To feel slightly put out at the implication that IVF babies are more precious?

[jollyfrenchy]

As part of a discussion about choking and cutting grapes for small children, one lady said she also wouldn't be giving her daughter raw apple or carrot pieces until she was 5 years old for fear of choking. When she was then told she was being a bit overly paranoid. In response she agreed, but explained it by saying that it took 11 years of trying and 2 rounds of IVF to have her daughter, and she wasn't willing to take any risks at all.

Now, I do understand that sort of experience has an effect on you, but I slightly resent the implication that her child is somehow more precious than others. Kind of like, "Oh well you can afford to take risks, you've got three kids, and anyway, you if you lost one you could always have another. This is the only one I've got and will ever have so I need to look after her more."

Er, no every one of my children is as precious and important as yours, it's just that in life you have to take risks and eating apples is a risk I'm prepared for them to take.

Also surely it's not beneficial to your oh so precious child's well being to wrap them in cotton wool and never take ANY risk with them. In a similar way I know people who had a hard time having their baby or who adopted after years of heartache, who then go on to completely spoil the child (never say no, let them have their own way all the time etc) because they're so grateful to have them. Again, not doing the child any favours really.

Just read TWT and I'm really uhhming and aahing.

Reading through I've got the impression that people are conflating two different issues.
The first being are people who have had to wait to be a parent, to go through the the process of grieving for the child they always imagined having. Then when they finally get that child, it's a sense of gratefulness and I completely understand this.
The second issue is where it gets murkier.
This is the idea that because something was 'harder to come by' (for want of a better way of putting it) that it will somehow hurt more if you lost it. This is the issue I think is causing the most issues. I don't think you can compare grief. I don't think losing a child will hurt someone who has tried for a baby for years any more than it would hurt someone who had an 'accidental' baby.

Before people berate me I am fully aware that the vast majority of posters have not said this, however one or two have.
One poster I'm specifically thinking of who said that if people can't understand losing a child when when you can't have anymore is worse than if you can have more, then they are idiots.

I also understand LOGICALLY why people are saying the attitude to these 'more precious' babies is narcissistic, however I do not agree EMOTIONALLY

It's because logically it's not even about the baby, it's about the person, their grief, their journey.
These personal feelings get projected onto the child. I'm not saying that's wrong btw, I think it's completely natural and understandable.

I haven't been through it myself, but my sister tried for three years before conceiving.
I do think of her son as 'precious'.
He is not more important to be than my other sisters child, I think I'm just projecting onto him how happy I am for my sister. It's actually not about him at all.
On the flip side of this, I wasn't trying when I fell pregnant. Mine were 'accidents' and I wasn't sure if I wanted them (when I first found out). I look at them now, and I still feel guilty. In my second pregnancy DS was IUGR, and I remember feeling I was being punished for not being ecstatic when I found out.
My point is that every single mother suffers from some sort of 'mothers guilt' where we feel that something we are doing isn't good enough, and people deal with things in deifferent ways. Essentially, you can't project how you feel about your child onto someone else and assume they must feel different/exactly the same about theirs.
You also CANNOT compare grief, regardless of how many children you have or how you came about having them.
Once again I appreciate the vast majority did not do this.

I sincerely hope nobody has been offended, Im just (attempting to) separate the logic and the emotion

Timri - "This is the idea that because something was 'harder to come by' (for want of a better way of putting it) that it will somehow hurt more if you lost it. This is the issue I think is causing the most issues. I don't think you can compare grief. I don't think losing a child will hurt someone who has tried for a baby for years any more than it would hurt someone who had an 'accidental' baby."

I promise I'm not berating you, I'm musing on what you said and my take on this issue.

I think what's actually being said is not that a person who has tried for longer would hurt more, but perhaps a loss following a long period of trying would also bring back all of the pain of the trying as well.

That kind of pain doesn't go away. You learn to carry it, but when something else happens it weighs heavy on you along with the weight of the new pain.

When we lost our first DS it was terrible, and we were walking around in shock for months. You could see it on our faces, it was like we were trapped wearing a grief mask that someone described to us as looking 'stricken'.

And then eleven months later, when we lost our DD, we grieved for her and we grieved for DS all over again as though we had just lost him anew. Well, we were still grieving for him, but losing DD brought something new to our grief for DS as well. It all came back as though it were the first day he was gone again.

It's really hard to explain. We mourned both babies equally, as I imagine any parent would. But there was something else there too the second time, a sense of everything being all for nothing, that hadn't been there when we lost DS, something extra had been taken, and wasted, for no good reason.

We'd been through so much, it took so much more than we knew we had to brave a second pregnancy, and it was all taken away in seconds by a man in a lorry not paying attention to the road.

It's not so much the grief of losing a child that people are talking about, because I think we all agree that that's got to be the worst thing any parent could ever suffer.

It's the bearing of other issues alongside it that I think people are talking about here. A kind of "after all they've been through, this happens" kind of empathy.

It's really not about saying they would grieve more, but they might have an additional weight to carry and deal with along with that grief that seems too risky for them to contemplate and too terrible for other people who know what they've been through to not empathise with.

I think this is about anxiety, if you have had such a hard time having a baby that probably makes you more anxious with things like choking. I think she was possibly more just explaining her anxiety than implying anything else. People often get defensive around people who are more anxious parents than them which I can understand, some after all are being judgemental unfairly, but really there are just different ways of doing things for different people and beyond basic safety rules there are a million different options and shades of grey all dependent on the characteristics of the child and the individual parents.

