The world of infertility has its own language.
A language I have yet to become fluent in.
I should fess up to the fact that I have always done poorly with foreign languages. I was an excellent student who consistently pulled good grades in high school and college, but foreign language was where I always faltered. I could set the curve in O-Chem. and be at the head of my class in Creative Writing, but I could not for the life of me master other languages.
My high school Spanish teacher was a bit of a perve, and I’m pretty convinced that was the only reason I passed those two semesters. In College I took sign language (thinking that because it was visual, it would be easier to pick up – wrong) and my only saving grace there was that my professor was a fan of my facial expressions. She said (or signed) that I had it all in my face; I just had to learn how to get it into my hands.
I’m still not sure how I passed those three semesters. If I tried to sign today, I could muster up nothing more than a few signs to use with your toddler.
That would be it.
Unfortunately, the language of infertility is equally failing at permeating into my brain. I have a printout of terms that I keep by my bed so that when I am blog reading I can at least attempt to understand my infertility sisters.
And I still have to look at it at least once a night.
Let me give you an example of how a paragraph could theoretically look written by someone fluent in infertile:
I woke up in the morning to discover that my CM was EW. I took an OPK with my FMU and it did in fact confirm I was in O. I grabbed my DP and started the BD for the rest of the day. After the 2WW though, the HPT showed a BFN. AF appeared a few days later. Since we had been trying for 12 months to no avail, we officially fell into the diagnosis of IF and went in for testing. My doctor initially thought I could have PCOS, but that turned out not to be the case. Instead, DP’s S/A came back bad. We struggled with what to do at first, but eventually decided to pursue DI through IUI. After one CY and another 2WW, the HPT finally showed a BFP, and now I am PG!
You don’t have any idea what I just said, do you?
Good. Because neither do I.
Of course no one ever reverts to the infertile language that completely (that's a lie - I have totally seen profiles on fertility boards that look just like that), but it gives you an idea of what is out there.
And a small sampling of how much looking up I do on a day to day basis.
To some extent I do understand how easily you could become fluent. When I told someone recently about my plans to pursue IVF, they stopped me and asked what IVF was. I was floored. To me this is common knowledge. In my world, IVF is the easiest acronym there is.
But that is because I am living it. Those who have never been exposed to the land of infertility don’t have the same knowledge base that I do.
I’m more fluent than I thought!
I highly doubt I’ll revert to speaking in acronyms any time soon (at least not on a regular basis), but if I ever throw one out there that you guys don’t know please don’t hesitate to ask me what it means.
Because really? I might take some sort of sick pleasure out of knowing I typed a term with ease that is not readily known to all.
It might mean my brain isn’t as shut down to foreign languages as I once thought.
FTTA (fertile thoughts to all).
ADSPACE
