The assvice just keeps on coming

Yesterday I went to the acupuncturists. Because it is a training clinic, each week, I am initially seen by a group of students, who ask me a number of questions about my general well-being, listen to my pulse and look at my tongue, before going off to report their findings to the Chinese Fertility Goddess herself. The CFG then comes in and repeats the whole process, before deciding on a course of treatment. She then supervises while the students insert the needles.

Yesterday, I was seen by a new group of students. How old was I, asked one of them. 'Thirty six,' I answered. 'Oh, that's no age at all,' he exclaimed, 'the newspapers are always full of stories about women having babies in their fifties: it's marvellous what doctors can do nowadays, isn't it?' 'I think you'll find those women conceived using donor eggs,' I explained, testily. 'Not necessarily,' he answered, 'I have a couple of women friends who both conceived naturally at the age of 44.'

How can this possibly be considered a helpful thing to say to somebody who has just undergone a cancelled cycle of IVF, and who is worried that her poor response could well be a sign of diminished ovarian reserve?

After the treatment, the same chap came in to remove the needles. 'Are you absolutely sure you want a baby?' he asked. 'Raising a child can be awfully hard work.'

Really? And there was I thinking that it was going to be a walk in the park! Does he not imagine that, after five years of trying to conceive, and the best part of three years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, I have never before stopped to question my motives for wanting to become a mother?

Why am I surrounded by people offering unsolicited assvice? Why does everyone I encounter seem to have an opinion on my infertility?

The student in question informed me that yesterday was his last day in the clinic for the time being, so hopefully our paths won't cross again - otherwise I would have requested that he had no further involvement in my treatment.

I do, however, have every confidence in the Chinese Fertility Goddess. Yesterday, she spent some time explaining how she plans to tailor my treatments to support me through my IVF cycle. She also told me that I should cut down on the amount of dairy products I consume, and eat more seeds and nuts - in particular walnuts.

Such is my faith in the CFG that I immediately went out and bought a large bag of walnuts, which I am chomping through as I type!

Assvice

Over the course of the past few days, it has been suggested to me that, if only I could 'just relax', I might still manage to conceive 'naturally'. I have been regaled with tales of a friend of a friend of my sister-in-law's who apparently did just that, and who then miraculously fell pregnant just before she was due to start her first cycle of IVF. I have been asked to consider the possibility that perhaps we are not meant to have children of our own and that, given the circumstances, we could always 'just adopt'.

All of the above is, of course, standard assvice. Anyone struggling with infertility will doubtless have heard similar things before from their own friends and family. But why is it considered helpful, or even acceptable, to say these things? Do these stock responses in fact say rather more about their embarrassment and discomfort, than about my infertility? It strikes me that there is at the moment no broader discourse on infertility and loss - or rather, that in the act of telling our stories and sharing our experiences, we are in the process of creating one here in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, however, the ripple effect seems slow to spread. Perhaps in time, people will begin to have greater understanding of the difficulties associated with infertility, and will stop and think before coming out with this crap.

Surprisingly enough, none of this came from my mother-in-law, who managed studiously to avoid the topic of our infertility - instead, she spent much of the weekend criticising Mr H and cooking up the type of highly-processed food that I never buy at home - over the course of the weekend, I've eaten more saturated fat and refined carbohydrates than ever I would in a month of Sundays.

I am accordingly both exasperated and bloated, but indescribably relieved to be back home!