There are many times when IF bloggers feel like assholes. I've felt like an asshole from both sides of my experience - an asshole when I was desperately infertile and everyone and their third cousin's hair stylist got pregnant with no trouble, an asshole once I got pregnant and was still jealous of those people, and of course an asshole once I had the baby and experienced limited survivor's guilt.
I have trolled new depths of assholism now, however. A good male friend of mine got married in November to a wonderful woman. Soon after he proposed they were going to start trying. When he told me this I was approaching IVF #1, pissed off that I had reached that point at the age of 27, and convinced it would never work since all the Clomid and 4 injectible IUI cycles had been a complete waste of time. His wife-to-be was 40, significantly overweight, and had PCOS. I blogged about it, insisting that she would be pregnant before me, because that's just the way things are.
The couple decided soon after the wedding to start Clomid given the wife's age. I spent hours discussing IF treatment with him via IM, and he was so grateful for the knowledge that I have been so fortunate to gather through experience. She had her first IUI a month ago, and guess who is pregnant? My friend sent me an IM not long after the pee dried, and I am still the only person to know. Their parents aren't even aware of the news.
So my reaction should be elation, right? Joy that my marvellous friend and his wife look to be having a baby? Pleased that a fellow infertile has had early success? No. The asshole that cannot just let go of the residual pain of infertility is sad and upset. A woman 13 years older than me, much heavier than me, and with the same condition as me got pregnant after two Clomid cycles and an IUI. Yes, I have my baby now, but for some inexplicable reason I cannot let go of the years it took to have her.
I recently commented on someone's blog that it's tremendously difficult to shed the jealousy that infertility graces us with. Some of us may have success, but envy never leaves. I don't want to look at this woman and resent her for something she and her husband want so badly. I know how that pain is, and I would have a very hard time dealing with the knowledge that someone else resented me in that position.
I have blogged about my anger with IF bloggers who abandon other IF bloggers once they get pregnant, preaching that we should all be happy with one another's successes and joys. Yet here I am, a hypocrite of dazzling heights.
My name is Pru, and I'm an asshole.
26 comments:
This feels like AA can I join in.
Hello my name is Caro and I'm an asshole.
I can't imagine the jealousy ever going away.
We're all assholes in one way or another. Infertility gives us more scope for that pain, is all. So long as you're not marching up and down outside their house protesting with a placard about how ridiculously easy they are having it, I don't think you are being an asshole. At least not externally.
Count me in! My name is Flicka and I'm an asshole, too.
hugs.
I'm an asshole too, then.
Seriously, last weekend we met a woman who we've known for about 6 months. She and her partner were talking about ttc when we met them. They were going to start in a "few" months.
Guess who is 11 weeks? Yep. And I'm all green and bitter. Somehow, my wife is able to be all like, "That is so great for them!"
And I'm like, "whatever."
Asshole.
This is one of the varied reasons I think I need to take a break. I feel angry and jealous every day because someone is getting pregnant or having a baby. Two years of blogging has some serious disadvantages.
I unreasonably think everyone has it easier than me when in fact, I think I should have been one of the lucky ones to get (and stay) pregnant after the 2nd IUIs.
I'm feeling all pissy now. So, yeah. I'm DD and I am definitely not a G&D asshole, but just one of those regular assholes.
Well, then I am an asshole too because I am *sure* that I would feel the same way.
In fact, my jealousy is so outrageous right now that I fear it will consume me if/when we have to move on to more involved fertility treatments. But, on the off-chance that clomid works in the next couple of months, I will *still* despise people who get pregnant, especially if they do so easily.
Yep, me too. Asshole to the nth degree. I thought once I was pg and had a baby that the jealousy of other pg women would go away, but it totally has not. I still see a belly and it makes me go all ugly inside. Or hear about someone getting pg on their first try, first cycle, unintentionally, and the green monster immediately roars for attention.
At the moment I am so extrememly assholey I'm even jealous of women who get BFNs - why? Because it means they GOT TO OVULATE. Something I have apparantly done exactly twice since my 21st birthday. Am now 32. Because it means they're allowed to try, and I'm not (not until after the surgery they still haven't set a damn date for).
Do I win the one-down-man-ship asshole contest yet?
