Talking about IF

I did something I’ve never done before.  I told someone I barely knew that we were infertile.  Actually, I did it twice in the span of a week.  This is a big deal for me since I’m super private about personal stuff.  Normally I’d want to tell someone about our IF as much as I’d want tell someone we were having marriage problems (we’re not).  Being shy and an introvert, I have to build trust with someone over time before I share anything personal.  But in these two situations, I decided to take a risk…

The first conversation started as any get-to-know-you conversation goes.   What do you do?  How long have you been married?  Do you have kids?  They were seemingly innocent questions until the woman dropped every IF girl’s favorite question, “So don’t you WANT kids?”  It struck me as a bit odd because of the setting.  It was the lunch break during an all-day marriage prep session at our parish.  I was sitting with the couple who was going to co-present the talk on NFP with me after lunch.  We had done the talk together once before, so she knew we were going to talk about being open to life.  Perhaps she was checking my credibility as a Catholic NFP instructor?  Or maybe she was just curious because of how long we’ve been married.  (I think other people’s curiosity about family size and TTC timelines is my biggest pet peeve…)  Anyway…  The question caught me off guard but she seemed trustworthy enough, so I admitted, “We’ve been trying for years.”  I could tell she immediately felt guilty for asking the question.  Her eyes widened and she repeated, “Years??  Oh.  I’m sorry.  I’ll pray for you.”  I was impressed at her response.  It’s probably the only “correct” response you can say to an IF girl that won’t hurt her feelings.  Since many people don’t naturally come up with an acceptable response, I wondered if she’d previously had this conversation with someone else.  It turns out she did; one of her good friends was infertile.  I shared a bit about NaPro, and she was going to pass the info along to her friend.  The rest of the conversation went as well as I could have hoped.  She asked questions and listened to my answers, offering no advice whatsoever.  If there were an IF sensitivity training course, she would have passed with flying colors.  :)

Side note:  The conversation made me think that everyone should have an IF friend who can teach her how to respond appropriately to someone with IF in case IF sensitivity doesn’t come naturally…

The second conversation happened at a party hosted by a woman from our parish.  I had never met her before that night, but we had spoken on the phone.  Our conversation started almost exactly like the one I described above—length of marriage followed by, “Do you have any kids?”  She answered the questions first, stating she had four young children.  When she asked me, and I said we didn’t have kids yet, she said, “Oh, you’re infertile, too.”  It wasn’t a question.  It was a statement.  It felt refreshing that she would just assume we were IF.  All I had to say was, “Yeah,” and she proceeded to tell me her IF story and how she adopted her children.  She was rather outgoing, so I think she would have shared it with me even if I wasn’t IF.  I could have talked to her all night, but I think it’s bad party etiquette to monopolize the hostess’s time...  I did get to ask her details about adoption, and she was a wealth of information.  She said that when she and her husband realized they were infertile, she didn’t want to do any testing to find out what was wrong; she wanted to pursue adoption right away.  I had never met anyone who didn’t want to know the reason for her IF, so it was interesting to hear her perspective.

Based on these two encouraging experiences, I may be more likely to share our IF with someone now.  I know that just because two individuals responded well doesn’t mean everyone else—or anyone else—will.  I mean, I’m not ready to go shouting it from the rooftops (i.e., Facebook) that we’re IF.  But at least it built up my courage a bit knowing that I can talk about IF without breaking into tears.