Aren't you pregnant yet? and other painful questions

“When are you guys going to start a family?”

“When are you going to have number two?”

“So are you going to try for a girl now?”

 

A few years ago I didn’t think much of these questions. I’m sure I asked them on more than one occasion. But over the past few years experience has given me new perspective on these questions.

I have watched friends struggle with infertility, whether trying to conceive their first baby or their second or third. Months turned into years spent visiting specialists, hoping for an answer that will tell them why, Why can’t I get pregnant, and praying for solution that will finally deliver the Holy Grail – a little plus sign on a pregnancy test.

I’ve watched friends miscarry, some of them over and over. I've watched friends miscarry due to tubal pregnancies, the double whammy that couples the loss of life with reduced fertility.

I’ve watched friends painfully struggle in their marriages, dealing with emotional abuse or infidelity or simply discontent, and make the choice not to try for a baby right now, because they don’t know if their marriage will survive the next year. All the while, they wondered and worried if they would get another chance to have the child they dreamed of. 

I’ve watched friends pray that they would get to have that second or third baby they so desperately wanted, as they spent months trying to convince reluctant husbands, feeling themselves slipping into depression and despair at the thought of not adding to their families.

How should these women answer that question? When are they going to start a family or have another child?  Should they open up, delve into this personal, painful subject, while they wait for the copier at work, as they cross paths with an acquaintance in the grocery store, when a well-meaning aunt asks loudly in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner?  

Does the person asking want the real answer? Will they respond with assurances not to worry, it will happen, what’s meant to be will be, their husband will come around, there is always in vitro, there is always adoption?  Will these assurances, which provide so little comfort, be delivered awkwardly or nonchalantly? 

Or is the person asking because they are simply making conversation, asking those questions that we’re “supposed” to ask of newlyweds and women in their 20s or 30s, having no idea they are poking at such a raw and tender spot? Should the woman being asked say, “We’re working on it,” or “Soon,” smiling on the outside while aching on the inside at this question, this sudden intrusion onto her day reminding her of what she doesn’t yet have? 

(Photo by Helga Weber via Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.)