and her husband have been struggling with infertility and it's been a terrible strain on them both.  

"It's been five months," she sighed.  I stared at her, thinking of my years "in the trenches".

And then she said it:

"I know exactly how you felt when you went through this, Illanare."

I picked up the stuffed toy dog her two-year-old son (conceived after two months of trying and now sleeping sweetly upstairs), had left under the kitched table and handed it to her.

"No, you don't," I said.  "I'm sorry for your difficulties, but you have no idea - NO IDEA - how I feel."

deep breaths

"Here," said Dr Smug, putting a jar of home-made jam on my desk.  "You can have this."

"You brought me jam?"

"Not exactly, a patient gave it to me this morning but I can't take it home because of my son."

I picked up the jar, which had a pretty, handwritten label on it saying "strawberry and blueberry, 2013".

"Your son is 18 months old, he's not going to be able to reach the cupboard or fridge, take the jam home!" I tried to hand it back to Dr Smug (reluctantly because it looked really nice and I do like jam).  Dr Smug backed away a little bit.

"No, I mean I can't risk getting sick or something.  I have a wife and child."

I stared at him in disbelief, and took a couple of deep breaths.

"So, as I understand it, you are giving me this jar of jam because I don't have children and so it doesn't matter if I get sick 'or something'?  Well, perhaps you should give this instead to the Professor [his boss]?  After all, she doesn't have children either."

Dr Smug started to bluster something but I was in full flow.

"Or perhaps the Professor's health and well-being does matter to you because she is a doctor, even though she's not a parent?  But I can take home and eat a jar of jam because it wouldn't matter if anything happened to me, childless non-doctor that I am?  Well, if I were you I wouldn't be so complacent - you can't be as good a doctor as you think you are, if you think that your patient has given you something with the potential to harm you."

Dr Smug was, by this time, bright red and starting to perspire.

"Illanare, I'm sorry, I..."

"Yes, you should be sorry.  Now please go away and don't talk to me again for at least a week."

I am still taking deep breaths!

There have been a couple of great blog posts this week about comments that those of us going through infertility, and those of us who are living without children, face.  You can read them here on Mali's blog and here on Life Without Baby.

It does get easier to bear, with the passage of time, although I still aspire to point three on Mali's list, and I now am able to bat the "why don't/didn't you just adopt" with "why didn't/don't you?"  As these comments are always made by people I know well enough, I know I'm not committing my own thoughtless blunder.

However, last week I was completely blindsided by this comment, from someone I had just met that evening (a stay-at-home mother of two): "so what are you going to do to contribute to society, then?"

I was too taken aback by this to answer and stepped away from the conversation saying that was sorry but I just had to go and talk to so-and-so before they left.

What I wish I had had the presence of mind to say was that I contribute fine to society, thank you.  I have a job in medical research which enables me to pay tax - which in turn enabled her to have two lots of year-long maternity leave and now gives her children child benefit, free schooling, free library services, free travel on London Transport until age 14 and a host of other taxpayer funded services. And I'm doing this without any quid pro quo as I will never claim any of the above list for my own children.   (I also pay National Insurance which gives her and her children free health care, but of course this I also use myself!).

What would you have said?

the one with the rant

Last week was my work's Christmas party and as usual I was pressed into service as our unofficial photographer.  I put the photos on my department's shared drive but my friend Goth Girl asked me to post a couple of photos of her onto her FB page so that her friend overseas could see.  Goth Girl has disabled her "Wall" so I had to post the photos onto my own page and tag Goth Girl - which of course meant that my friends could see the photos too.  One of them also had me in it and it gave rise to a few comments (thank you, Rach!).  It also prompted another "friend" to send me a private message, congratulating me on still looking so young for my age, and expressing her admiration of my "expensive" dress and shoes and my opportunity to drink vodka martinis in the middle of the week.  She ended her message with "I guess that you can do that when you are single and don't have to get kids up in the morning, eh?! Lol! :-)"

I know that message came from her being stressed and perhaps yes, a little envious that I was drinking martinis in a little black dress (incidentally $22 from F0rever 21 in Atlanta) and satin sling-backs with diamante clasps (admittedly not $22) on a Wednesday night.  However, I am suddenly in no mood to forgive this, or even give her any leeway.  She knew I lost Starchild and Tilly, although she didn't know about the IVF and subsequent loss of the Little Stars.  She knew how much I wanted children and she knew how my life almost crumbled into dust after A left.

I know how lucky I am; I don't get paid a whole lot (I work for the NHS after all), but I do okay.  I can keep a roof over my head, pay my bills, go on holiday, buy a new pair of slightly expensive boots every winter because I want them even if I don't need them, and dammit I can afford vodka martinis in a central London bar.  I can also stay out until 2am and not have to account to anyone and I can spend the weekends in bed with a book and my cat if I want to. Sometimes there's nothing in the flat to eat except a tub of ice cream and a jar of olives, and I have glass ornaments which won't get broken on my Christmas tree.

But the little red and white backpacks stuffed with toys under my tree are for my niece and nephews.  The glass ornaments are four glass hearts, one for each of my children. And there is no-one to phone and tell not to worry that I will be home at 2am.

