Day Eight

Instead of waking up this morning ready to enjoy another day of waiting, I woke up to a broken tooth. I had a root canal a couple weeks ago and my stupid temporary tooth broke. In a mad rush, I found a dentist here and was able to get it fixed but he told me I really should get the permanent crown put on right away. According to his schedule, he wants me to be in his dental chair on my due date! What a perfect way to miss the delivery of my baby. Now if I were pregnant, I could easily say, "Dude, I am going to have a baby, I can't do this right now." But once again, I had to make a choice - Do I explain myself to this random dentist in a city I don't live in, or do I just walk away? So I walked away.

TEN WAYS TO PRACTICE THE ART OF BEING INFERTILE:

10. Arm Yourself with Information, But Accept the Unanswerable.

9. Find Other Infertiles.

8. Tune out the noise.

When you are dealing with infertility treatments, there is a plethora of chatter, uproar and judgments among your friends, family, and the general public. First, people will offer you idiotic advise or tell you that you just need to relax. Then when you still don't get pregnant, they might start to look at you awkwardly or with pity and say even more stupid things. Then, to add insult to injury, we, as infertiles, are part of a larger public debate that lets total ignorant strangers think they can tell you what to do with your body. Though there are certainly times we need to fight back, to talk back, to try to educate, there are also times to IGNORE. Most of the time the noise around us about infertility just exacerbates the situation. Know who in your life are the noisy ones and who are the ones that can be of true support.