Last night we had dinner with an old coworker (OC) of mine and his wife. I had recently reconnected with OC a little over a month ago at a happy hour. We have been saying for years that we should get the spouses together and we decided to finally make it happen.
I wish we would have done this a long time ago.....
Sometimes when you get couples together for the first (or even 10th time) there can be awkwardness for the spouses that didn't already know each other. Not all all the case for us - we all hit it off from the get go. OC and his wife are around our age, also have a couple of dogs, watch a ton of TV, and don't have any children. Similar to us, the reason that they don't have any children (yet) has not entirely been in their control.
We enjoyed mojitos and chatted about our love of binge watching TV shows via DVR, Netflix or Apple TV, our love/hate relationship with yardwork and disposal of last year's yard waste (joke to you OC if you are reading). All and all it was a great time.
After a few cocktails the mood got more serious and we started sharing our infertility journeys. While it is a difficult thing to share, it also feels so good to be able to have meaningful conversations with someone else who has been there. We are all lucky to have friends and family who are empathetic people and who have been a much needed ear or shoulder to cry on at times. This is nice, and we are thankful to have these people in our lives. As helpful as it has been to talk to these people, it is just not the same as talking to someone else who has also been on the journey.
While we have all suffered disappointments in our lives and we have all lost things, pets or people that are near and dear to us, unless you have gone through infertility you cannot know the pain that it often brings. You cannot know how it feels to see pregnant woman after pregnant woman and for whatever reason, you just cannot get pregnant......or stay pregnant. You cannot know the heartbreak of going through adoption in the hopes of having a child to call your own, and get denied for whatever arbitrary reason the agency chooses. You cannot know how much of a failure you feel like when you cannot even complete the basic biological function of reproduction.
It sucks. This is completely and understatement....but for lack of better words.....it sucks.
It is so healing to have a fellow infertility warrior to talk to, to ask questions of, to just know what you are going to.
OC and wife - we love you guys, we feel for you guys, and our hearts go out to you.
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