To tell or not to tell?

To Tell or Not to Tell?

Deciding who, when and how much to tell people about fertility problems can be a big dilemma,   I think I’m fairly unusual in my approach to this issue. I talk quite openly about the fact that I’ve been trying for a baby for a number of years and that I’m waiting to have IVF but I know that others either don’t want or don’t feel able to share what they’re going through.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong on this issue, a lot of people are very private and don’t want others to know their business.  I do think however that sometimes the secrecy that surrounds fertility issues can make the heartache all the more difficult to bear.  I work with about 100 people, a majority of them are women and there are usually 2 or 3 who are pregnant at any one time.  Watching other people go through their pregnancies has been one of the hardest things for me over the last 3 years, often harder than seeing people once they’ve had their babies.  I don’t think I could have got through those years if people hadn’t known.  People’s natural line of conversation when you’re married or in a long term relationship is often “When are you going to have children?” or even more difficult to stomach for those struggling with infertility “It’ll be you next.”  Leaving everything bottled up inside I think I would have tortured myself unnecessarily, at least if people know they tend to avoid these conversations.

In terms of who I’ve told and when, my approach has been kind of reversed; Ordinarily you would think that you’d tell close family and friends first and it would be work colleagues who you would be more likely to keep it from.  For me it was the other way round, my work colleagues have known pretty much all along, there’s probably a few factors that influenced this.   Nurses as a profession do tend to discuss things that other people don’t and since I see my infertility problems a medical struggle I guess it seemed a natural place to discuss it.  Another factor was that I was always felt more need to discuss things than Matt did, he wasn’t particularly embarrassed about it but just felt that it would happen before too long so what was the point in telling people.  So for me work was the only place where I am that Matt isn’t and a group of people that he doesn’t really socialise with so it gave me the opportunity to discuss how I was feeling without it affecting who and when Matt wanted to tell. As time has gone on Matt has been more willing to be open about things so this hasn't been such an issue but to start off with it really helped me. A third factor is that those closest to me have more invested in my struggle to become a mother (ouch, that word always hurts); My parents and Matt’s parents have their chances of having a first grandchile invested in it, my sister has her chances of becoming  a auntie invested in it, so there’s a lot more gravity in telling them than in telling people who it doesn’t really effect one way or another if I get pregnant.

I think the decision on who or what to tell has to be a joint one, it’s important to take time to understand each other’s coping mechanisms and to respect each other’s feelings.  If Matt really hadn’t wanted me to tell anybody I would have respected his views but on the other hand since I really wanted to be open about it he also took the time to respect my views and gradually over the years we’ve worked through who, when and how, we wanted to tell people.  It’s about finding a way of coping that suits both of you.  Certainly before I started keeping this blog I made sure Matt was ok with that, I was a little surprised to be honest, I thought he might find it a bit of an odd thing to do but I think he’s found it useful to watch video blogs on YouTube of other people’s IVF experiences so he’s happy for me to do the same for other people. 

The one thing I didn’t intend to be open about was exactly when we were having the IVF just because there’s then that period of time afterwards when people will be looking at me thinking “I wonder if she’s pregnant,” or asking me if it's worked.  When people started asking me about when I was starting IVF however I just found myself being honest and since I then decided to keep this blog everybody may well find out anyway!  So I’ll just have to hope people figure out not to ask if it worked or not and just to wait and see!

So for me I’ve made a conscious decision to be open about our IVF journey and in the process hope to help and inform others about the process and what people go through, but it's a very personal thing and everybody copes in different ways.

I’m very thankful that IVF is even available and I’m lucky enough to live in a country and a region where it’s available on the NHS.  If it works I plan to get this little baby grow for my baby, because I’m thankful for what science can do for me.