To think that just because her baby was conceived through IVF does not make them more "precious" "loved" or more likely to be preyed on by sex offenders??

[BackToB4Beatrice]

I sometimes take DD out with a group of friends and friends of friends for a dog walk and some tea and cake. One woman (friend of friend) has an adopted teenage son, and then a daughter (2.5) through IVF.

There was about 12 toddlers out today, and a one point two of them were missing (for about 15 seconds, had snuck into a small wooded area). When they were found, said mum turned to me and said "the thing is Beatrice, people just don't understand how precious X is, we just love her so much, and she is so beautiful she is just the kind of child somebody would, you know, TAKE"

This is not the first type of comment like this. And I'm afraid to say I just snubbed her a bit, raised my eyebrows and said "really?".

I'm sure it was a bit rude of me but I just felt like telling her to fuck off. Every child is precious, and me and DP love DD so so much, despite being unplanned and probably being a bit young (not teenagers, I was 21 but we definately could of done with a few more years before she trundled along!) when she was born.

And don't even get me started on the "taken" thing! WTF?

Go on, I'm BU, aren't I? Guess I Gould cut her more slack?

Thank you Bestb411pm. I don't think I love my daughter than anyone else loves their child, but I never thought I would ever be in that position.

She shouldn't have said it, but I think going through infertility and ivf does put a different perspective on this.

Of course I love my DC to bits, would do anything for them etc etc but I do think that going through several years of infertility and IVF does make you (rightly) a bit more precious.

re: the comment about something taking - YANBU about that, I agree wtf because everyone thinks their toddler is beautiful (and all toddlers are beautiful esp DS2 )

re: the recreating parental status thing, no I don't get that at all - because once you hit say 45, regardless of how easy it was to conceive in say your 30s, it would be hard to recreate the parental status.

just to correct you wannabe "because you need to have come to terms with the fact you cannot have your own biological children.. "

That is only one small reason for waiting until you aren't ttc'ing. The main one is (in my mind) that you can't divide the energy that a newly adopted child needs with a newborn. It wouldn't be fair on them and thats what SS think about the needs of the child not you. Going on to have birth children after adoption is just fine and dandy by SS.

"re: the recreating parental status thing, no I don't get that at all - because once you hit say 45, regardless of how easy it was to conceive in say your 30s, it would be hard to recreate the parental status."

Completely valid point, although imho knowing exactly how horrible that situation is to live through, a fear/dread of been back in that situation is completely understandable. It's almost phobic, rightly or wrongly someone who has been in a plane crash would receive far more understanding of a fear of flying than someone who had the same fear but had never even stepped on a plane.

Why does everything need to be taken as a personal insult? This woman was talking about her own child. She was tryi to articulate her feelings, albeit badly. It's obvious where she was coming from. She didn't say other peolple's children weren't precious, she was speaking from her perspective.

It's like when people discuss feeding, weaning (anything really). If you say you do something a particular way, people get offended when it's different from them. Just by speaking about your own children, they see it as a reflection on theirs. Ridiculous.

"However, I can imagine that requiring IVF, and hence having found yourself on the wrong side of various statistics in order to be there (1 in 6 couples
has fertility problems, 1% of women has this problem, 5% of men have this problem, etc) , would make you a more nervous person afterwards, and far more
panicky about any kind of risk. It could make you less blasé about "everything being okay; it'll all be all right. That kind of thing only happens to other
people."

Which applies to anyone who has experienced any tragedy, actually." Having to have IVF is not a tragedy. Especially not when you have been able to have a baby at the end of it.

Yes having to go through infertility is difficult and can be heartbreaking. Yes being a statistic is horrible (been there, done that). But at the end of the day, if you are then able to achieve your desire for a baby shouldn't the idea be to then look to the future? not harp on about the "tragedy" of what you went through and reliving the pain and the suffering and the tears and the anguish and thinking about the what-ifs and how things would be different if the child died/was snatched etc etc it's as if you want to tempt fate. Fgs why not try and be happy and positive and look to the future, you know, the one with that baby in it you so desparately wanted.

Being that nurotic can't be good for anyone - certainly not the child.

Once the baby is born no parent is any different or any more deserving and no child is any more precious than any other.

