Secrecy, or Lack Thereof

It's hard to keep an IVF pregnancy a secret, because it's hard to keep IVF a secret.

When you're undergoing IVF, or any other artificial-type baby-making process, it totally and utterly consumes you. The emotional and physical battles you're facing are tremendous. You eat, drink, sleep, and breathe conception. You feel like shit from the hormones, which leave you not only emotionally unstable (which was to be exptected), but also fatigued, achy, and generally run-down (which was less expected and even less well recieved). While prepping for IVF, you're giving yourself multiple injections a day, making you feel less like a person and more like a walking, talking pincushion. You're in the office constantly for vaginal ultrasounds and bloodwork. The procedure severely limits your activity (sexual or otherwise) for weeks on end. In other words, people want to know why you can't lift that gallon of milk.

So when anyone inquires about your general well-being during this time, it is the hardest thing in the world to slap a smile on your face and say, "oh, fine, how about you?" It's the elephant in the room. Given your emotional and physical fatigue, you're a lot more likely to just simply tell the truth. "Well, not so great. I'm undergoing IVF and I feel like my life is over."

Or, at least, it was like that for me.
I'm not a secretive person. I find that it's absolutey exhausting to keep a secret about myself, partially because I'm just too lazy to come up with a plausable lie, but mostly because I just don't care who knows about my problems. Despite the stigma that comes along with infertility (we just don't talk about it), I'm an open book. I'm tired, I'm emotionally charged, and if someone wants to know how I'm feeling, I'll tell them. It's just that simple.

The problem is that everyone who knows about your IVF also knows that you'll be getting news (good or bad) shortly thereafter. And anyone who knows about your IVF will also be expecting an answer at some point. "I'd rather not talk about it" is just not going to cut it.

So you have your family, a close circle of friends, and a less close circle of individuals who know about your IVF (the latter likely due to a slip of the tongue and a little gossip). Thus, they know that you know the outcome of this procedure in the next two weeks. Those with self-restraint won't ask, but most are dying to know. They mean well - they genuinely care about you and are hoping for the best - but their curiosity is there, nonetheless.

So although I'm only in my 4th week of pregnancy, more people know about it than you would expect. Again, this is okay, because I'm not a secretive person. But in the back of my mind, there is that horrible, terrible potential for having to "un-tell" all these people if something goes wrong.

If I could do it all over, would I keep the whole process of IVF a secret? Well, now I know it actually worked, I'd probably try.

But on the other hand...this is a wonderful, wonderful problem to have :-)