Recently we completely randomly ran into old friends.  And when I say old friends, I should probably clarify what I mean.

Both Mr. MPB and I knew them from our early university days, over 15 years ago.  They are a couple who started dating around the same time Mr. MPB and I started dating.  But, the guys were never great friends and nor were us women.  We used to see them regularly when our large group of friends got together, but we would never see them independent of all the other friends.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we never even have knew each other’s phone numbers.  They are nice enough people, I have no idea why, but we just never became close friends.  Maybe acquaintance is a better word to describe what our relationship was.

Once we all finished university we parted ways.  But as we chatted the other day, we learned that we have all been living in the same city for about 10 years!  And, just like our friendship 15 years ago, we didn’t exchange phone numbers – they didn’t ask nor did we.  Acquaintances we shall remain.  Who knows, maybe we’ll randomly cross paths again.

But I will admit, that I did enjoy catching up with them.  I always find it interesting to hear what old friends/acquaintances are doing which doesn’t happen frequently since I’m not on Fa.cebook.

Yet, running into them was almost surreal for 3 reasons:

1. I don’t think they’ve aged a bit.  How is that possible?  I swear I’ve aged at least 20 years since we saw them last…  Maybe I just aged enough for all of us?
2. They have 3 kids.  Their eldest is almost 10 and their youngest is a few years old then Little MPB.  First, I cannot imagine having a 10 year old – 10 years ago we were onto our second University degrees while they had entered the world of being professionals. Our lifestyles would have been completely different and Mr. MPB and I were no-where near ready for kids! Also, 3 kids looked like a lot of work, but also a lot of fun!  And I couldn’t help but thin that we should have more kids, 1 was never the plan.  Seeing them with their kids playing together made my heart long for another, or maybe just for the babies we lost too early…
3. Why do people ask if we’ll have more kids?  I know, I get it, old friends and random strangers have absolutely no idea what we went through to have Little MPB, and we don’t always tell people and almost never tell people we see for the first time in 10 years (that would be nothing short of awkward).  But, why cannot fertile people, or maybe just all people, have more self-restraint and not ask others about their future fertility?  Maybe I’m over sensitive, but seriously!  It’s not so much that they asked, it’s that everyone asks me – those who don’t know me and those who do know me.  I hate saying nope, we’re one and done or no, we are just so thankful for our one or no, we fought long and hard for this one, and we are embracing our family of three or even we’d love to, but it’s not in the cards for us.  What I don’t understand is that there are so many things in society that polite people just don’t talk about – I don’t walk up to someone and ask them what their income is or if they have diabetes/heart disease.  So, why is it okay for people to go up to others and ask them about their reproductive system and how they intend to use it (or not)?  Somethings just are not meant to be public knowledge.  It’s National Infertility Awareness Week, and the theme this year is Listen Up!, and I’ll admit sometimes I just wish I could get fertile people to listen up and stop asking prying questions about other’s fertility.  And I get that those who don’t experience infertility, really don’t understand how frustrating these types of questions are – they don’t see the hurt behind our eyes as we try to brush off the reminder of what we cannot have and the reminder of the years of hurt we’ve endured.  But I hope the more people who share their infertility struggles, eventually more people will understand how frustrating and even hurtful these types of questions are.

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