I can quite understand the concept of it being doubly tragic if something does happen to a child that it took so long to conceive, e.g. when I was on the ttc boards there was another poster who had ttc for five years without success. She eventually managed to fall pg, had a text book pregnancy, and when she went into labour the chord got wrapped around the baby's neck and he was stillborn. Now, no stillbirth is any more tragic than any other, but I can certainly see that trying for such a long time and then losing the baby at that stage must be doubly heartbreaking for the parent going through it, knowing there might never be another chance of being a parent.

But while no tragedy has befallen the child there is no reason to be like that, none.

As for my comments re her adopted child, my comments were aimed at her, not at every adoptive parent. Of course parents love their adopted children equally to their biological ones. But it is naive to think that there aren't parents out there who feel differently. I certainly know people who were adopted who feel their parents treated their biological children differently to them. Equally there are people who feel differently about their individual biological children, and my comments that I felt sorry for the other child would have stood regardless of whether he was adopted or not. But in this instance he is adopted, and she is clearly nurotic about her biological child, which to me looks as if biology means more to her than adoption. It happens.

And I don't think it's a personal insult to anyone. I think she's just a loon and I pity her children - both of them.

Wannabe-suffering from grief,trauma and the deep anguish of years of infertility sadly doesn't just disappear into thin air the minute you conceive. For many women the scars will be there forever,for some they may disappear straight away for others it maybe years.We're all different with different experiences.The brain is a funny thing and you can't tell it what to do if we could we wouldn't have people suffering from depression or ptsd.I don't think you should be dictating how people should feel.

Also her adopted son is far older than her daughter.As the years go by I get less and less twitchy about my dc. It's completely normal to worry more about a 2 year old than a teenager on a day trip.

I completely agree MrsHeffley.

Totally, MrsHeffley.

My Mum reminded me of a situation she found herself in a few years back when I was a teenager.

She invited some mums round for coffee and they were chatting about their kids when Mum felt that she had to explain at length that her daughters were extra special and loved more because she had suffered a miscarriage.

She was completely unaware of the hurt she caused. one woman (had had two still births) left because she was so angry and my Mum felt very hurt because she had gone through many years of infertility. It was a hugely insensitive thing to say.

it is one thing to feel it but totally another to say it out loud to people whose circumstances you don't know. It is that self awareness and empathy that this woman (and the one in the OP) lack

YANBU at all.

Just how self absorbed is this woman to think that she is the only parent who would be equally horrifed and mortified if their child was taken?

People who have had difficulty conceiving simply do not love or want their children more, despite what they might like to think.

To be fair to them though, they probably have showed a lot of determination in going through a lot emotionally and financially in order to have children but really that's intrinsically selfish rather than altruistic in my view.

Everybody yes.
The woman described in the OP has no way of knowing what others have been through.
Sadly baby loss is very common, people lose children, people go through infertility without telling others.. so many things that make their children special.

To think it is absolutly reasonable. To articulate it, particularly in such a clumsy way is unreasonable and self absorbed.

Obviously she was BU but agree with other posters that any trauma can make you more worrisome. That doesn't equate to loving your child more or them being more precious. She was insensitive but perhaps trying to articulate some feeling - just very badly.

However I think it must be common - not long after DD started nursery I was asked if she was IVF - the timing of which was essentially trying to fine a reason for my pfb itis...

I know that DD will be my only (not through choice) and occasionally I get a bit precious and worry that if anything happens to her I won't be a mother and that she is supremely precious. I just don't say it to another human (other than here ) and I pull myself up on it pretty sharp.

Wow perriwinkle - some really nice valued judgement there.

"But in this instance he is adopted, and she is clearly nurotic about her biological child, which to me looks as if biology means more to her than adoption. It happens."

I didn't take your comments about adoptive parents personally just pointing out that it is fine to adopt before and after birth children - social services don;t generally have an issue with it as it rarely makes a difference to family who manage to get through the adoption process. (if it does make a difference to them then generally IME they drop out before being approved).

I also don't think you can tell from the OP how this woman feels about her son. She may have been every bit as precious about her son at the same age as, for different reasons he was equally precious. It may be that he was adopted older and she hadn't been through the very dependent baby/toddler stage with him.

I also think its hard to tell without having been there and heard exactly what she said and how she said it that she really meant that her child was more special than anyone elses.

Do you have issues with IVF Perriwinkle, because I find your post really quite nasty.

