I was talking with someone today about all sorts of topics. In reference to another topic she was talking about I mentioned people who get pregnant with high-order multiples (mentioning specifically quintuplets and sextuplets), and how there’s a choice to keep all of them knowing that the risks of severe problems including losing the whole pregnancy, or to reduce to two or three. (I swear the topic really was related to what she was talking about.)

First thing she said was that you don’t hear of that happening very often (losing some or the entire pregnancy, or severe mental retardation in some of them), which made me o.O for a minute. I realized that the success stories are so newsworthy that normal people really don’t get a sense of how dangerous higher-order multiples really are. A few cases of mostly-healthy sextuplets (the new show Jon and Kate Plus 8 comes to mind – though one of the two year olds has to wear glasses; the other set of sextuplets on TV, the ones who are teenagers now, one of the boys was “legally blind” though everyone was otherwise healthy) does not a general population make. This is not to say that people shouldn’t keep higher-order multiples if that’s what they believe in and they’re willing to take on the risks, but to claim that there’s little to no risk is flatly false.

The other thing she said was, “Oh, you mean like when they take fertility drugs? I think that’s wrong. It’s messing with nature.” After that I wisely did not mention us doing IVF.

This person is actually aware that my husband and I want kids and are having problems having them, though she may have forgotten. And when that came up in a round-about way last time I saw her months ago she waved it off with a, “Oh, kids are such a hassle anyways. Enjoy not having any! Just relax. You’re too young to worry about it!”

Why do people insist on having opinions on things they know nothing about?

On the other side of the coin, I got an email from an old college friend that I haven’t talked to in some time. She told me what was happening in her life and asked me how things were going. I mentioned the house, the job, this and that, and told her a bit offhand that we were trying to have a baby but are having problems and are now doing IVF.

This friend of mine, she had the most beautiful reply ever. She said that she’s sure I’ve done a ton of research and no far more than she ever could about the subject so she wasn’t going to try giving advice. She said she actually reads A Little Pregnant (which I do too – and by the way, her last entry has me nearly peeing myself laughing) and that she’s aware of how horrible it is to deal with infertility and have to put yourself through IVF and everything. She added that she knows never to give “assvice”, so that all she’s going to say is that it really sucks that I’m having to deal with it and hopes that everything works out for us.

That email just made me feel so good. I mean, first off she knew what IVF was and I didn’t have to explain it – she knew how horribly heart-wrenching and overwhelming this is. From reading someone’s blog she’s gained a whole new way of seeing things that otherwise she may not have known anything about. This is why it’s so important that us infertiles keep blogging, keep talking. We may not know whose lives we touch, but someday, somewhere, that person may run into another infertile and have the insight and compassion to just say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

They estimate that 10% of the population is dealing with infertility. The other 90% will someday hopefully realize it.