Reproductive Innocence

Yesterday I spent a wonderful morning at the beach with two great mothers. We each have a little (almost) 3-year-old little girl. One of these mothers was telling us that they have been trying for a second since January without luck. She is forty years old. In my world, the world of SIF, that’s about 6 months of unsuccessful trying and she fits the diagnosis of secondary infertility. I didn’t tell her that. She was too much in denial that anything could be wrong (and she could very well be right). According to her a) they wouldn’t seek any help unless they had been unsuccessfully trying for a year* (which to me seems a bit risky if you are forty) and b) she felt that it would happen any time now. She felt it could happen any time now because her husband was finally emotionally on board with the project second child.

I wish I had her innocence.

I am not sure though I ever believed emotional readiness played a crucial part in getting pregnant. I mean, what would it do? Make sperm more willing? Make eggs younger? Make your uterus more receptive?

But she really believed it.**

Living in reproductive la-la land sounds much more fun than being in reproductive hell***.
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*to be honest, I waited 9 months to speak to my OB/GYN myself. I was 34 but knew I had endometriosis. I was clearly in denial.

**she also seemed to believe in the “just relax” or, worse, “just adopt, and you’ll get pregnant” urban legends. I know those urban legends exist, I know some myself, but I also know that our database is skewed, simply because we don’t register all the cases where “just relaxing” didn’t work.

***Whenever I tell people that we have been trying for almost 2 years now to have a child, including IVF, they seem to relax (haha) when they hear all my reproductive ailments. Because stuff like that clearly isn’t going to happen to them. Most likely, they are right. But still, it bugs me.