On Giving and Judging

I have lots of thoughts today.  Let’s start with judging.  It’s hard when you’re trying to start a family not to judge every family interaction you see around you.  It’s easy to see a glimpse of a stranger and say you would never be like that, or they’re damaging their children or not valuing them.  But, I think it’s really important to keep in mind that we make our opinions of people within the first 5 minutes.  5 minutes.  What if that’s the worst 5 minutes of that person’s day, week, year, etc?  Let’s just try our best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  We aren’t perfect.  We all make mistakes.

Now onto giving.  Whether you give your time, advice, story, material items or love, it seems that people begin to expect you to continue to give once you’ve started.  They believe they’re entitled to it.  When I started this blog, I did so to share what we were going through, to sort out my emotions, to bring more awareness to infertility.  I had also made it clear that once we reached a certain point in our journey, it would be a while before I shared the details.  Not because I don’t want to share, but because there are some things that should be done privately for a time.  Whether that be savoring the sweet joy of pregnancy or suffering through a failed cycle or miscarriage, we had decided to keep quiet until we were comfortable discussing it.  I’ve received some opposition to this.  People, including those close to me and strangers, think they have a right to know the rest of the story, on their timeframe – not mine.  We will share our story.  We won’t leave you all hanging, but we’re just not ready.

Let’s think about this a bit.  If an IVF round was successful, a positive pregnancy test would happen before 4 weeks, but that isn’t the end of it.  You have to then sustain a pregnancy.  Couples walk on eggshells until their doctors think they’re at a relatively safe spot in their pregnancy.   Most ‘normal’ people wait to announce their pregnancy until 12-13 weeks when the chance of miscarriage is greatly decreased.  You wouldn’t even know they were ‘trying’ unless they had shared that info.  If an IVF round was unsuccessful it doesn’t mean it’s just another month with a negative pregnancy test, it means that a fertilized embryo or embryos were placed into a womb and given all they needed to stick around, yet they didn’t.  Or, a positive initial pregnancy test could lead to a miscarriage, these are all very personal situations.  Even though we’ve been open about our story so far, it’s our story.  When we’re ready to share, we will.  Until then, please understand that we are dealing with a lot of emotions and it’s important to focus on us and our marriage.

We appreciate all of the support we have received and are continuing to receive.  Our story is to be continued…