Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Finding a fellow traveller

Remember "gaydar?" The little bell that goes off in the heads of the gay and gay-friendly that makes you think somebody is part of the community, a fellow traveller? That little something? Do you think infertiles have something similar? (What would we call it? Inf-dar? Bar-dar? ART-dar?) Because I did the strangest thing this afternoon.

I hold my cards pretty close to the vest regarding the whole IVF-thing. Neither my family nor R's knows that Small Boy and Boychen are IVF/FET babies (though sometimes I think R's mom might suspect). Some of our good friends know - three we told during the process, people we'd been friends with for over a decade and who stood up for us at our US wedding; but Small Boy was one before I told Dutch Friend and two before I told Australian Friend. I don't mind people knowing, but I don't broadcast it. As I said, I hold my cards pretty close to the vest.

Today I was at a playgroup some of the expat moms have been trying to get off the ground forever and talking with a new woman; I had come into the conversation late and she and Australian Friend were talking about how hard twins would have been and we don't know how we would have done it. But then we all agreed that we would have done it because it is what it is, and you just do it. Especially twins with a first (successful) pregnancy - you don't have any basis of comparison and infants are just hard anyway. And then we all agreed that twins the second time around would be really hard and I said - to a woman I'd just met five minutes ago - that when we were trying to get pregnant with the Small Boy I was willing to risk twins with a two-embryo transfer but the second time around, with Boychen, we only ever considered single embryo transfers. It just slipped out of mouth with all the natural ease in the world.

And she said, that's what we're doing too.

Whoa.

Her child is an IVF baby too. We have different REs but they use the same lab and she knows Herr G, the Labmeister, too; we agreed he's a super-nice guy. (Did I ever mention that after my last transfer - the Boychen transfer - we hung around with Herr G chatting about cycling, the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, and Fabian Cancellara? Well we did.) What a small world. And how strange that I would have picked that moment, with that woman, to say something that honestly I never introduce into conversation.

What do you think, fellow ART-ers? Do you think we have an "ART-dar?" Has yours ever tingled? And were you right?

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4 Comments:

At 19:45 , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know about Art-Dar, because you and I are different...I broadcast all my details to anyone who will listen (although I'm getting better, because now its the girls' details as well) So if they are IF, they usually open up to ME. (They're EVERYWHERE, BTW...) but the thing about the twins and first time/second time? Oh yeah. We would ONLY consider a single embryo transfer now. The first time I didn't have anything to compare it to, like you said. Made me chuckle a little.

p.s. I wonder if we are in the same Yahoo expat group...of course, we never did expatriate...

 
At 09:40 , Blogger swissmiss said...

Lynnette, good to hear from you. I'm not in a Yahoo group, so it must not be me.

 
At 15:42 , Blogger J said...

I'm quite surprised that even R's family don't know.

 
At 20:36 , Blogger swissmiss said...

J - like I said, I think they might suspect but we just never felt like going through the whole thing with them. Now it's so late that it seems pointless to get into it.

I must say, the second time around it was harder to arrange all the doctors appointments involved and have them babysit Small Boy without somebody figuring something out. Which they might have.

 

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