Train Wreck

Yes, it's been a while. But I find the old infertile in me (I subscribe to the once an infertile, always an infertile theory) still popping up once and a while.* And this has been one of those weeks.

In part because the coworker who began trying a few months after we did and had her baby in September of 2007 is now pregnant with number 2, again after only a few months of trying. I will never understand why it comes so easily for some. And she has the uncanny ability to have her events coincide with mine. The day her baby was born I was going for my first IUI which resulted in me in tears because of the count results. And coworker told me of her pregnancy today as I get ready to go the endocrinologist tomorrow to very likely learn that I am pre-diabetic and possibly insulin resistant and may need to go on metformin. My gestational diabetes didn't just disappear. So, the question of a number 2 is fraught with a lot more problems on my part.

But the infertile in me came to the forefront even more so due to the story that people can't help but talk about- yes, the octuplets and their mother. I confess. I watched it. The Dateline interview, that is. A definite train wreck. It was the story of an infertile gone bad. I could sympathize with her desire to have children and even wanting to use the embryos she had left over and not selectively reducing. But how did she get to the point where she needed to do have these pregnancies in a serial fashion? Her uterus must be made of steel. Not even discussing the issues of finances and how fair this is to any of her children, but what possessed her not to be grateful for the one or even the two or three she had before she got into the level of a litter of children?

I feel so grateful for the one I have that if I never get another, it's ok. I look at my son each night and thank God that I was given this little miracle. Being on the "other side" now, I can say with certainty that infertility IS different when you already have a child, even if you want more. It is not the same and it can never be the same. When did Nadya Suleman lose that perspective?









*And at what point can one be considered secondarily infertile given that there is already a diagnosis? Not that I am trying for number 2 at all right now, but it's something I ponder- when? After six months (given that I am now over 35-sigh)? It's all a semantics game.