Our paths have always been parallel from first jobs, demanding bosses, blind dates, breakups, engagements, first homes, and marriages. Similar weaving paths have strengthened our decade-long friendship.
Then it came to the pivotal milestone of starting families, and suddenly we found ourselves on opposite sides of fertility.
You had your feet firmly planted on the side of IUIs, insurance coverage, false hope, Clomid, injections, praying for a miracle, and countless pregnancy tests. I was on the other side, where I had never seen a negative pregnancy test.
When I found out I was pregnant with our second. I cried. Honestly, I was in shock. The truth is, we weren’t trying. I peed on a stick while our 12-month-old pulled up on the side of the bathtub and gummily chewed on the new rubber ducky that she just got.
That night, I sobbed again for you. How was I going to tell you? I wept into my husband’s shoulder about how unfair it was.
Weeks later, when I did tell you, I tried to be sensitive. I Googled “What is the best way to tell a close friend you are pregnant when they are struggling with infertility?” There were conflicting responses about whether to tell you in person or send a text or email so you could react in private without censoring your feelings.
All I could think was, what if you read my text while doing your weekly shopping and ended up having a breakdown while paying for overpriced multi-colored carrots.
But I called. I called, and the first thing you said was, “You’re pregnant.” Because you knew, there has always been this unspoken connection between us. You congratulated me, but we quickly switched topics.
That night, I went back to my trusted yet questionably reliable friend, Google, and researched every infertility acronym there was. That is a total overstatement because the truth is, there is so much information about infertility that one could never research everything. And even if I spent hours or days researching, you and your husband practically have a “doctorate” in infertility.
But I wanted so badly to understand. I felt like if I could “speak your language,” I could in some very small way be a better friend to you. I am a “fixer” by nature, and I wanted to help you, heal you, and console you so that I could ease your pain.
Here is the truth. I will never understand!
There is no conceivable way for me ever to understand what it was like for you to host my baby shower and to love holding my girls when the thing you wanted the most in the world was such a struggle. I will never know, and I don’t pretend to relate or empathize with your experience.
You are on one side of fertility, and I am on the other.
Even now, when we are both in over our heads with sleepless nights, pumping horror stories, baby food making, toddler tantrums, and more, we entered this phase of mommyhood in very different ways, and that is okay. We are friends, no matter what side we are on.
