none of your business

I'm really sick of people asking if I have kids. Especially patients' parents. They ask, usually after we've discussed something important related to their child. Like today when a first time mom of a newborn told me that she prefers to put her baby to sleep on her stomach because the baby sleeps better than on her back. I explained to her why we recommend putting the baby on her back to sleep (decreased SIDS risk). I also explained that even though all of us were likely put on our stomachs to sleep when we were babies and obviously we made it out of infancy alive, we now have many studies that have shown that putting babies on their backs to sleep cut down the incidence of SIDS in the US by 50%. So while it is her decision, if she was one of the unlucky ones whose baby dies of SIDS and it happened to be tummy sleeping, would she always blame herself? It really helped that the patient's grandmother (mom's mom) was nodding and practically saying "amen" to everything that I was saying.

Getting back to my point, we finish this little discussion and then she went there - "so do you have children?". FUCK. Yes, I have 2 children. One should be 28-29 weeks now but died around 20 weeks ago. Although she was such a sweetheart, she stuck around for a week dead inside my uterus before I even knew about it. My second child should be almost 10 weeks now but that one decided not to grow pretty much from the get go. OK, so I really didn't go there this time. Instead, I said "not yet" and smiled. I did add, "I have been trying for a while now" - so that they would squirm a bit and perhaps think twice about asking. I'm sure they didn't get it but I had to say it.

It's been a fun morning. The patient before that was an adorable 18 month old whose mommy was expecting "baby brother" in January. The saving grace for me was that mom just looked fat and not really pregnant. I gave her my fake smile congratulations.

The patient that I really like is the mom that I know was on heparin shots throughout her pregnancy because she had 3 miscarriages before this child and the mom who did IVF with donor eggs. For them I give them my real smile and my sincere congratulations. They have graduated from my club (by my club, I don't mean that the club is mine but rather I'm a member too)! I know with many infertiles, once they have a child, they forget somewhat about being an infertile and try to blend in with all the "oops" moms and pretend they haven't spent their child's college money just trying to conceive the child. So do feel free to share your struggles with other. If you want my sympathy, please do share your horror stories and maybe I'll share mine.