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Saturday, February 21, 2009

People are funny

Why is it that strangers feel completely at ease asking me "Did you do artificial insemination?" within 5 minutes of meeting me? Seriously, people. Fear and trepidation. That is what one should use when confronting an issue so sensitive and tender as the conception of a child. Would you ask someone what position they used while having intercourse to conceive their child? No? Me either. So having multiples does not throw that out the window. If you have to ask, it probably isn't your business. SHEESH.

I know this is an old subject and I harp on it often, but I get asked EVERY DAY, with few exceptions. So I am making it my mission to educate the world. Surely none of you kind and intelligent people would ask a total stranger such a personal question. I have faith in you, but on the off chance someone reading this happens to think such private questions are free game in our reality show obsessed society, please re-think it. No one is paying me to be on TLC. So my private life in general, my sex-life in specific shall be off the table for strangers. Now, let me caveat all of that by saying that there are ways to ask personal questions so that they are not offensive, but if you are asking to satisfy your curiosity, remember what it did to the cat. And if you are asking a hormonal woman, you might meet the same fate.

My personal favorite was a woman last week who recently had twins. She asked me if we had infertility treatment, and I didn't mind at all. It is an unspoken bond among moms of multiples (or so I thought) that that subject is not off limits because we are of the same tribe. Many of us have survived the same struggles. I said "Yes, we had help getting pregnant". And she said "Oh. We were just blessed." I promptly said, "Well, so were we." It's funny. Are people so ignorant to believe that God is in control of all things except infertility treatment? The funniest part was she said her "we were just blessed" in a way that made her sound like some kind of martyr. Her words said one thing, but her tone another. What she meant was, "we were just burdened". Yet, there was an element of pride in her response that let me know that I had just unwittingly participated in pissing contest between my uterus and hers. It was her duty to inform me that my uterus was tested and found wanting. The irony? That many of these blessed people with spontaneous (*don't say natural. my kids aren't unnatural or plastic*) twins, triplets, etc. don't want them. They wanted 1 child, and are offended that their body made more than one baby at a time. But they were just blessed.

Then there are the rest of us, the unblessed if you will, who spend all of our savings, all of our prayers, our emotional stability, and all of our energy just to convince our ovaries to work for 5 minutes. We beg God for a uterus that will accept an embryo. We pray for strong sperm. We undergo painful tests and procedures. We discuss our sex lives openly and explicitly in hopes of finding answers. We chart our cycles. Cry and snot all over our friends, our parents and siblings, and our doctors as we try just to get pregnant. And when that test comes back positive, we LOSE OUR MINDS WITH JOY! I actually remember telling Brandon "I don't care if there are 15 (babies) in there. I want ALL of them". And I meant it. Was triplets a shock? You bet. I only took meds to make me ovulate, and it was such a mild medicine that my doctor never even discussed the possibility of even twins. We found out that there was less than 1% chance of me getting pregnant with twins. I have no idea where triplets fell in there, but I am guessing the odds hovered around zero. In 10 years, our doctor has had 1 set of twins from Femara/Letrizole, and no triplets, until me. In online communities and locally (there are close to 40 triplet mommies in our community) I have never met another person who got pregnant with triplets with Femara only. So what did we do when we found out? We CELEBRATED!

There is something to be said for wanting something you can't have and then watching God deliver that something 3-fold. Sometimes I think 3 babies are 10 times the work of one, but I know for sure they are 10 times the fun, 10 times the joy and 10 times the kisses. So I ask you, who's blessed now?

9 comments:

Jon and Melissa said...

Ok, so I feel bad after talking to about the Octo Mama at your store last week. When I asked what you did? But you for sure have a point. That was rude what the twin mom said. Just Rude!!! I need to start keeping my trap shut...

Sunny said...

Melissa,
you are so funny. YOu are my friend. I don't mind if a friend asks. This man had literally been in my store for less than 5 minutes. He was 70+ years old. It was AWKWARD. I had another old man ask me if my children were legitimate. :) People are funny.

Emily Doss said...

after telling our neighbor we were planning to adopt she started asking if we'd had trouble having children...then proclaimed that she had her husband "fixed" after they had their two kids. I nearly lost it. People are funny!

Sunny said...

I have heard from moms of adopted children that people will ask "where did you get your baby from?" if the child is asian or basically anything other than caucasian. Seriously, what are people thinking? You may have a blog post much like this in the future. Crazy people!

All About the Bailey's said...

Sunny,
Good post. I am a stranger and I did ask you that personal question but I hope that you knew I only asked because our children share the same diagnosis and I too used fertility treatments to help get my little guy here and it was actually the same meds as you say you took. I hope that you knew my reasoning behind my asking :)
Miranda

Mindy said...

We've had this conversation before. I pledge, as your friend, to never inquire about how a stranger came to have their children. :)

Tothblog said...

When I told someone the other day that we were thinking about adopting, she replied "why would you want to do that? you have two healthy children of your own. if you adopt, would you include that child in your will, or just your two biological children?" Really?? She was worried about our will. People are ignorant.

Tothblog said...

Oh, and I second Mindy.

Sunny said...

thank you Girls! and Kristen, people are ignorant. Your will, seriously? How stupid!