I like her

I recently met this new woman at our church. We went out for coffee today to get to know each other better. She has a young daughter and we were talking about family. I ask if her and her husband think they will have any more children. Her answer was basically yes they will try in a few months because the timing would work out with her school schedule, but she also acknowledged that you can make all the plans you want but never know what will happen. I wish everyone could realize that not all plans work out. I think I'll keep this new friend.

Friends

When I first started looking online for information about conceiving, I thought I would mostly informational websites or tools. But once I found a community of women like me I knew there was so much more. These are women that I know. Maybe I've never met them in person, but I know them. Perhaps at a deeper level than most people I interact with everyday. They are me.

I've stayed around the message boards not just because there is good information, but good friends. I relish hearing about their joys and daily lives and feel heartbroken with them during the trials. Their joys are my joys and their trials are my trials. I want us all to get our BFPs and have beautiful healthy babies.

And I feel privileged and honored when they get excited about my happy news or upset about my bad news. So few people understand what IF is like that is is gratifying to hear others who understand, or maybe not quite understand but know when support is needed and how to provide it.

So that's why I'll be spending tomorrow with my friend here. I want to get to the jump up and down exciting part of this with you. Good luck.

IRL

I did it.

I told someone IRL about our IF problems. I didn't intend to. I don't even really know the person I told. We are colleagues who are definitely friendly with each other and I enjoy her company, but we don't really know each other well enough to approach the level of friendship.

There we were, talking about the project we work on and I was giving her advice about graduate school and the big conference for our field that is coming up. And then she dropped the bombshell.


She charts.

The only people I've tried telling about charting IRL looked at me like I was crazy and were utterly confused about the whole thing. Who just drops that in casual conversation? She is making her trip to the conference as short as possible because she predicted her next two cycles and doesn't want to miss her fertile period. Now, I have that same concern and usually am bursting at the seams to say something when this topic comes up.

But there I was telling myself to not go down that road and trying to change the subject. And she kept talking about it and said they haven't gone too overboard with charting yet and just have been having lots of fun. So I decided to take the plunge.

It felt really good to get it out the open with someone. I finally felt like I wasn't lying to everyone. My family is always on our case about having kids. And academia is not exactly the most supportive field for having a baby. Even when people are not asking specifically about babies, I feel like I'm lying when I make plans for conferences or data collection trips several months in the future when I'm really thinking, "well, if I'm pregnant by then..."

Now it's out there. Well, I guess the fact that this colleague lives in another city and has a very small chance of bringing up this topic with the rest of our project made it possible for me to open up to her. But still. Someone else knows.