Julep: touchy, touchy

I had my annual gyn appointment this morning. I've been seeing the same doctor since I was 18, and I like her a lot. But could we get some sensitivity training up in this joint?

The minute I walk in that place, I feel defensive and inadequate. Being in the waiting room this morning reminded me how incredibly difficult it was to go there over the past three years. As you might expect, there are a lot of pregnant women waiting around at the gyn's office ... and as someone who desperately wanted a baby and was having no success making one, it was hard to sit there in their midst. (I actually think they have a second waiting room for the emotionally fragile, but maybe they save it for miscarriages, because no one ever offered it to me. Was I supposed to ask?)

Now that I have the Bear, the waiting room isn't as painful. I do feel a little bit raw whenever someone tells me that she is expecting, but I'm pretty much used to that at this point, and I can hardly avoid it. I'll have a whole long lifetime of living with this twinge, so I might as well ignore it.

But it was a quick shake of salt in the wound when the nurse asked me, amid the long line of health questions, what form of contraception I was using. I said "none," and she said, "Are you trying to get pregnant?" I didn't know how to answer that. I would love to get pregnant, but after four years of not conceiving I don't much think it's likely. And while we aren't taking any efforts to prevent a pregnancy - why bother? - compared to what we were doing two years ago I would hardly say we're "trying" to get pregnant.

And you know, she's standing there looking at my chart. Does she not see the stuff about the hysterosalpingogram and the records request from the fertility doctor and whatever notes my gyn has made about this over the years? Read ahead, woman, that's all I'm saying. Instead I had to try to sum it all up in a sentence or two, which ended in, "... so we gave up and adopted." And I got a big smile, with "That's when it always happens!"

Really? Really, Nurse Betty? Can I get that in writing? Because you are about the 500th person to tell me that, and although I appreciate the sentiment, (1) you are full of shit, and even though you are standing there with my entire gynecological history at your fingertips, you obviously don't know any more about my fertility circumstances than the last person to say it, and (2) this knee-jerk response is a big part of why your waiting room gets my hackles up - because you think my motherhood doesn't count since I didn't go through labor and nausea and swollen ankles.

I'd say it's already happened, thank you. No, I didn't have the weight gain or the morning sickness. But I waited a lot longer than nine months for my child, and I can guaran-damn-tee you that I suffered for him just as much if not more than any of the women in your waiting room.

/OFF Julia Sugarbaker Rant/