A heavily pregnant friend recently wrote the following Facebook status:
Yep. This is someone who about to go through one of the most amazing and rewarding experiences that life on this planet offers, and this is how she chooses to express herself to the world at large – well, to her 490+ Facebook ‘friends’, but you get the idea. I’ve ranted with incredulity at the overuse of the the ‘FML’ tag/concept in the past, but this one really takes the cake – “Everything is so horrible, I have a partner, a healthy child, another one on the way, and my entire life is made so miserable by the miraculous life growing inside my belly, because I can’t lay comfortably in the bath tub, so I shall rail forth and say ‘Fuck My Life’ to all and sundry to make them feel sorry for me and offer me meaningless platitudes.”
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Are people so wrapped up in their own little lives and inside their own little heads that they
seriously don’t realize the impact that their words can have on the people around them? Do they truly not realize how many people on that 490+ list of friends, would give their left arm to be uncomfortable in the bathtub due to being heavily pregnant!?! I don’t even know this person terribly well, she lives over 1500kms from me and I see her barely a few times a year, but I do know at least five mutual friends on her friends list that are affected by infertility, who probably found that comment as immature and insensitive as I did. And, given that Infertility affects up to one in six couples in this country, I’m guessing that there was at least triple that again, who read that status update and had some sort of emotional reaction to it, ranging from incredulity and disbelief, to pain and disquiet.
It reminds me of an occasion when I was sitting around the waiting room at my gynaecologist’s rooms, waiting for an appointment – probably just another ultrasound to check on follicular development, there were lots of those. Anyway, the Dr had been called off to another part of the hospital to perform an emergency c-section, and so there was about six women waiting for him and he wasn’t even back in his rooms yet. The women grew bored pretty quickly of the trashy magazines and started nattering, as they do. One after another, they complained about their sore backs, their bloated bellies, their uncomfortable bladders, their swollen feet, their increasing weight and their despair at
missing coffee and wine. After about fifteen minutes of my purposefully staying out of this conversation, one of them eventually turned to me, smiled and said, ‘You’re obviously really early in and got all this to look forward to! How far along are you, dear?’
There was a brief look of horror from Suzie, the medical receptionist whom I had gotten to know quite well over the preceding months, as she contemplated how to rescue me, and it took me a moment to answer. I was mentally weighing up whether to lie and say ‘Oh, x number of weeks’, and let them continue in their collective dismay over stretch marks; or to fess up with the truth and hopefully make these women feel lucky that they don’t fit into
anything in their wardrobes. I opted for the later – ‘Actually, I’m not pregnant, I’m one of Glenn’s IVF patients. As it happens I am infertile, and have been undergoing assisted reproductive treatments for a bit over a year now.’ Well, you could have sliced the room with the shocked and slightly panicky looks that I got from these complaining expectant
mothers. Suddenly they didn’t want to complain over their collective misfortunes anymore. I got a few mumbled, ‘Oh’s and some ‘I’m so sorry’ type comments accompanied by some very sheepish looks from round the room… but no one had anything else to say, and they eventually turned back to their trashy magazines.
Sigh. Yes, I know my friend’s status update was an off hand comment designed to elicit ‘poor you’ type responses from her acquaintances – and yes, evidently it performed it’s designated task admirably, judging by the ensuing commentary. But, is it too much to ask that people think, just a little bit, about others before they post?
