To all of you out there with Perfect Uteri

Just to get it straight - I AM NOT INFERTILE. Well, not really, I think. If it were 1852, I would be infertile. But today we can poke little holes in people and root around with a camera. We can also insert tiny, little scissors into a woman's uterus and snip away the wall that divides it in two, making for a remodeled, and hopefully functioning, unit. I hope it works for me. Right now, it is too soon to tell. So I can get pregnant, repeatedly, but my body is a babykiller.

But here is the point.

I have, since May 2007 to present, suffered 2 miscarriages due to my septate uterus while all of my friends (and I really do mean that) have gotten pregnant on near the first try and taken that pregnancy to term. I am surrounded by a festering ring of fertility. I am the statistic. Girls, stay close. You wanna have a kid, stick with me. I am the percentage, the one you hope you are not. I got the shitty end of the stick - so you go ahead and grab the good end. I can take it.

Problem is that people who have kids, and pregnant people, are really bad at talking to people like me. They say really dumb shit. They call their pregnancy a failure because they developed gestational diabetes (the same friend is currently holding her self-incubated son.) Another friend contacted me all upset because she was turned down by a midwifery practice. They will not take her as a patient because she has epilepsy. She is all pissed because now she will have to delivery her kid in a hospital (safety first!) Ummm, guess what. I can't really deal with this. Fact is, your experience will ultimately end in bliss. Mine, repeated tragedy. I don't mean to minimize anyones feelings, but I can only be so generous. Remember who you are talking to, and be sensitive to that. Because, frankly, it hurts like hell-- and in the grand scheme of things, I have had a pretty easy go at it.

So I just stumbled on this today and want to share it with all of you out there with perfect uteri. Here are some really helpful hints on how to deal with people like me (I edited it a smidge). I found it on RESOLVE - which is a national association for Infertility.

• Don't Tell Them to Relax - no amount of relaxing would have dissolved my septum. Nor will it help other people who are struggling with various known and unknown cases of infertility.
• Don't Minimize the Problem - Talking about all the petty benefits to being childless is a sucky thing to do. (sleeping in, not getting barfed on, going out for beers)
  
• Don't Say There Are Worse Things That Could Happen - Great. I already feel shitty, now you are reminding me to feel guilty about my own pain...
• Don't Say They Aren't Meant to Be Parents - I don't believe this crap anyhow.
  
• Don't Complain About Your Pregnancy - This is the motherload. If I have to explain why, then you may possibly be too insensitive to be anyone's friend. Hope your kid loves you, because you are a piece!
  

I can not tell you how to talk to me, or anyone like me (but this article might help.) If a friend slowly pulls away from you during your pregnancy because of their infertility - don't assume that she wants your kid. Seeing pregnant people is really hard for me because it is a constant reminder of my own failure. It is not that I want to be you. It is that seeing you reminds me one more time that i have been forced to adjust the very way in which I imagined my life would be. Miscarriage and infertility are a different kind of grief. They are grief that is ongoing, with intermitted moments of hope, and some really painful drops into despair. It is exceptionally hard for me to feel joyful for my fertile friends right now. I do the best that I can.

If you can have children with ease and have never suffered a miscarriage you can never, ever understand what it is like to be me. That is all there is too it.