SIL's Wisdom

A few days after my birthday, SIL and I finally caught up with each other to chat over the phone. You might remember that we spent some time together in October and I spilled the beans about our struggle with TTC. We spent time at Christmas together, and also in Tucson in February, and nothing ever came up about the whole infertility thing. But, I knew that she'd probably (99.9% sure) tell her mom and dad, as well as her uncle and grandma minutes after I first talked to her about it in October (she shares everything about everyone else with her family). I kept waiting for something to come up from any of these family members, but nothing ever has.

However, six months after first talking about it, she brought it up again. I'm sure the family is *dying* to know what's going on with us (and of course they won't ask us to our face...)! After the typical surface-level "how are you?" "fine, how are you?" etc., she jumped into, "haven't you been going to the doctor for some stuff?" So, what did I do? I laid it on thick! Told her about the painful IUIs (which I didn't really want to go into detail about the process...told her to *google* it), the money constraints, etc. The reason for the "thickness" is due to the fact that it's hard to get a person who chooses their career over their marriage or having children to truly understand the pain that has gone into our journey. She is somewhat condescending in her responses, and some of that shows the fact that she hears info., but doesn't really hear the feelings that are behind what's being said. She said the usual comments a naive person may say to an infertile, "it will happen" (gag me), "what about adoption?", "have you thought about a surrogate?" (is she gonna give us the $60,000 for that?!), etc. And, no, she doesn't know about my blog:) In fact, while we were in Tucson, she made it clear that she thinks FB and blogging are dumb...point taken.

Overall, I am so happy with the support that Conrad and I do have on this journey. Sometimes it'd be nice to know his family is behind us though...emotionally, and maybe even financially. I guess I will take what I can get...which at this point, consists of lots of AMAZING and UNDERSTANDING friends and my family.