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

[Blinkyblink]

Not that I'm interested in tbh.
If someone is endeavouring to become a mother but then judging a mother for bringing her child to an appointment, then I think she needs to perhaps re evaluate what she's doing. Because she's not showing much empathy! I have no family support whatsoever, and you can't get a sitter for half an hour, so I have to take my children everywhere with me. Explain to me please what I should do in such a situation? Leave them on the street?

[Floggingmolly]

Get a sitter for a couple of hours... Would you seriously show up to a fertility clinic with a whole rake of kids and expect the other occupants of the waiting room to be the ones to show all the empathy that you seem to lack??
You sound totally obnoxious.

[GuinessPunch]

So someone going for fertility treatment should re evaluate if she should even be trying to be a mother if she finds it insensitive or upsetting to see a baby/toddler at the ivf clinic?

If I go again I will either make DH come with me (I had to manage work and appointments last time) or have a friend or family member look after my son. They can even wait close by.

I will not be taking my son with me. Seems like some of you get your precious babies and forget the heartache, anxiety and other feelings that comes with not only infertility but just going to appointments.

[GuinessPunch]

Blinky I think she's just being an arsehole. There are usually 1 or 2 on threads about infertility.

[Blinkyblink]

One child to a fertility treatment. Totally acceptable.

A sitter during the day? Ha, fat chance!

[eurochick]

I had ivf and saw plenty of babies in the waiting room. It didn't bother me. I assumed they were earlier successes for parents having another go. Many people don't have babysitters on tap (we certainly don't) so I understand why they were there.

I could have done without the three brats rampaging around the epu when I was miscarrying after ivf though.

[NerrSnerr]

This is a really tricky one, it can be impossible to get a sitter on a weekday, most people are at work/ college or doing their own things with their own kids and not everyone has family help. I can see how it would be difficult to see but not sure of the solution.

[Blondeshavemorefun]

surely you all have friends you can leave your child with while have a scan/appointment at ivf clinic

as i said im relieved my uk clinic said no kids to any appointments

[Blinkyblink]

Yes blondes but sometimes plans fall through. That's the reality of parenthood. You set something up, but then on the morning their child has a sickness bug. So plans fall though. It happens very frequently with young children... plans change

[NerrSnerr]

The vast majority of my friends all work, so no they wouldn't be able to babysit in the week. That is the norm where I live.

[MyHairNeedsASnip]

No friends or family that aren't working no. I remember what it was like going to the appointments, of course I do, I'm still in it now. If I get sent to certain rooms I get filled with dread, my heart rate goes through the roof on the morning of the appointment, but other people's children didn't bother me - I wanted and still want my child, not theirs. I am sorry if I've ever made someone feel like shit in a waiting room though.

[bananafish81]

When you're a mum, no childcare option at all for a half hour appointment, you do what you neee to do, and that might involve taking your child in with you. No other mother would judge you for that.

Im not a mother. That's the whole bloody point

I can't become a mother. So no, I don't understand the needs of childcare. Because I can't have a frigging baby

That's why I'm in the IVF clinic

[YoureMyWifeNowDave]

I had to take my DD to some of my scan appointments when we were trying for DC2. I tried very hard to schedule my appointments for a time when we had someone to babysit but it wasn't always possible due to DH's work commitments and a family member with a chronic illness. I even had an embryo transfer while DH sat in the car with DD as she was under the weather and we didn't want her to be in the waiting room (just a bad cold - we got the ok from the clinic before we turned up).

I had a lot of cycles before we conceived DS and had a lot of appointments so it was almost inevitable that we would run into the occasional childcare hiccup

[randomsabreuse]

I had to take my 6mo to a fertility clinic because my DH was having sperm banked before chemo. He wasn't fit to drive himself and we both had to sign a lot of forms.

Felt guilty but had no realistic alternative as we were spending the whole day in various bits of the hospital so dropping an ebf child elsewhere wasn't an option and frankly turning the whole experience into a family day out with grandparents was just not an option - had to do that with various ops...

[bananafish81]

Not that I'm interested in tbh.
If someone is endeavouring to become a mother but then judging a mother for bringing her child to an appointment, then I think she needs to perhaps re evaluate what she's doing. Because she's not showing much empathy! I have no family support whatsoever, and you can't get a sitter for half an hour, so I have to take my children everywhere with me. Explain to me please what I should do in such a situation? Leave them on the street?