How is it "intrinsically selfish" to want a child when you are dealing with infertility, any more than someone who can conceive naturally? I'm sure people who have struggled to conceive don't "like to think" anything about how they feel about their children compared to other people. I for one couldn't give a toss.

WannaBe: I apologise unreservedly for any offence I caused you.

EDIT: having just spotted the wee humpy face ("about the "tragedy" ")a paragraph later, I do feel a need to clarify as well.

When I used the word "tragedy" in the line that offended you so, I wasn't referring to IVF use. I was thinking of Bad Things. Of which there are many. I was making the point that this woman has no monopoly on grief.

YABU. She was obviously panicked, and never said that she loved her daughter more than you loved yours. Your journey to becoming a parent, did not involve being told you are infertile, and screamed and crying at your body. I'm not saying she loves her daughter more than you, just that she's had a different journey.

Mishy1234 I have no issue at all with IVF. Why on earth would I? I have no personal experience of it whatsoever and how other people conceive their children is of no concern to me. I find your comment quite odd.

What I meant was that any decision to have a child is motivated by a person's inherently selfish desires to have what they want and is never altruistic (unless you're one of those people who has a child simply to provide stem cells for a sibling or something).

Very often though, I think people who go through lengthy infertility treatment are seen as some sort of saints by others simply because they have endured so much and it's almost as if they're not doing this for themselves and are such altruists.

Yes, they have probably been to hell and back emotionally - and financially in many cases too - and they can be admired for their fortitude and determination in striving to achieve what they want but the point I was making is that they are no different really from anyone else in that they do this for themselves to satisfy their selfish desires to have a child. Once they have a child, those people might also have a sense of entitlement in feeling that because they have strived so much harder to have that child, that child is somehow more "special" than a child conceived naturally and easily. "Miracles" is the word we always hear bandied around. It's a subjective thing.

In fact, to be totally objective about it, a child who took 10 years and maybe £100,000 to conceive is no more "special" in the eyes of its parents than a child who was conceived naturally - and who may even have been the result of an unplanned or initially unwanted pregnancy. But I guess I can understand what motivates these feelings.

So, on balance, the OP was not being unreasonable and possibly nor was the woman who thought her IVF child was special. Both children are equally special and the the problem would be if the IVF mum thought her child was somehow more special...

"Very often though, I think people who go through lengthy infertility treatment are seen as some sort of saints by others simply because they have endured so much and it's almost as if they're not doing this for themselves and are such altruists. "

But you could say that about ANY fight to do what the rest if the population can do easily. Would you call someone who had fought to walk "selfish"?

Having taken 10 years and 7 ivf attempts to finally conceive my DD, I was a bit shocked when my consultant said "this is what we call a very precious baby, so we want to make sure we do everything right with the pregnancy and birth" - made me wonder if they are a bit slapdash in their approach to everyone else! My DD is the most precious to me, but assume the same is true of most parents (unfortunately not all)

I do however, understand the panic and the fear that you have finally been too lucky to get pregnant (quickly forgetting the bad luck in years of infertility) and that someone will balance it out by taking it away from you. I was completely bonkers during my pregnancy, but luckily calmed down the second she was born.

I wonder if it was just that she had a fright, spoke unthinkingly in her distress and didnt really mean any comparison.

Incidentally, i do think the desire to put yourself and your partner through IVF etc is quite selfish, its about your desire to have a family and it just gets taken further than those who conceive naturally. I dont think that there is anything wrong with that though.

YANBU, she does sound slightly mad. Unfortunately I think infertility issues do have an effect on people's mental health, and they start losing empathy/perspective as a result of their problems. I try to remember this (not always successfully) when friends are dickish about unplanned pregnancy etc. It is quite unpleasant that they seem unable to realise that people dealing with an unplanned pregnancy will often also have gone through emotional turmoil as a result, and are thus very intolerant, but I find treating it as a mental problem they have rather than an actual opinion helps to feel less hurt by it.

Both of mine are unplanned and they are still way better than anyone else's kids of course. It would be lovely if people would be understanding of how difficult it is to mentally process and continue with an unplanned pregnancy and the effects that has on your life, as well as we understand how difficult infertility is, but it doesn't seem to be likely any time soon.

Good post Wibble- can see where you are coming from.

YABU. I am pregnant with an IVF baby, and my baby is more precious than all of yours because it cost me $60,000 whereas yours were all free