The reason “Just relax…” pushed so many buttons for me when I was TTC was for several reasons, but I’ll just cite the two main ones:
Reason 1 was that I felt it implied that I had been uptight about conceiving from Day One, and not just uptight but so uptight that it had affected my fertility.
Reason 2 was that we heard it over and over, from everyone. You smile and nod the first fifty times. After that, it starts to eat at you and you begin to read implications that the speaker may not have intended (see: Reason 1).
I felt a lot of anger about being told to relax because we were possibly the least obsessive attemptive-parents-to-be for a very, very long time. Even before we started I was aware that it’s not unusual for conception to take 12 months, so I didn’t consult a doctor in that time. We didn’t tell anyone we were trying for a baby, we didn’t make a big deal out of tracking cycles or trying to get our timing right, figuring that in the course of a normal, healthy relationship the timing should work out at least most months, if not all. After more than a year had elapsed, I went to the doctor but I was still fairly unconcerned about it all. I was pretty sure I had PCOS, and I was pretty sure it was mild. Having known women with severe PCOS who were able to conceive with medication, I figured it wouldn’t be long until we were in business.
After 18 months of doctors doing a lot of tests on me and nothing happening, we finally discovered that my husband was severely infertile, and that we wouldn’t have been able to conceive because of that, even if I didn’t have PCOS. We then had to wait a few months to test him again and see if that made a difference, and then wait a few more months to see a specialist, and then test again, and then wait again, and then more tests, and each time the news got a little worse… and that was the point where our anxiety levels were ramping up and up and up. That was also the point where our little secret hope to have a baby had become common knowledge with people and we were getting the “Just relax…” advice from everyone. We’d done relaxed. It hadn’t worked. Doctors were telling us there were reasons why it hadn’t worked and would never work, and they had nothing to do with our stress levels. We weren’t looking for advice from people, we were simply answering the question “How’s the TTC going?” when friends or family asked (it wasn’t something we went into detail about with strangers). There’s something so frustrating about giving people a run-down of the latest medical issues that have come to light and then being told “Just relax…”. Were they not listening? Do they seriously think that my PCOS and his count/mot/morph issues are all because we’re not relaxed enough? Do they honestly believe that we started out this stressed and maintained it for all those years?
I’ve known any number of people who’ve sought medical intervention because they haven’t conceived in the first couple of months (in a couple of cases, the first month) trying, or have started planning for IVF before they even clock over the first year, and some of them are good examples of people who just need to relax and give it some time. We weren’t like that. In fact, if we’d been less relaxed about it in the beginning, it wouldn’t have played out for so many years. We’d have pushed for more tests sooner and everything would have come to light in months rather than years. Our relaxed and laid back attitudes to TTC had cost us several years when a slightly more worried outlook might have sped things along.
As it turns out, it was probably a good thing. The stress of TTC lead to my husband flipping out, having a breakdown and undergoing a complete change of character. He ended our marriage and is now involved with a woman who doesn’t want children, and I discovered that my PCOS is a non-issue when I ironically ended up falling pregnant with my beautiful daughter while using contraceptives. Perhaps people were right… perhaps I relaxed about TTC and it happened. I can’t say that I felt terribly relaxed though, going through the whole separation/divorce/moving house/dividing our stuff/struggling to support myself/dating stage. I think what worked was being with a partner who wasn’t infertile. (Note: I do not recommend suggesting this as a fix to other couples!)
So while I appreciate from his elaboration that Wallenstein was commenting about a specific couple of his acquaintance who could benefit from chilling out a bit, the first comment he (or she… sorry if I’m mistaken) made
just hit a nerve that is still pretty raw, even though my membership card to the Infertility Set has been revoked.
