.... to be fed-up when people moan about not being about to conceive DC 2/3/4/5/6/whatever

[AuntieDoris]

... when I can't even manage to get pregnant with number 1?

I know it doesn't make any difference to me but it still unreasonably winds me up :(

Stat-wise, I believe six months is the approx average time it takes to conceive, and over a year is considered problematic. 'Most' people will conceive in two years. I can't recall the exact figures but it was something like 85% in a year and 90 or 95% in two years?

It may seem like I've made the above up, but I swear I read it all somewhere! :)

Obviously age is a factor too.

I think it's natural to panic quite early on, but those with an ounce of intelligence should realise you're not infertile after a mere three months trying (I have seen people - not here - try to claim that!).

Travel wouldn't have been any comfort to me, personally. Nor would any amount of lie-ins, even though I love my sleep!

I just remember looking around and seeing all these people who had been made by this most natural process and feeling an utter failure because I didn't seem able to do it for whatever reason. I became very bitter and angry. For me it was useful anger though - it stopped me heading straight to depression. So I tend to sympathise with anyone in a funk about it all.

yabu - i have 2DS but my new husband does not have any - it breaks my heart every month that I cannot give him the joy that I know, the problem is with him but I would do anything for him. We had self funded ICSI (because I have children) which failed, do you think that hurt any less because I have 2 children already?

I'm sorry that you are struggling to concieve and wish you all the luck in the world but we're all struggling - lets support each other not turn on each other x

Spamspamspam it may feel inappropriate to you. But I had a sister that was still born with the added trauma of my poor step mother not even knowing she was pregnant (went full term!!). They named the baby, but I can't bear saying it. It feels easier to refer to her as the baby. We all deal with grief differently.

"If your dealing with primary infertility your not really in a position to disuss secondary infertility"

And thinking about this further - what an awful, awful thing to say to someone.

Your childlessness means you can't understand my terrible pain of not having the multiple children I would like.

No, but I bet they'd swap places with you in a fucking heartbeat.

That wasn't a quote of my post but I guess I said something similar a few posts later. I think it just shows how everyone deals will it all so differently and how it's so personal.

For us, we deliberately waited until close to 40yrs before trying for our first so I guess I had already reconciled myself to it possibly/probably not happening. So in that sense, if it had not happened, I don't think I would have felt the extreme sadness so obvious on this thread (though who knows how I would have felt reaching 50 etc) However, once we had one, I was like a woman possessed trying for No2. I was utterly desperate to conceive and for me, it was because suddenly, after having 1, I realised the joy of parenthood. This thread clearly shows that so many woman come to that realisation even before their first so of course, their pain is immense. So I apologise if my post offended anyone.

I guess that maybe I shouldn't have posted on this thread at all having been fortunate enough not to suffer with infertility but wanted to share the story of losing my mother and MIL in quick succession and saying how that helps me empathise with the feeling that others don't know how lucky they are and getting annoyed at hearing people moan about GPs wanting too much access when my kids have no GPs etc. My pain, especially at my mother's death is so raw and bitter that it can sometimes cloud the fact that other people are also suffering and of course, you feel your own pain the strongest and the longest.
Good luck!

lovingthecoast - don't apologise for posting or for your feelings. Great post which should make people think. I'm really sorry for the pain you are feeling about your mother.

I think it is ridiculous to talk of people being willing to swap places with others, because we don't think their suffering is on a par with ours.
I bet if we did many of us would want to swap back again.
This is just more of the destructive talk this thread is full off - women in pain turning against women in pain. How surprising.

Thank you, Proudnscary.

I know it makes me irrational simply due to the fact that she was so traumatically snatched from us by a drunk driver. I have caught myself talking to a colleague who lost her mother to cancer and thinking that her pain must be less due to how her mother died which is completely ridiculous. Of course her pain is no less, her loss is still there but we (I) sometimes get too caught up in our own emotions to be able to offer appropriate empathy and sympathy.

