So what to do, what to do? Tell, not tell? If your family is like my family, telling only a few people is NOT an option because everyone will find out anyway-and because those you didn't tell will probably be "hurt" that you didn't trust them enough to tell them personally, blah blah blah. Yeah. My mom's side, they're a tight knit Italian clan. That should explain the lack of boundaries and enmeshment. Fortunately, we don't have the same sort of intensity on my father's side or in Dan's family. Love my family, really do. BUT limit setting is a matter of survival and sanity.
Anyway. Last time we went through treatments, we did not tell our extended families about anything. I didn't want to be "gossiped" about, even if the general motivation was because they cared about us. I didn't want to feel different, like an outcast next to my fertile cousins. Whenever anyone in "the family" would ask us about having kids, I used to just say "we aren't ready yet...we're having too much fun right now". Fun. Yeah right! But I really wanted them to think that it was our choice.
Let me preface this next statement by saying that I love my mother. She's a good woman and a great mother. HOWEVER, one of her flaws is that she loves loves LOVES to gossip. About anyone and anything. Which is one of the reasons why I don't get involved in gossip either in my personal life or work life. People can say whatever they want to me and I will listen, but I am not going around spreading the stuff myself.
Anyway, we told our parents and siblings and our closest friends about the treatments. We let them know that they were amongst the "blessed few" (LOL) to know about this. I had thought that my mom's gossiping ways would not extend to her children, but I was wrong. Within a week, everyone in the family knew that we were going to a "fertility doctor". Let's just say, the family was not too stealth in trying to pump information out of us at holiday functions. Made Christmas a lot of fun that year-especially given the fact that I had a miscarriage about three days prior to Christmas Eve 2008.
Of course, I was very hurt that my mom couldn't keep this to herself. After all, I trusted her with this painful knowledge. I felt disrespected. I felt like she cheapened this experience by spreading it all over the place. But I also think that she might have done it because she was *so* worried about us, about me especially, about how I was holding up. I think that she needed to get a lot of it off her chest and needed her own platform from which to vent. So perhaps her intentions were not horrible and came from a place of worry and love. But it still hurt.
And I love my mom as much as before. But it did change our relationship a little bit. Basically, I don't confide in her about anything fertility related. After talking about it for awhile now, Dan and I have decided not to tell either set of parents or siblings (because really....are they going to be able to keep it from our parents) that we are doing treatments again. We also decided that we aren't going to tell them, God willing, that we are pregnant again until after the first trimester (that part coming from my mom telling everyone about our pregnancy with Alex at 6 weeks!). It kind of sucks that it has to be this way. But this is better than having to field invading questions that, really, no one has a right to ask in the first place.
Coming from a big, close- knit family is wonderful in so many ways. This, however, is not one of them ;P Unfortunately for my cousin, Sara, the family is sniffing around her because she is in her 30's, has been married for 2.5 years and has been known to have been "trying" since September 2010. Poor girl. I need to give her lessons in not giving out too much information!
First time in pigtails!
Monkey hat <3
Who needs daylight to ride?
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