Hygge I'm so sorry for your losses, it's something I can't even begin to understand.
That's why I hope my own musings don't cause offence, as people are having to deal with emotions I can't imagine.
I suppose the fact that people deal with emotions completely differently comes into play too. There's no right or wrong way to grieve.
For example after suffering a miscarriage person X might feel extremely cautious about trying again, scared of feeling that loss again, whereas person Y will try again immediately, in an attempt to maybe 'numb' the pain of it.
Or if somebody loses a child while having others, person X might become a lot more anxious about their remaining child/ren, while person Y might close off emotionally, sort of drowning in their grief. (That sounds quite insensitive but I hope you know what I mean).
The fact you said that you grieved 'differently' for your children I think shows that there are different factors involved. You obviously did not grieve 'more' for your second, but after you explaining it, it does make sense that you would be dealing with other emotions, on top of that heartbreak.
So in that respect, it does make sense that somebody losing a child they thought they would never have would not only deal with the loss, but also that it would bring back the memories of the heartbreak they felt when they thought they would never have it.
The 'it was all for nothing' feeling.
I still stand by my statement that it is wrong to 'project' that grief into somebody else and imagine that they will have it easier because they don't have the 'on top of that' emotions to deal with as well.
(Please know I'm not saying that you or anybody else has done this at all)
I'm just trying to put down my thoughts, and a lot of my thoughts are quite contradictory.
It's just such an emotive topic, so while I'm trying to look at it logically it really isn't possible to do so.
Again, I sincerely hope I haven't caused offence.

Timri you haven't caused any offence to me.

Nobody grieves in the same way. Even DH and I, grieving for the same two children, grieved in very different ways and still cope in different ways now.

You are right, there is no right or wrong way to grieve, not in the first early days or now, several years later.

I think you, and most of the people on this thread, have tried very hard to see things from the perspective of others and shown a lot of empathy.

Our DD was ivf number 3 and 7 horrible years of awful fertility treatment. When she was born quite a few people kept mentioning the Ivf and saying how she was so special and precious because of it. I just used to reply "all children are precious/special.' I found it quite odd. So when I conceived DS quite easily and naturally, does that mean he is less important? Strange.

Such a difficult topic to discuss. So sorry to hear people's stories of loss on here.

I agree with lots of people's points on this. Obviously all children are equally precious, but the experience of becoming a parent is the non equal factor.

When I lost my child at 3 days old, it was the most difficult thing ever. I talked on line to other mothers who had had still births. One lady had lost her ivf baby. I remember thinking how much harder that would be to deal with. Not because her baby was more special than mine, but because her journey to get there had been so much longer. Part of the mental strength to get through our lots was the hope that we might be parents again soon. Her hope for the future must have seemed bleaker and more difficult to achieve.

So I think I can understand where the ivf parents are coming from. It's not really about the child, but the journey and the emotional effect of conceiving after such a long wait.

hygge i couldnt imagine burying one child, let alone two - life is very unfair

no parents should ever have to buy their child but it happens :(

owlina same to you

sorry to you both

its weird to explain but maybe as ivf takes time and money and screws with your emotions due to drugs/injections etc then when it fails, you know there is no way you will ever get pregnant naturally and its even more heartbreaking ,plus as i said then paying back the money for something (wrong word i know) you dont have it your life

it just breaks my heart :(

i would happily remortgage my home and pay £30/50k if guaranteed a successful ivf, or clinic would keep doing treatment/cycles till successful

but sadly no such guarantee

and eventually you have to say right thats enough, i really cant afford any more treatment/go through the emotions of failure again

yes ttc naturally you get upset each time Af comes but you carry on and shag each other senseless and hope next month will be successful

but with ivf you get one shot, you see the cells multiply and tech is the start of a baby (tho some disagree and say its not) but you see that tiny fertlizied embryo get placed in you and you hope and wish soooooooooooooo much that it will work this time

and then it doesnt and you get your period and all your hopes and dreams of this baby ever happening are shattered once again

im not sure my words have come out right and sorry if offended anyone x

My sympathies to all who have shared losses here. I genuinely don't know how some of you have coped with what life has thrown at you.

I have found this thread very hard reading and it has made me sad. I honestly don't know where I stand on this issue. We conceived dd with ease naturally and like most parents, when she was born she was the light of our lives. When she was a toddler we tried for a sibling for her. We had no joy. After several years we tried many treatments (IUI, IVF etc) all unsuccessful. I will be honest and admit that I now feel it blighted my enjoyment of her early years as we were dealing with the emotional fall out of unsuccessful treatment and grinding infertility. 7 years later we had given up and totally out of the blue I got pregnant. We were thrilled but nervous and very sadly we lost that baby at 12 weeks. Devastation was the only word for it.

The result of all this experience is that we absolutely think that our dd is the most precious child - to us. We are only too aware of how close we came to not having a child at all. Looking back it is like a miracle that we conceived her at all given all that happened after.

I am acutely aware of the passing of time with her - we are so incredibly lucky to have her and to experience the joy of having a child. We are also aware that there will only be one experience of this for us, and by that I mean for all the 'little things' - 1 experience of school, santa, tooth fairy, childhood really. It is a very hard thing to put into words! Our experiences have most definitely sharpened our sense of these things by comparison to the 'before secondary infertility days' to 'after'.

we had a lot of 'you should count yourselves lucky to have any child' which I found ironic as if there was anything we REALLY did appreciate - that was it!

For those who are waiting and hoping - I wish you all the best and hope that it will work out for you.