Tuesday, March 07, 2006

How the other half lives

Earlier today I was chatting with a coworker of mine. She's probably the coworker I'm closest to--not that I'm particularly close to anyone, having only been there 6 months, but our offices are next door to each other, we are the same age and close in title and job area, and have been married for the same amount of time, so we have enough in common that we talk a lot. Anyway, another coworker who's on maternity leave (one of the approximately 8,736 people I know who had a baby in the last 6 months) had brought her baby in for a visit, and we were all cooing over how cute she was (very very cute). My office neighbor was saying that it made her want to lobby her husband for another kid right now (they have a 15-month old son). I said, "He's not ready for another baby?" She replied that no, he was, but they were trying to plan it so they had a spring baby, since it was such a bummer last time to be trapped inside with a newborn in the middle of winter. Also, she said, if they started trying now the baby would have the same birthday as their son. Notice: not "might" have the same birthday, but "would." No doubt in her mind that she would get pregnant right away.

I nodded, smiled, and got out of there. I wasn't angry, or offended...just a little bit sad. Wistful, I guess is the right word. It's hard to be carrying this secret around next to my heart, to not be able to just say, "Oh yeah, good plan" or even "Yeah, that is, if you get pregnant right away," in a chatty way, because I'm afraid my true feelings will spill out. I've resolved that if/when I do get pregnant I will tell everyone--well, not total strangers, but people who matter in my life, including everyone at work--how long it took to get there and what I had to go through, because I think it's important that infertility not be this scary closeted thing. But here, in the middle of it, I'm not prepared to tell anyone, other than a few close friends, and it's hard to keep it guarded.

But mostly I'm just wistful that I will never have that kind of confidence in my own ability to build my family. I never had it, I guess, and I wish I could know what it feels like.

2 Comments:

Blogger MsPrufrock said...

Ah yes...the blind faith of the fertile. I have a co-worker who assumes, as I am pregnant, that I must be fertile like her. She has told me that in the upcoming months she will have to avoid her husband because "he only needs to look at me and I get pregnant". Haha! Oh, isn't that just hilarious...It really is that easy apparently.

3:05 PM  
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