Your name is Pru, and you're a Human. You will always resent how much it took to get what you wanted so badly. And if someone doesn't have to go through the same hoops you did, you'll resent her, too. It doesn't make you an asshole - it just makes you normal. I have a big hate on right now for my secondary infertility friend who, after her first failed IUI, got pregnant on their own on a Napa Valley wine trip. Bitch.
Call me an asshole too. I'm certain the jealousy I feel won't ever go away. I have a daughter and have been TTC #2 for over 2 years (including 1 surgery & 3 failed IVF cycles). Not only am I bitter and sad about the infertility, but my daughter was premature (8 weeks) and spent 4 weeks in the NICU and 6 months on a monitor. Everytime attend a baby shower BEFORE someone has had their baby or hear about some nice normal delivery I'm filled with jealousy. And anytime I hear someone who's past 30 weeks complain about how big or uncomfortable they feel and how they wish they could have the baby already I want to shriek at them and tell them how lucky they are and that they should shut the F up, because if they got what they were asking for they'd be pretty darn unhappy about it. Hmmm. Guess I was in a need of a little venting - who knew!
Mindy
Count me in. I'd be jealous.
Heck, I'm jealous of the couple who conceived naturally after failing 7 IVF cycles. 7 fresh ones, I don't know how many FETs. Got worse when they conceived naturally a second time.
And I resent my fertile friends for making me feel like I should be over the whole IF thing already. Excuse me, there is still no baby in my house, though my odds are insanely good right now.
May I join your club of assholery?
I've experienced something similar lately, with friends trying & worrying because it's taking more than a month or two--and without moving on to any treatment, they conceive. They're like IF-near-misses, and it pisses me off--they don't get that there's not really an "almost infertile" category out there. They want to commiserate with us, but I still see them on the other side of the great divide.
I'm an asshole too.
Even after finally successfully having a child my first reaction to hearing that ANYONE is pregnant is a flash of anger. It doesn't last long...just long enough to make feel like a horrible person.
Another asshole here. Actually I'm two assholes because I'm pretty sure I don't want another kid and still . . .
My name is Em and I am an asshole too. I feel jealous all the time - when I see pregnant women, when I get emails from my mum's group in London to say someone else is expecting #2...all the time! Loved the post.
I must be one too then. I feel much the same as Mindy does about women who are over 30 weeks and complaining.
This was a very good post.
Personally I try my very best to not allow myself envious thoughts, but its always possible and hard not to do.
Brave and honest of you to admit it, I admire that :)
HUGS
Second babies do it to me. It just exacerbates the initial ookiness.
I got here via DD's blog, although I did read you for a while after the card thing this X-mas. but then I took a break from blogging all together because I felt I was becoming a HUGE A-Hole. I thought a break would help, and it did, but not entirely. The way it helped is that I am now OK with being an a-hole, where before I felt kind of bad about it. HIstory doesn't change - even if I will the infertility lottery and havea child, the processed was muddied and until I am ready to let that go and a-hole I will be.
Yep Yep
My name is Aurelia and I'm an asshole.
Envy and schadenfreude take over my life regularly...sigh...
Big ol' asshole here. I doubt I'll ever not be jealous of someone who can get pregnant and not have something terrible happen (ectopic/miscarriage/other loss). Seriously, who gets pregnant at 40 on their first freakin' iui?
I was an asshole. I had a miscarriage and couldn't even talk to Statia about her pregnancy (she was really nice about it though. Makes you hate her nice damn heart, doesn't it?)
I do admit, though, that I'm generally ok about others being knocked up, and I was even before I got knocked up. There's a blogger, though, who makes me want to gouge my eyes out I find it so unfair she's knocked up.
So I'm still an asshole, really.
Just the existance of such shows as "America's Funniest Home Accidents" show us that our primal nature is to look out for number 1 and to be pleased as punch at other people's misfortune. So what does that make us as a species? That's right; assholes.
Jealousy is just another extention of it. It's human, it's natural. And when you've gone through IF, watching every lucky fertile in the world around you swell up like balloons, you can't expect that to just go away even after you have your own sweet little bundle in your arms.
My name is Tonya, please pass the candle. I'm definitely an asshole even though I'm one lucky beeotch.
Hardly... and I've known quite a few arseholes.
I think your reaction is probably completely normal.
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