The Holidays and "None of Your Damn Business"

I'm a member of an online forum for doulas.  Recently, a woman posted about a scenario she and her family are dealing with and wanted advice.

Here's the deal: she and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for two years now.  They've tried everything short of IVF, which they are against for personal and moral reasons.  In the past year, she has become pregnant twice, only to miscarry at 5 weeks and again at 11 weeks.  All of her siblings (I think she has three sisters) have kids, and they always have the whole extended family gathered on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A few weeks ago, during the family's Thanksgiving party, a number of older relatives asked her, "Now when are you two going to have a baby?"  It became so persistent that she had to excuse herself for the bulk of the afternoon.  None of the family knew she had been trying and having miscarriages.  It was so heart-breaking for her and her husband that they are considering not even joining the family this Christmas.

Now I can see a number of people thinking she's being overly-sensitive, or that we can't fault her family for upsetting her, as they didn't know about her difficulty getting and staying pregnant.  However, being the kind of person who believes that there's no right or wrong way to feel about infertility/pregnancy/pregnancy loss, I think this woman has every right to be emotionally drained from the constant reminder that she's the odd one out in the child department, and not by choice. Additionally, I can't fully excuse the family simply because they didn't know she was having trouble.

See, I'm a firm believer that the decision to have a baby is no one else's damn business.  Even if this particular woman hadn't been experiencing fertility problems, I would still find fault in the constant prying into her personal life.  They had no idea that their questioning would take such an emotional toll, true, but I don't even think we should even be asking these kinds of questions out of the blue like that.

I experience this kind of thing in my own life, though I wouldn't have the same emotional response, as I am neither having fertility problems nor am I trying to get pregnant.  It might well seem like a harmless question, "Are you planning on having a baby any time soon?"  But I just don't see it that way, and I think the knee-jerk assumption that a couple will be procreating after a few years of marriage is in and of itself problematic.

There is nothing more personal than the decision to bring a new life into the world, and you'd think the act by which pregnancy occurs would be personal enough to keep distant relatives from asking about it.  A mother or father wanting to know, in confidence, if you and your partner are planning on having a family of your own is one thing, but having an aunt or distant cousin who you only see once a year come up and ask whether or not you're having unprotected sex is a bit odd, don't you think?

And what are they expecting the answer to be?  "Oh yes, Grandma, we're planning on trying at the start of the new year."  That just seems weird to me.  You might as well be saying, "During my next cycle, I will be monitoring my cervical mucus and, when the time is right, I will be having sex with your grandson/nephew/cousin with the intention of soaking up his seed."  Not exactly the conversation you want to have over pecan pie.

If a couple wants to have a baby, it's really no one else's damn business until they choose to make it so.  The fact of the matter is, many couples experience difficulty conceiving, and many others miscarry early on.  Asking about if/when you'll be having a baby is liable to trigger difficult emotional responses, and let's face it, who really needs that during the holidays?  And if a couple doesn't ever want a kid {gasp!}, that's also no one's business.  You wouldn't ask parents why they chose to adopt, so why would you ask a woman why she's not pregnant?

I'm sure I'll hear much of it this year.  Charlie and I are "next in line" for pregnancy in his family (all the other married siblings and cousins have new babies), and everyone in my family is itching for a grandchild/great-grandchild.  I'm just thankful I'm not experiencing any sort of infertility or pregnancy issues that could make those questions loaded.  But that doesn't change the fact that my sex life is no one else's business, nor is my decision to get pregnant or remain childless.

It just seems like there's other things we could be talking about... Charlie and I both have had very big years career-wise, but I somehow doubt that will be what people want to hear about.