Fine. You have to bring them. Doesn't mean I have to like it

I can still be heartbroken when someone brings a child into a waiting room

I can still feel devastated that the one place which is supposed to be for people who can't have children, is proving just how completely barren I am

Why would it give me hope? Someone else succeeding doesn't have any bearing on my outcome. I'm thrilled for them, but doesn't mean I have to be happy about having salt added to the wound

[Sparrowlegs248]

I went for my first fertility appointment and realised that I shared a,waiting room with those waiting forante natal appointments, pregnancy scans, miscarriage services, and others there for ultrasound scans not related to pregnancy. Theres a sign up to say if you find it upsetting, speak to reception and they'll seat you elsewhere. Not sure that's all that helpful or pleasant.

[Swissgemma]

I remember cycle 5 of Ivf a small boy dressed as Batman chatting to me - it was the His mum saw my eyes filling up and whisked him away

[Swissgemma]

Oooos posted to soon... I remember cycle 5 of Ivf a small boy dressed as Batman chatting to me - it was the nicest moment of my whole ivf journey, a conversation about whether Batman was better than Superman and how even though he was barns. He's still got the bus there. His mum saw my eyes filling up and whisked him away. I didn't get the chance to tell her that in the fog of drugs and pain of failed cycles that he'd reminded me what it was all for.

[eurochick]

All my friends work. If we were doing more ivf (we're not - we can't face I again so I remember well how hard it is) we'd be fine on a weekday when she is usually in childcare but stuck at the weekend when there would be no one to help.

The clinics are there to assist anyone trying to conceive, not just the childless.

[CheesyChristie]

I imagine if you're at a fertility clinic, even if you already have one child you know how hard it can be to see young children. I'm sure most people don't bring them out of choice or because they think it'll be a nice day out for the child. They do it because they have no choice. Getting a one off babysitter is pretty much impossible - I have had multiple smear tests and cancerous cells lasered off my cervix with my dc's present because I had no flipping choice.

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Yes plans change. Children get ill etc

So what would you do then. As I said my uk clinic allows no chikdren under any circumstances

There are notices on the wall stating this and in the paperwork you sign

I can't believe how many mum on here don't understand the pain of infertility yet ttc no 2+ as they have no 1

I'm lucky after 5 private ivf - 10yrs ttc and £27k spent I finally got preg and due next week

Hopefully all will go well. And I shall be a mummy. I won't be doing any more treatment tho have 3 frozen as feel lucky finally worked

But if I changed my mind - I wouldn't as had a hard pregnancy - but if for whatever reason I had to go back to the clinic - I wouldn't take my to be child - as know the pain it causes seeing children in such places

Yes hard seeing them in hospital when going for scans and sadly had friends lose their babies and come out into the waiting room with screaming crying children - but those are joint places for
Children and mothers to be

An infertility clinic should not allow children

[toffeepuddin]

In an ideal world we wouldn't be barren people wouldn't bring their kids to an infertility ward and have a infertility/pregnancy monitoring in the same waiting area but again it's just of the things,hospitals are strapped as it is.
Sending women who suffer miscarriages to recover on a labour ward ( as they did in a hospital last week) is truly horrific. It resulted in a woman taking a new born baby. Hospitals need to have more common sense at times

[user1476185294]

Are they allowed to take in an adopted child? If the kid has a t-shirt on saying 'don't feel bad, my mummy and daddy couldn't make one on their own either'? Why all this horror at parents bring in a child whilst trying for another? Just as these parents don't know what you are going through you don't know what they are going through either.

I don't have kids (yet) and waiting on a blood test for a health issue that will make it much harder to carry to term... but having other peoples children around isn't going to make it any different.

I get that it may be extremely upsetting for some (maybe most) and add in hormones flying and it can get very emotionally painful, but you'd basically have to have IVF clinics telling patients they can only have a try at another kid if they can get babysitters at the drop of a hat. Maybe these clinics would do better if they had multiple waiting rooms or even a playroom with a member of staff to actively babysit?

[Blinkyblink]

So in your clinicnjabe you ever seen children despite the signs? In that scenario, I couldn't attend that hospital.

[Blinkyblink]

Because that is the hospital's policy.

In a hospital where there is no such policy, I think it is acceptable to bring a child.