Easy for you to say!

It never ceases to amaze me what people will say to me about my infertility.  No matter what the issue is, I always follow this motto - the only thing I truly understand is my own experience.  I can sympathize with someone about something I have never experienced, or I can try to help, but advice or wisdom really cannot be shared without some experience.

I figure that I am still pretty young and don't have a whole lot of life experience under my belt.  I will only give advice on things that I have experienced.  Otherwise, I think it's ballsy and often rude to assume that you know more about the issue than the person who is living it.

Why doesn't everyone else follow this basic code of conduct?  It sounds cliche for an infertile to complain about other people's comments, but it really is grating and hurtful.  Actually, it is one of the hardest parts of infertility.

Recently, I have been told by friends, family members and coworkers many tidbits of advice that are based on absolutely zero experience or insight.  I have been told that I should just "go for it" and try IVF.  I have been told that having a child is the most important thing in the world and that I should spare no expense.  I have even been told that not having a child wouldn't be "the worst thing in the world."

Here's why these statements may seem logical to the speaker, but are like a knife in the heart to me:

"Just go for it - try IVF.  You have nothing to lose."
That just plain old isn't true.  I am not against trying IVF at all, and if my life were a little different, I would probably be doing it right now.  But my life is like this - I can't afford it.  I would have to take thousands of dollars from my family just for a roll of the dice.  They are all insisting that I should just do it and that the financial concerns shouldn't affect my decision, but they do.  My family cannot afford this.  They would be stretching themselves far beyond what I can possibly expect from them, and I know that I would live with the guilt of taking all that money and hurting them financially, especially if it didn't work.  They can think whatever they want about it, but I know that there is a chance it wouldn't work and that I would be an emotional mess and complete guilt-monster if it didn't.  Plus, if it didn't work, we would just need thousands more to adopt.  It really isn't as cut-and-dry as they would like to think.

And, yes, as a matter of fact, I have a lot to lose.  I have thousands of dollars to lose, weeks of time from work, months of building hope, and hopefully not the devastation of it not working.  In the end, if it doesn't work, I will have lost a lot - most importantly, a little part of myself.

"What are you doing spending money on anything else?!  This is the most important thing in the world and you should be saving for more treatment!"
OK, first of all, we barely have enough money to be saving for treatment.  On top of that, this is not just infertility - this is our lives.  Part of surviving being child-free, especially if we are going to stay that way, is to have a fulfilling life outside of having children.  In the past two-and-a-half years of TTC, we have traveled, visited friends, gone on day trips, and made a few larger purchases.  Creating a happy life together is what keeps us sane.  If I devoted every penny to fertility treatment, life wouldn't be good.  We would be lonely homebodies who couldn't go out to dinner with family or visit friends in other cities.  We couldn't have attended distant weddings or spontaneously decided to go out.  And how about when all the treatments didn't work?  Then we would have been miserable, miserly, lonely and it really may have stressed our marriage.  The truth is - I don't regret living while we are infertile.

"Not having children wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."
Maybe it wouldn't, but it really isn't anyone's place to say this, and then again, maybe it would be the worst thing.  Being forced to live child-free can put an immense strain on a marriage.  And it's not like once we decided on this path, we would just forget that we ever wanted them.  Our whole lives will be surrounded by people with children in a society that values family life and finds fulfillment in having children.  We may be devastated for the rest of our lives.  We may even be divorced.  Based on how much C and I deeply love each other and how much we have always wanted and prepared for children, this really does seem like the worst thing in the world.