It's National Infertility Awareness Week. The title of which I find amusing. Infertiles are more than aware of their infertility. And those who don't struggle with infertility- I wonder are they aware of their fertility? How did they get to the point of taking it for granted? Is that the default position societally?
This thought came to the forefront for me yesterday at a baby shower at work. I dread these things, not because I am still in the mental place that it's painful to be at a baby shower; rather, because of the conversations focused on "planning" children. A woman who is not one of our regular coworkers was telling the mom-to-be how wonderful it is to have a baby and regaled us all with how when she and her husband decided to have a baby, she "got pregnant 20 minutes later." And dang if they didn't do it again the second time too- the very minute upon deciding.
Because it's a given that married women of a certain age do that- plan when and how many children to have. In my head, it's always if. If someone can get pregnant, if that baby is born, if someone can have another. If.
I have a magnet on my filing cabinet at work from the March of Dimes. It says, "Every mom deserves a healthy baby." And that's true, I wish all babies are born healthy and not premature. But the reason that I put the magnet up is not just to support healthy babies. Every time I look at, I think:
WHAT IF every woman who should be a mother got a heathy baby?
2 comments:
Oh, so true...
Isn't it amazing -- just the way people are when they haven't been 'touched' by infertility as we have?
Not everyone, of course -- but so many -- just the naivete makes me wince.
I was in Pacifier the other day and the salesgirls (and I use the term purposefully) were in a clutch all talking about having babies --one had a nearly two year old - - and was saying 'and I can't just can't possibly imagine being so OOOOOLD as to have a baby at THIRTY...) she was probably 22 --and all about how her life would be over and yaddayadda -- and I had to come up to her and say with Z in her carrier strapped to me -- "I'm 38 -- and she's a miracle of modern science -- you may want to try earlier -- but you never know"
I was nice about it and all -- and she was suitably mortified -- but still.
*sigh*
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