Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Maybe friends aren't so bad after all

We went to dinner at a friend’s apartment on Monday night, the same friends who I’ve mentioned before in the previous post and this other post. They recently ended their first trimester and have been so excited to tell everyone about their pregnancy. They’ve also been sort of asking every couple they know if they’re considering starting a family yet. I’ve gotten the feeling that they’re hoping at least a few friends might want to have kids on the same timeline as they are.

I feel like I’ve been very understanding of their excitement and I’m honestly very happy for them. We haven’t been very open with our IF struggles, so only a few of our friends know about it, and those who do are not even close to trying to get pregnant at this point in their lives, so I’m not sure they really truly understand what we’re going through. When our newly pregnant friends asked again, with both me and L there, if we’re going to start a family soon, L said to me, “It’s not really a secret, you can tell them.”

Of course they got all excited thinking we were going to tell them we were pregnant (after I had drunk like half a bottle of wine, right), but then they felt really, really bad. I felt bad for making them feel bad, since they started to realize that they’d perhaps said a lot of things that could have been tough for me/us. But they were really nice and supportive and well … I’m nervous about what might happen next. Will they avoid us? Will they have more compassion for me and more thoughtfulness about what other people might be going through? How will it affect our friendship – in the short term, but also in the long term if we don’t get pregnant?

I would have thought the wife would have been completely aware of the impact of IF in other people’s lives, considering that she works in the health industry as an educator (and was actually a sexual health educator, although I think she dealt with college students and tried to prevent pregnancy and STDs). I guess you learn (or realize) something new every day.

So now I have to keep deciding who we tell and who we don’t tell, and eventually (hopefully, cross my fingers) if we get pregnant we’ll have to decide whether to confide that we experienced IF, or just not say anything at all (not that I would deny it if anyone asked, for sure, I just don’t know if it’s relevant for everyone to know).

In other news - only 6-7 days left until IUI cycle #2!

1 comment:

  1. Good for you for saying something. Although, I bet that was tough. I guess you can't prevent them from avoiding you, which totally sucks, but maybe you can somehow assure them they don't need to do that? YAY for 6-7 days till your IUI! Hang in there, you're doing GREAT!
    (((HUGS)))

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!