So I was really proud of myself: At our last childbirth prep class last week, I asked two of the girls who we'd sat next to the whole month (with their hubbies) if they wanted to exchange emails.
I hemmed and hawed on my reason for getting their information, because let's face it, saying "I really don't have any other friends because up until now we had nothing in common with the rest of the fertile late-20-early-30-something couples" was not really going to make me look very exciting.
But I am actually a pretty outgoing person at heart, so I knew I could come up with something. After much thought, I finally remembered how I'd told them about my yoga studio, and how they offer postpartum classes (mom and baby) at 6 weeks. So, when I asked them, I said, maybe it would be fun to keep in touch and maybe we could all go to yoga with our yogi's sometime.
Luckily, they took the bait! Haha ;-) I think it is funny (sad?) that somewhere deep inside, my opinion of my friendship-worthiness has degraded to the point where I feel like I need to market myself or come up with excuses on why people might want to be my friend. Need to work on that I think...
ANYWAY.
So I emailed them a few days after our last class (had to wait just enough time so as not to look desperate, of course), and much to my delight, we are now emailing back and forth and trying to plan getting together for dinner sometime next week! I am so excited that I actually might have just made myself some new friends in our area. Especially ones we seem to have some general things in common with: similar ages, similar family situations (all of us are 8-9 months pregnant with our first baby), and it seems like we are all on the "young professional" side of things.
All was going fine and good until one of them included the lines "I can't wait to have my body back....not pee three times a night.... get back into running....sleep without the big belly.....". I did a double take, given that I had just talked about my befuddlement of her first phrase in my last post. I just shook my head, until the other girl emailed back that she could totally relate- she saw a guest on today's morning show who had jeans, and a shirt tucked in with a belt, and she was JEALOUS!
Oh, sweet mercy.
Can I be friends with fertiles?!
I actually did have my first noticeably uncomfortable night of sleep last night- just a backache- (I don't count peeing as making me uncomfortable), but I still would not trade it for anything or wish away my pregnancy because of it. I think it is amazing and awesome that our bodies change so much to carry a baby, and if that comes with some aches and pains, so be it. I will gladly embrace all and any discomforts for the chance to be a mom. Without hesitation or whining or complaining. End of story! We are experiencing a miracle here, people!!
(ETA: I'm totally going to give them a pass and pursue the friendships! It was just one of those things that makes you sigh and go "hmph", you know?)
And this is why infertile girls just don't have friends. LOL. I think it's awesome you took that step of connecting with them. I'm always so awkward at making new friends. And you definitely don't need pretext to have someone hang out with you (I better you're pretty cool) but I'd feel the same way.
ReplyDeleteAs for their comments, it'd bother me too but I think there's just a divide there and they'll probably never understand in a million years why or how their comments could be taken as bad. If I didn't go through what I did, we might not have a no-complaining rule in our ass and I might bitch about things all the time. Who knows.
As long as they're not totally obnoxious or insensitive to others feelings, I say give them a chance. It's fun to go to dinner with girlfriends and just chat.
Good on you for making the effort. I guess their responses are what you would expect. How funny to think of how so many of us long for big bellies and stretchy pants :)
ReplyDeleteYay for new friends though!
Well...I guess this is a crossroads. Now you can "pass" for a normal member of our generation, such that the fertiles feel free to make normal fertile comments around you. Congrats! On the other hand...yes, I'd be annoyed too. So, you can choose to educate them on your unique perspective, and no doubt they would learn something; but then you'd be consciousness-raising, not just BEING, and it would be nice to just BE. No advice here, just nodding along - you're on the horns of a dilemma. (Well - if you can find some other post-IF new mothers, that might be one solution. I don't know of any who are exactly near you, though...)
ReplyDeleteYep, I'm learning how tough it can be to have fertile friends (new ones) as well! The things people say about pregnancy and babies when they have NO CLUE how hard it is to just get there...
ReplyDelete