My life doesn't suck, in fact I'm pretty happy right now. Nonetheless, as Ms Bradshaw once said "It's really hard to walk in a single woman's shoes.  That's why you sometimes need really special shoes"

a safe place

I was pregnant three times but there is no evidence of that to the outside world. I saw Starchild’s heartbeat twice. I saw Tilly’s heart beating, saw her legs and arms, was starting to see evidence of her under my clothing and started to feel the fluttering which was her tiny movements.  I saw the Little Stars in a Petri dish and as tiny patches as they were put into their all too short-lived home inside me.  Their existence changed my life and I loved them, and I still do.  I would have done anything, anything for them because they were then and always will be, my babies. But I never met them or saw their faces or held them.  I could never present them as whole to other people.

Perhaps this is why, when I mentioned them in a conversation with a friend last week (part of a conversation which is a topic for another post), she told me that I was “over sentimentalising”. She didn’t expand, but then she didn’t have to.  I knew what she was thinking.

I make no apology for feeling as I do about Starchild, Tilly and the Little Stars.  But perhaps I shouldn’t expect to be able to talk about them outside of this community.

spinster aunt

It seems that I have, at work at least, turned into a sort of universal spinster aunt of yore. The man in the opposite office has two young children and every morning I am treated to the stories of how they slept, and how often he or his wife were woken in the night.  Pregnant Doctor likes to use my office to have a quick 5-minute sit-down and rub of her belly while she tells me how difficult she is finding being pregnant.  A friend's wife is recently (as in about 7 weeks) pregnant with twins and I have daily updates about her morning sickness and their worries about how to tell their 4-year-old son to expect siblings soon. And finally, Dr Old-School is going to become a first-time grandfather in a few months, and shows me his daughter-in-law's scan photos every time she has one (which is every few weeks as she is part of a research study).
I try, I really do try, to maintain my happy face each time.  But I admit here, in this place of safety and understanding, that each day my heart breaks a tiny bit more.

in the paper today

From The Guardi@n today: The lonely pain of miscarriage.  A heartfelt and open story (though some of the comments are heartless and unthinking).

the things people say

CGD recently wrote this post about the varying reactions from her friends to the sad loss of her baby boy and it got me to thinking about some of the slightly more puzzling responses I got after my own losses.

After we lost Starchild one work friend tried to comfort me by telling me that "it wasn't a baby" (I still wonder how he would have felt if I had said that to him had he lost his son at almost 13 weeks). Another woman at work told me that I wouldn't have miscarried if I had only had acupuncture all the way through the first trimester.

After we lost Bean (at almost 18 weeks) yet another work colleague told me that I should take comfort in the knowledge that at least I could get pregnant. Apparently Significant Other's and my mistake was wanting more than that...

But I think that the worst, the very worst response of all came from one of my closest and dearest friends in the world, Marathon Man. I sent an email the day I was discharged from the hospital after losing Bean in February (2009) and his response was "I'm really sorry". Which he sent in May after 3 months of silence.

Updated to add:
I wrote the above a few hours ago because I was feeling somewhat sorry for myself this afternoon. I want to make it clear, though, that mostly IRL we have been met with a lot of sympathy, and some awkwardness and here in blogland I've had nothing but wonderful sympathy, empathy and support, for which I am truly grateful.

And - BFG, I also want to make it clear that I am not aiming any of this at you.

just

We've all heard that word, haven't we?
"Why don't you just adopt?"
"You just need to relax"
"Just give it time"

Mine came from a friend on Thursday (pause here while I give due credit to her very good intentions and acknowledge that she spoke with love):
"I think it's time you just accepted this."

Yes, I have to accept I am never going to be a mother or grandmother or mother-in-law.
That Significant Other is never going to be a father to our child.
That my parents will never be grandparents.
That the books and toys I have saved from my own childhood to pass down will go to other people's children.
That I will never get a Mother's Day card.
That whatever is in Significant Other's future, I have made his present almost unbearable.

Yes, I know I have to accept all of this. But it is hard and sad and unfair.

And it is never going to be just.

perspectives

On Friday I had a little email exchange with the friend I mentioned in this post. She doesn't know about the IF but she knew about the first 2 miscarriages and I just told her about the most recent. She replied that she was sorry and that it was "a shame".

The words gave me pause and I read them over again - "a shame". I would have used that phrase if someone told me that they missed out on concert tickets for a band they loved, or if a cake they baked had turned out flat or if they left their unfinished book on the Tube.

Is this what it's like out there in the non-ALI world? A miscarriage is not a tragedy, a terrible loss, a cause for grieving? Is that why she was also able to say that she "knew how I am feeling"? Because in the non-ALI world, getting pregnant naturally less than a year after starting TTC is the same as having assisted reproduction for more than two years?

I don't mean to be mean-spirited about my friend, she is a lovely, kind, funny, generous woman whom I'm lucky to have in my life. But I will never be able to live in a world where a miscarriage is just "a shame".

the walls came tumbling down

In the last 3 months I have:
had a chest infection
had IVF
lost my grandmother
had my third miscarriage
had a cyst painfully removed from my breast
congratulated 4 friends and 1 cousin on the birth of babies / new pregnancy
been living with uncertainty about the future of my relationship
been facing the very real possibility I may never be a mother

And, apart from on this blog, I've been very successfully pretending that nothing has happened.

Until today when I got an email from one of the new mothers. It was a nice email, with a photo attached, telling me about the baby, about how amazing it all is, how exhausted she is and - how she thinks I too must be wanting to start a family. And with that one sentence my carefully-built protective wall came crashing down.