Unsolicited Advice

Experience:

Time and time again, as soon as someone finds out I’m trying to get pregnant, I hear way too many, unsolicited, words of ‘wisdom’. You’re having a hard time getting pregnant? You should take a vacation; all you need to do is relax. Don’t think about it. Eliminate stress from your life. Take this supplement; it worked for my friend’s brother’s cousin and now they have 5 kids. The minute you stop trying, it will happen. These are but a few of the many, many pieces of advice I have been given throughout the years.

Lesson:

Nobody likes unsolicited advice. So, unless your advice is absolutely solicited, never tell a person suffering from infertility what simple steps they should take in order to conceive. While lying in a contorted position for 30 minutes after making whoopee may have worked for you or your 3^rd cousin’s once-removed niece, it is not what I nor any other woman struggling with infertility wants or needs to hear.

Infertility is a long, painful and very personal process; a process which includes hours of time and energy focusing on what will work for one woman’s very specific situation with the thought and desperate hope that this time I will become pregnant. I’ve worked with doctors, specialists of all kinds, and I have access to endless information via the internet. You need to realize that you do not have some secret key to unlock the mystery of infertility. Please recognize that the last thing someone in my position wants to hear is what someone who has never suffered from true infertility (trying to conceive for longer than 18 months) did before they got pregnant. Chances are it had nothing to do with you getting pregnant in the first place. I have heard every piece of advice you can imagine and I’m not interested! Please try to remember this when discussing infertility with a friend.

I don’t need to hear it will happen when I least expect it, all I need from you is a shoulder to cry on and someone to listen and validate my pain and suffering. For instance, I’m sorry you’re going through this. Please let me know what I can do to help. I love you and I am here for you.

My "Own" Child...

Experience:

 I have been asked too many times to count if I want my own child one day. I do want my own child. In fact, I have him. Did I give birth to him? No. Did I bond with him through 9 months of rigorous pregnancy? No. Is he my own? YES!

Lesson:

Please please please, never ask an adoptive parent if they will ever have their own child. My child is my own child. He does not need to look like me. She does not need to laugh the way I laughed when I was her age and the child does not need to be a newborn babe when placed into my arms for me to call him my own. If you want to know if I want to conceive and give birth to a child, then you may ask me if I would like to have a biological child. I will then inform you that adopted or biological, my child will be loved and treated the same, but at least you have asked respectfully and properly.