I made an ass of myself tonight on the phone with my BIL. He's a nice guy and means well, but is kind of chronically "a day late and a dollar short" as far as knowing what's going on, when to stop with certain comments, etc. (He's made too many comments about us and kids, other clueless things, etc.)
Well, I just spilled a lot of the fertility thing to him - I'd had to call him because he'd called to wish me a happy birthday a few days ago. I hope it ultimately winds up being a good thing. I feel like I overwhelmed him and probably babbled too much. But in my own (admittedly lame) defense, I had just gotten my hair cut and chatted a bunch with my stylist about all this stuff. (The stylist is a great guy, he knows my whole family, and has been really supportive since I started going to him after my late husband died.) So it was at the top of my mind - even more so than usual.
I feel like a complete idiot for having told him as much as I did - as much as he might try to understand, he really can't, because by his own admission he and his wife had absolutely no problem getting pregnant with either of their kids, and she was a few years older than I am now before she had the first one! And plus, he just generally seems kind of clueless about this kind of stuff.
And yet, maybe this will help decrease the number of at-best-unhelpful, at-worst-insulting-and-painful comments from him, especially since the last of my vacation days are going to be used on a family trip we're taking with DH's side of the family in a few weeks.
Normally if I was going to spill this much to anyone in my DH's family, it would be to my SIL (their sister, not the one married to the BIL), but generally I don't talk much about this to them. I feel like I'm admitting that their son/brother married someone broken and defective. DH's part of things seems fine... I'm the one not ovulating.
And it doesn't help that Post-Maternity-Leave-Girl at work's husband brought the baby in today. Daddy and Baby were walking around the floor all afternoon. I hate that feeling of "Awwww, how cute, I want to play with the baby" so closely followed by that heart-constricting pain of hating her for having a baby because I don't, and it'll be quite a while if it happens at all for me. I want to rip the baby pictures off her door. Apparently it hasn't occurred to her that having the pics on her office door is - ahem - less than considerate. No one else in the company has baby pics on their door (a couple of older kid pics, but not even many of those). If HR weren't largely not very helpful at my job, I would consider going to ask them to ask her to move the pictures into her office. Anonymously, of course! As my DH said, he is surprised that it's even allowed to post baby pics so prominently like that, given all the sensitivity to people's issues nowadays in the workplace. I don't want to be the bitch who complains, since I'm sure it hasn't even occurred to her that she might be causing pain to someone by posting her happy baby pics on her door. I keep hoping someone else complains first so HR makes her take them down, so I don't have to be the one to do it!
I guess I have to go to bed. Oh well.
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3 comments:
Of all the issues in the workplace that people take notice and consideration of, infertility is the one that seems to fall into the category of Things That Aren't Thought About. If no one thinks about it, then it's not a problem. Well, it's not a problem for anyone except those who walk at warp speed past baby pictures plastered to the outside of an office door.
I think the reality of the situation is that most of the population goes on blithely unaware of the struggle that IFers face, which means that they have little capacity to understand and be considerate.
I really hope that PMLG doesn't intend to put new pictures up month after month. That could get nauseating in a hurry.
At the same time, I have to say more people at work may understand what you are going through than you may realize. For instance, I just discovered that a woman at my office used my RE two years ago to have her twins . . . and I never would have guessed that she understood my plight. People just don't talk about it.
TTCindc - I definitely understand that sometimes you don't know what people have or have not been through, either in having kids or not being able to have them. I had a kick upside the head along those lines when I saw an acquaintance at a recent school reunion, holding her daughter and beaming like crazy. I was doing okay at that point with the baby stuff (held other people's babies etc.), but I just couldn't bring myself to go over and say hi. Turns out, I later heard from her that she had had treatments to have her daughter, and absolutely understands a lot of what I'm dealing with at the moment! At the same time, PMLG I would guess didn't go through anything like this, otherwise (at least this is my assumption), she would keep the pics inside her office and not plastered to her door - a door by a very high-traffic area, I may add.
kymberli - I agree, often people don't think about these things. And it's all the worse because I work for an educational company - kids are our reason for existing... so it makes it even harder, I think, to dare have an issue about her baby pics on her door. I mean really, have the pics, that's fine... but could she please just put them INSIDE her door?!
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