I wish all the ladies on here struggling with infertility in whatever form, all the luck and best wishes in the world.

Dor :(

Given that we post on the same thread, and I already have a child, I don't know what to say.

I don't want to talk about being reasonable or being unreasonable. Your feelings are your feelings, there is no right or wrong. I have a friend who had stillborn twins who finds it difficult to remain friends with anyone once they get pregnant, even though she has a healthy happy son. On the other hand I have a close friend who had a stillborn son who is able to rejoice in other's pregnancies and children. I can understand and empathise with them both.

As I said, there is no right or wrong, there are only feelings. I hope that posting yours here has been helpful - some wise words have been said.

"women in pain turning against women in pain."

It isn't women in pain turning against women in pain.

It is women going through a particularly hellish sort of pain asking women who will never know that pain to cut them a break.

Demanding that women staring down the barrel of a childless life accept that their lives would be just as shit if they had the baby they longed for but couldn't have a second is ridiculous.

It's unfair. And taunting them that they can't know the pain of secondary infertility is cruel.

So sorry for your loss, loving :(

What an awful way to lose your mother. I'm sure it must make you feel that those of us who complain about our parents are being very shortsighted indeed.

Oh so it's ok to say your fed up of people moaning that they are suffering from secondary infertility problems but it's not ok for others to say for them it feels as painful the second time round?

What some posters were trying to put across is that those suffering from primary infertility don't know how much pain those suffering secondary infertility are in, the same as those who have never mc/ had a stillborn child don't know the pain that those who have are going through

Is a women who can't conceive in more pain than a women who has repeatedly mc even if she does allready have a child? Noone can answer that as they havent experienced both situations

I can't answer it but I wouldn't presume my pain is worse than anyone else's and I wouldn't expect them to feel their pain is worse than mine

Shecurofftheirtails - you are doing exactly what I said. How can you know that one person's life is "shitter" than another's? I do not see how you can know that the unhappiness borne by a woman who can never have children is of necessity worse than that of a woman with a child and (to use a recent example) stillborn twins, or whose 3rd child dies in childhood. I do believe it is unreasonable to claim you can KNOW which person is bearing the most grief. But you continue to say you can. It's like you want one grief to bow to another. People began this thread saying we can't write a hierarchy of grief, and yet 15 pages on that's still what is happening.

No I don't understand this either

Don't bring still-births into this, that's not the issue here.

The issue is simple:

Which is worse?

1 having no children and wanting children

2 have one or more children and wanting more

Now, given that 2 already has what 1 wants, I think it takes a real asshole to say to 1 that she must accept that they are both suffering the same pain.

Wome who are afraid they cannot ever have children are saying that it upsets them when they are told that things are just as bad for women with children who are afraid they can't have any more.

You are telling them that they are not allowed to feel that way. That they must accept that two obviously unequal situations are the same.

I just don't get what kind of dickhead you have to be to be a mother and tell a childless woman with infertility that your infertility is just as bad.

How can you possibly argue that the thing that makes your situations different - the very thing at issue - is irrelevant?

It takes a very special kind of self-obsession to insist that you have it worse when you already have what somebody else craves more than anything.

None of which is to say that secondary infertility is not a problem, or that women who suffer it shouldn't get all the sympathy, support and moaning time they need.

But do they really need to compete with childless women suffering infertility?

Do you know how upsetting it is to be talking of your experiance of years of ttc inbetween having children, of the mc you have had and the recent stillbirth you have suffered on a thread entitled " to just want to get pregnant and stay pregnant " ( obviously about reaccuring mc not primary infertility) to then see that one of the posters has started this thread less than an hour later about people moaning that they can't conceive anything but their first?

Even though the op has stated that this thread is not about that one who reads posters experiences of the loss of their 1st,2nd,3rd,4th child and straight away starts one like this?

