Bah Humbug, or How Infertility Killed Christmas.

All I can say is, Ebenezer Scrooge must have had male factor. Nothing like a spot of IF to kill the Christmas spirit.

Briefly, I have refused to spend this Christmas at home with Family. Of the 4 women who will be present, 1 is 55 years old, each of the other 3 have newbie newborns, plus there's a 1 year old for added effect. And I'm just not doing it. This is DH's side, so of course I feel like the Grinch. My family have never even done Christmas, so it means nada to me anyway, but now I've made it all about me.

In the spirit of Denial, I harken back to those innocent, halcyon days of early TTC. You know, when you keep thinking, "next month I'll be pregnant too, so talking about your pregnancy won't seem so bad" or, "this time next year, I'll have a baby too, so looking at your baby won't seem so painful" etc etc. Those sweet, naive days are over, amigos.

Chronologically, I've always loved babies, cute little things, even the ugly ones were cute in my eyes. In my mid-20s this meant that everytime a new mother wheeled her kid back to work for the obligatory show-and-tell session, I'd be the one clucking and holding their kid. Behaviour such as this evinced knowing nods and smiles from the old duck brigade, who were quick to connect my cluckiness with near-future breeding. Never mind that at the time I was engaged to a complete twat, so happily the aforementioned breeding never occurred.

With the passage of time, so passed my cluckiness. Late 20s to early 30s saw me lose interest in the little blighters, was having too much fun and it all seemed so distant and disconnected to my experience. Interestingly enough, once you start TTC, babies become a constant reminder of your failure. There's also a seemingly-contradictory, inverse relationship between the time it takes TTC and how interested you are in other people's spawn.

So, the first 3 years or so of TTC saw me visiting a few babies (partly to do with the blog title-more on that later), not collapsing publically or bitching privately at pregnancy announcements etc. As well as the Denial phase, I call this the "do the right thing (by others)" stage, closely related to the "masochism and go home and drink yourself into paralysis" stage.

Now, I feel that my experiences have validated my current actions. I'll stand up proudly and declare...."I'm Infertile And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!!!!"

This involves: not being in touch with pregnant women, if I don't want to be. Not going to social events if there will be multiple babies/bumps. Not making up gastro/flu excuses for these invitation-refusals, but actually saying that it upsets me now to be around lots of babies/kids. Not being in touch with friends who want to share every detail of their pregnancies with me, the Infertile friend. Appropriateness, people!!! Also not being in touch with friends who become Helicopter Parents, you know, the ones who just lurve putting on the "I was an individual for 35 years but now my life revolves around talking about poo-poo and controlled crying." Note that I didn't say that their lives shouldn't revolve around their kid, more that their lives shouldn't revolve around obsessing over said kid, particularly not with their Infertile Friend.

This leads to one of my favourite pearls of wisdom: Choose your Audience!!! Considering that 90% of people seem to pop out kittens with no problems whatsoever, please discuss your kittens with these people, not your childless friend who lies awake at night wondering "why me?" and walks around shopping centres in a daze trying to make sense of this thing while being rammed by 19-year-olds with a twin pram and one on the way.

On the other hand, I virtually brought up my baby brother, so please don't condescend to me by telling me how to hold a baby, earnestly explaining no solids for 6-months or basic crap like that, just because I'm not yet a breeder. You can't win with an Infertile friend, but hey, you get to have a kid/s and I don't, so I'll take the high-moral, selfish road, for now, and feel not a jot of guilt.