This was my post for the Great Cross-pollination day which was posted over at Katie's blog. Real post forthcoming soon-ish. Possibly after 30w check up later today. Yup 30 weeks - shocking eh.
I was reading a post by Kym the other day where she talked about “passport children” and how for those of us who were either infertile or have had recurrent losses the living children we have are our passport into the fertile world. That’s the world where people plan their children so they have birthdays at the beginning of the school year. Where a decision to try for a baby means a baby is created max 3 months down the line and at that point it is safe to go tell everyone and buy nursery gear. Where it is a given that the number of children you have and their spacing is a deliberate choice. Where detailed knowledge of transvaginal scan procedures and how to inject yourself anywhere from the torso to the thigh is not necessary. Where - I could go on for pages in this vein - but you get the picture.
Anyhow the post said a lot of the things that I felt as well but then I got to thinking isn’t it about time I stopped feeling like this? I have two lovely children (spaced a fertile world style 3 years apart to the week thanks to those failsafe great planning techniques of a few ivf cycles and a miscarriage) a third hopefully safely en route. To all intents and purposes I have leave to remain/a green card (depending which side of the Atlantic you are) in the fertile world. Look come on I am now that annoying woman who conceived naturally at 42 and seems to be having a successful pregnancy - quickly reaching for the copious quantities of wooden coffee tables, lamps etc in close proximity - lets keep quiet about the further miscarriages in between.
Maybe I should just suck it up and move along. Its hard though because it still bloody rankles when its easy for other people. On balance though I think the anger is marginally better than the overwhelming sadness the whole business used to engender. I wonder how much time, energy and life I have wasted on this? Too much? Almost certainly. Would it have been easier just to be public about the whole thing and not suffer in silence? Would it have made any difference to the kids if the world knew about their start in a petri dish? Should I just have got over the fact that I thought they and me and the husband would be pitied for our failings to be a real part of the fertile world? Maybe. Maybe not. Do I really need to add regret to anger and sadness over the way we had to travel to get to where we are? I think not. I think now I need to grab that stamp in the passport or that green card - which isn’t even bloody green you know - and enter that other world as if we all belonged there all along. And in a spirit of multi-culturalism try and do a bit to make it so that for those coming along behind the whole passport issue just isn’t such a big deal anymore because we can all finally get to belong however we get to build our families.
Enough of the maudlin introspection though - serves me right for x-polling whilst watching a Joan Baez documentary. And thank you for letting me take over this space for a day.
