“You deserve this…”
When we first started IVF, I didn’t tell many people. To me, the sense of failure if it didn’t work would be compounded every time I had to reveal that all the build up had lead to a very painful end. Consequently, there was very little inane, oblivious niceties from people who were honestly trying to make you feel better, but really just revealing the depth of their disconnect. Because who, truly, can understand the complexity of your individual situation and emotions without having been through it, or without being you. However, by now, my need to talk through painful situations, and my inability to lie about things like why my whole body is covered in track marks has lead to statements such as:
“Didn’t Mariah Carey just give birth to twins through IVF? You are much younger! I am sure it will work.”
“My cousin’s sister’s niece just did fertility treatments. She said it was super easy! Do you want the name of her doctor?”
“I can’t believe it didn’t work! It will work next time, I KNOW it!”
“I have a good feeling about this round. It will definitely work”
“I read in Glamour magazine that you are supposed to be super relaxed and zen. That is the best thing for the baby. You should really go get a facial or something.”
“You guys are going to make such great parents! You deserve this!”
There is that word. Deserve.
“To be worthy of, be entitled to, have a right to, be qualified for”
I have thought it myself. My husband and I are moral, loving, financially secure people who could give a child so much. We deserve this. I harbored that sense of entitlement deep in my gut. It made me bitter and angry to see or hear about women who had been effortlessly, and often abundantly, endowed with this gift of motherhood, only to take it for granted or squander it in abuse and neglect.
However, what have any of us truly done to be deserving of motherhood. It isn’t like a promotion at work, which perhaps you spent innumerable hours of extra work and training preparing for. My current life situation is optimally suited right now for children. That is different than deserving them.
Fertility isn’t a reward, just as infertility isn’t a punishment. It is just a fact of being who you genetically are.
It is what you plan to do with who you are that matters.