Making other people feel that their situation or pain is not as valid as your own is insensitive what ever context it is in and others have the right to reply to that without being called dickheads

Well if you believe this thread was a response to the thread you are talking about, then fine.

But if it is a response to a real-life incident, as the OP says, then you can see that more than one woman who is not suffering from infertility has seen fit to opine on how secondary infertility is worse because women who can't have any children don't know what they're missing.

I don't think it is hard to see how maddening it must be to have your situation minimised in that way.

In the same way that someone who has not suffered a still-birth can't claim to fully understand that pain, a woman who has children can only imagine (or remember, from a place of knowing it all worked out) the pain of unchosen childlessness.

It is a nonsense to weigh the loss of babies up against one another. I would never, and have not, said that anyone should be doing that.

But I would be more than a little if someone who had suffered one mmc and had gone on to have a successful pregnancy insisted that her loss, her pain was the same as that of someone who had lost a baby at term. Or worse, claimed it was better to have a stillbirth, because at least you got the whole pregnancy.

The OP didn't suggest that multiple losses and stillbirth were what she was talking about. Like you say, that is a separate issue. If she had expressed (or anyone had) impatience with women who have children talking about the pain of multiple losses, it would be a different thread. A much shorter one.

There are people who think it should not be allowable to discuss the fact that primary infertility is its own special pain. That are insisting that we must all accept that the pain of infertility is the same, no matter what your history of having children.

I think that is a massive liberty.

THe OP said 'The pissed-off-ness stemmed from a comment a friend made to me in real life.' - and the title says 'people moan about not being able to conceive dc2 etc' so I don't think you can assume it stems from a remark made by somebody who isn't suffering from difficulties in conceiving. I think there has been a lot on this thread about the difficulties in comparing situations and women suffering primary infertility have talked about the factors that produces and women suffering secondary infertility have done the same. Can we not leave it at that - that both situations are awful? Once you start comparing where will you stop? Is the woman who has tried to conceive for 12 cycles but has no children, entitled to feel angry when a woman who has tried for 30 cycles but has one child , expresses her despair? Becuase it seems to me that is what some on this thread suggest and I just don't think that it's an arguement that's going anywhere.

I just don't get what kind of dickhead you have to be to be a mother and tell a childless woman with infertility that your infertility is just as bad.

You know what, I'm officially done.

And there I was thinking this thread had taken a nicer turn. Don't blame you Lissie.

I think everyone should shut up now.

I think your insistence that people not be allowed to discuss their feelings is incredibly arrogant.

What makes it your place to tell people that they must not compare obviously comparable situation?

Multiple women who have suffered primary infertilty and secondary have told us of how much worse the former was than the latter.

Who are you to deny those feelings? To deny people who have no children to be comforted that other women know how they feel?

Why must people with no children due to infertility buy into the obvious lie that having children is no better than not having them?

That if they had a child, their situation would be improved not a jot?

Because that is what you are demanding.

I don't think anyone feels that not being able to have children isn't a different sort of pain or that there pain is greater than someone who can't have children

I think that what this thread has done is make those suffering from secondary infertility believe they have to defend or validate their feelings just by the way the post is worded and the use of the word moaning.

There are women who now feel they maybe shouldn't post about how upset they feel about not being able to have more children because some posters will be thinking that they are moaning ungrateful dickheads who should just be grateful that they allready have children

In the same way as it has made others feel that people might be thinking the same if they talk about loosing a pregnancy that is not there first

I think all this thread has done is made women struggling to conceive in all different circumstances feel they have to valadate their pain somehow because there are people out there who seem to be dismissing those feelings. Women with primary infertility now upset because they feel people with secondary infertility believe they are in more pain, people with secondary infertility feeling that their pain is being dismissed or is somehow not as real because they allready have children

It is a shit upsetting thread for everyone

Tell you what though, it's made me think seriously about donating eggs. And I still haven't lost faith in most MNers.

That's fantastic projectbabyweight, good for you :)

"it's made me think seriously about donating eggs"