Out of the Blue

I work with a woman who can be difficult at times. Professionally, she's pretty good at what she does, so I can't really blame it on that. She just kind of bugs me, and she's one of those people who is always complaining about how she has so much more work and so much more to deal with than anyone else. To which I say, feh. What entitles her to think her life is so hard, when we're all working our asses off? There's no obvious animosity between the two of us, just a kind of invisible ever-present tension. Needless to say, we rarely talk about personal issues. She doesn't have the slightest idea of what we went through to get pregnant. And all I know about her really is that she's single, but whether she's ever been in a relationship, whether she longs to quit her job and buy a villa in Italy, whether she wants children, these are things that have simply never come up.

However I've found that since I've been pregnant, people are suddenly much more willing to talk about their own family/reproductive issues/childhood. And to ask inappropriate questions about mine. The bigger I get, the more obvious this little social phenomenon is. The size of my belly seems directly proportional to the probing questions people feel they're allowed to ask me, and also to their tendency to divulge previously unknown aspects of their own personal lives.

So yesterday my co-worker started talking to me about my pregnancy, and dropping cryptic references to her familiarity with the stages of pregnancy. Wondering where these comments were coming from, I hesitantly asked if she had family members who had children, and then she told me that years ago she herself had been pregnant. Just as I was about to ask if there was a secret kid hidden away somewhere that she'd never mentioned, she revealed that she hadn't been able to carry the baby to term. It was traumatic, and she still thinks about the baby that would have been hers.

Wow.

I guess you just never can tell who has had an experience with infertility or miscarriage or loss that you just don't know about. People don't walk around advertising these things, do they? My co-worker has said some fairly stupid things to me about this pregnancy over the last few weeks, but my heart softened when I heard her story. How utterly terrible to have gone through that. And I realized that she knows! She knows that getting pregnant and having a baby doesn't always go the way you think it's supposed to. She knows that the goddamn pregnancy test ads are full of shit, that two lines doesn't necessarily mean a live baby. She knows the pain of having your dreams of family shattered by bad news.

It just made me realize that there are probably so many women out there who are usually silent, who live with their pain quietly. Women who are desperately trying to get pregnant, who are in the midst of intrusive medical procedures and constant testing that push them to the limit, while they put on their game faces in public. Women for whom it took years to get pregnant but they never told anyone what a struggle it was. Women who had multiple miscarriages before bringing home the baby that everyone thinks resulted from a first pregnancy. Women who tried and tried to conceive and finally decided to be childfree, but everyone thinks they just never wanted kids. Women who used donor sperm or eggs but have never spoken about it to their friends. Women who have adopted children and seem beautifully happy, but who went through private hell before their families were complete. How many of us are out there, who have lived our infertility mostly behind closed doors?

Of course, my sympathy for her waned a bit when she asked me if I wanted more kids (why does everyone ask me that when I'm not even halfway through this pregnancy yet?). And when I said probably, she exclaimed, "Well, you better get a move on! You're pushing 40!" First of all, bite me. Second of all, I'm 36. And third, bite me. At that point, I remembered that she really gets on my nerves. But I am sorry that she had to suffer the loss of her baby. I don't care how much you annoy me, I would never wish that on anyone.

Comments

[Susan]

There are too many of us, trying to get through all this behind closed doors.
I read on someone's blog, early on in my blog-lurking, that we go through IF "trying to pass for normal." True, you never know what pain someone has been through.

Oh, and a 'bite me' from me to your co-worker, I am 37 and still trying for #2.

[dish]

It is a type of hidden existence. There are people who know my whole tale and others who have no idea that we've done IVF. As much as I want to make the world know to try and ease the topic into mainstream (yes, I can do that singlehandedly, did't you know?) there are people that I just don't tell.

And what is up with asking about kid #2 when kid #1 is not even born? I've had the same experience. I love screwing them up by saying that we'll be adopting (which we will).

[Lala]

I think bite me was tame. I would have used some "mindyourownmotherfuckingbusiness,youdon't knowjackshit" type of language myself.

[Menita]

Hmmm...I don't know. Do you think maybe she asked you in a "would you put yourself through this again?" kind of way?
If she didn't, then I chime in with a "bite me!"