The Power of Three

I manipulated a backrub out of my guilty DH last night, I slept in until 10am, and the sun is shining today. Let's hope this day is on the up-and-up, and my appointment with the RE this afternoon shows a beautiful lining ready for IUI.

What I love about ICLW is that reading other people's posts often gives me fodder for mine, especially when I'm in a creativity slump like I've been in lately. Write Baby Repeat had a really moving post yesterday about getting lapped, and all I could think about was a friend of mine who is now expecting her third kid and what a visceral response I had when I learned the news.

For the past year, whenever I hear a pregnancy announcement from a "civilian" (non IF'er), my mind immediately goes into survival mode with a bunch of rationalizing thoughts. There is the sincere "I'm so happy for them," followed by a wistful "How lucky that they'll never have to question themselves about fertility," and then a rather selfish "I hope they won't bombard me with too many pregnancy updates and shower invitations."

Those thoughts take a mean turn, though, when I learn that it's a third or fourth pregnancy. I am immediately flooded with an outraged "How *dare* you?!" followed by an insincere "I hate you!" and then a selfish and childish "Why does the universe hate me so?" It's happened two or three times now, and I always feel totally surprised and ashamed by the depth of my negativity and my lack of grace.

I tell myself over and over again that having babies is not a zero sum game - there isn't some limited pool of them, so Jane having three...or nine children has no bearing whatsoever on the number of children I will have.

In my IF-addled mind, though, there is something subtly terrible and mocking when a couple flouts social convention and throws themselves on the other side of the average 2.2 kids statistic. I know logically that the following isn't true, but a primitive part of me sees 3+ kids as a flaunting of genetic wealth, as a kind of evolutionary and ecological selfishness.

"Our world is overpopulated, we don't know if we'll have enough water or gasoline to get us through the next few generations, but sure - go ahead and go over the replacement rate. Clearly two is not enough for you. Unless the third pregnancy was an accident, in which I already hate you for your untold amounts of luck and fertility." Something like that.

I am well aware that this isn't a nice way to think about this. That I'm taking someone else's deep personal joy and throwing my political and philosophical feelings on it, along with slathering a layer of infertility shit on top of it. I don't want to think like this, but I do.

But at least I know I will never say these thoughts out loud. That's why I have this blog. So I can exorcise these ugly thoughts and protect my happy and naive friends from them, and so that I can love their children - no matter how many of them they have - with a cleaner heart.