To the woman who gets pregnant after a couple of months of trying:
I know you consider yourself to be up on “women’s issues.” You’re pro-choice and you’ve chosen to have a baby. Congrats! You’ve even read a blog or two by women who don’t have a baby and not by choice. This, of course, makes you knowledgeable about and sensitive to the topics of miscarriage and infertility.
You’ve heard of woman crying over getting their periods.
But when you get your first not-controlled-by-hormonal-birth-control period in years, you are thrilled because it’s your birthday, and you want to drink a beer. Pregnancy seems trivial to your desire to celebrate because, if not this month, of course it will happen some other month really soon.
You do experience cursing at your period. But only because you are winter camping and it’s below zero and you’re nearly literally freezing your butt off while changing your tampon. Tamoponsicles are more of a bother than not being pregnant right now. You aren’t concerned you aren’t pregnant ― it will happen next month.
And it does. You are elated. You assume everything will be okay. 80 percent of pregnancies result in a live birth. No way will you be the 20 percent who miscarry. You are better than that. You’ve never had anything medically wrong with you in your life.
You have thoughts ― judgmental, insensitive thoughts you feel guilty for. Really, you wonder, why would a woman cry when she gets her period? It’s no big deal! Those women are overly sensitive, they should probably go drink a beer. You are better than them. They are high strung and you know there’s more to life than just getting pregnant. Maybe you’ll go on to complain on social media about the discomforts of pregnancy. These women who aren’t pregnant have no idea how good they have it until you let them know.
You are clearly a better person than the women who long for a child. Perhaps that’s why some higher power blessed you with one so quickly.
Until that blessing is taken away. In an instant, a heartbeat, you find out your embryo has none. Of course, it’s no big deal. Disappointing, sure, but you’ll be pregnant again before you know it. You’re a fertile goddess who just stumbled into a bad circumstance and beer has never tasted better.
You have no idea what it’s like not to get pregnant after a couple of months of “trying.” By trying, I mean you’re not using birth control. Unlike others who are Trying with a capital T, you could care less about when you ovulate, what an acupuncturist says about your yin or yang, which prenatal vitamin you take, or what a Reproductive Endocrinologist thinks about your hormone levels. In fact, acupuncture is a hoax, pre-conception vitamins/supplements are a marketing gimmick, and women who seek out the care of a Reproductive Endocrinologist should really think twice about how overpopulated the world is before they actually pay money for help getting pregnant. Leave the childbearing to those who can. Easy enough for you to say when you are so confident you can. Having felt the joy of being pregnant once, you know you’ll feel it again.
“Everything happens for a reason,” you hear after you miscarry. Fast forward to a year after you first went off birth control and you still have nothing to show for it. No baby, no pregnancy announcement of a soon to be baby. You desperately want to feel the joy of pregnancy again, but, realistically or not, you fear that may never happen.
You know exactly when you ovulate and actually pay money to test for it. Then, you pay money for medicine to help you ovulate- medicine that a Reproductive Endocrinologist prescribed. You go to acupuncture religiously, you mail order state of the art vitamins your doctor prescribes. If someone told you that raw platypus liver increased fertility, you’d eat it every day for breakfast. You can finally relate to the blog or two you read about infertility and miscarriage. Perhaps your new found empathy is the best “reason” you can scrape up out of this mess.
You read fifty million more blogs on these sad topics because there is comfort in knowing you are not alone in this struggle. Having felt the joy of being pregnant once, you are bound and determined to feel that again, and you won’t take it for granted. You know how different you are from that woman who gets pregnant easily and yet you know exactly how she feels. You were once her.
If you’re the woman who gets pregnant with ease, I hope it stays that way for you. I would never wish my current circumstance on you. I do wish that you will know that I started in exactly the same place as you- just a women wanting a baby without a care in the world. I could’ve ended up in your shoes; you could’ve ended up in mine. I know I may seem selfish, baby crazed and insensitive to overpopulation. Please know there is much more to my feelings. I wish I’d had a shred more empathy back when I was a fertile goddess.
