Babies in the waiting area...

[meadowlark3]

What do you think about babies in the waiting area of your clinic? A couple came to our clinic and brought their small toddler (perhaps 18 months) and the baby played and babbled in the main waiting area. It seemed to make lots of other patients quite uncomfortable.

It surprised me to see a small child running about and wondering what others think.

xx

Perhaps it is too much to ask when these are such personally upsetting matters in our lives.

An elderly relative had a DC at 16 (unplanned) but then had fertility problems, ttc and then many miscarriages and a stillbirth. She is late 80s and still clearly has a lot of pain, and it all deeply affected her relationship with her sister (who had 5 DC with a few problems along the way) until her sister's death. And indeed her relationship with her one DC. Heavy stuff.

Sometimes - controversial opinion here - I wish IVF had never been invented. When I was at primary school there were a great many only children. I had several aunts and uncles with no children. Now IVF seems to make winners and losers and whereas in the past you had no choice but to come to terms with your lot, now there's this carrot dangling on a stick and some people end up with heaps of carrots and others fruitlessly and heartbreakingly lunge after a single carrot for years.

Suspect those are minority views, even amongst people for whom IVF isn't an option or hasn't worked.

And this thread has already had enough controversial topics!

Nope differentnameforthis I stand by my pervious post. I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve tbh. You seem to have an agenda of "parents first" which is fine in pretty much any other part of this website. Here, less so.

'Waving right back at you Bip' . Thank you for posting on this forum, I always read your posts with interest. I am planning to pm you if that's o.k about a website I am currently working on about infertility and miscarriage/loss as a legacy to my late son.
Sometimes posts like this become very emotive well that's exactly what infertility and miscarriage is; a bubbling pot of messy emotions. LIsten carefully to others point of view, what are the emotions behind what someone is saying, is there something new to be learnt that we weren't originally aware of, most likely there will be some kind of pain be it anger, sadness or envy behind what someone says all lovely wonderful components of grief (she says sarcastically) and Infertility. A poster was correct in saying that no-one wants to be in either position. How one person will react to children in the waiting room will be different to the next person depending on a lot of variables for example it may affect someone differently according to how long they have been ttc, whether they have had losses, nature of fertility issue the number of variables is vast that's why people feel differently. As someone who has experienced secondary IF and also a late mc, I would be sensitive to others feelings and err on the side of caution. Talking about childcare issues and the stresses of motherhood etc does not seem appropriate in this forum and needs to be discussed elsewhere (except to say that attending a fertility clinic with children could be an issue as discussed previously - hence the need for crèche facilities or perhaps a need to run clinics separately for primary and secondary infertility) or some other consideration but something that supports both sets of women who are in a similar but disimilar place; both sets need some thought and consideration to be shown by the powers that be. Having had a second child now (but unable to have another) my feelings surrounding IF have not gone away and I can re-live them as if they were yesterday and as for my mc I have been profoundly affected by it and always will be and that's why I want to help others with running support groups/website etc.

P.s sorry for the ever so long post. Guess what? I feel passionately about this subject

I have secondary infertility, my daughter has special needs - the main problem being that she is legally blind. Even though she is 7 and at school I had to take her with me to my first appointment at the clinic as we have no family here, and her additional needs make it difficult to just leave her with a friend. I was painfully aware of how hard it may be for others there - having given birth very prematurely (25 weeks) I found any contact with pregnant women and new babies very painful and difficult for a long time afterwards. If I had another option I would not have taken her, but I had no choice besides not attending myself. I did however try and keep her quiet and entertained and sat as far as I could from the others there. I am not insensitive, probably if anything I am too sensitive to the needs of others.