February 5th, 2010

An Infertile Raped My Ear

Posted in Attention Whores, Martyr Mommies, Whiney Breeders

Is there anyone more annoying than infertiles? Okay, screaming, misbehaving kids in every public place we go these days are certainly more annoying. But infertiles are high up on the list of annoying people. I’ve never known anyone who whined more than infertiles!

A couple of years ago someone pointed me to an infertile blogger for some reason. I subscribed to the RSS feed and occasionally read her posts. She sounded fairly intelligent (which is more than I can say about most infertile bloggers) but she is an eternal whiner. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t whine about! Everyone on the planet hurt her little feelings.

- She’d whine about HOW DARE her relatives or in-laws get pregnant, knowing she so desperately wanted a baby and couldn’t get pregnant. Didn’t they know it would upset her?!!?! How dare they talk about their pregnancies around her!
- She’d whine about how she and her husband both had all kinds of ugly genetic diseases in their families that, if they ever did manage to have a baby, zomg, it might not be perfectly healthy, and she wanted a perfectly healthy baby of her own DNA, damn it!!
- She’d whine about other infertiles who were “lapping” her (having their second kid in fewer years than she’d been trying).
- She’d whine that people who were pregnant would complain about pregnancy and how fucking inconsiderate were they were to not appreciate that they COULD have a baby.
- And of course she hated the childfree because how dare we take our fertility for granted! She felt that we should be the ones cursed with infertility. (Although it wouldn’t be a curse then, would it?)

Of course, I never told her that I believe if you can’t have biological kids naturally, that’s nature’s way of saying your crappy genes should not be reproduced. But I really, really wanted to! (And hey, go ahead and tell me that maybe childfree folks not wanting to reproduce is nature’s way of saying our genes should not be reproduced either. I don’t care. Even if my genes were the fittest they aren’t being reproduced, so it doesn’t matter either way. But if I really wanted to argue with you, I’d point out that making a conscious decision is not the same thing as nature handing you a physical condition trying to keep you out of the gene pool!)

One day last week I was in a waiting area and had the misfortune of being seated next to some dumb cow (I know that’s harsh, but you’ll agree with me in a minute) who wanted to spend her half-hour wait whining about her infertility problems. To strangers. She struck up a conversation with the woman next to her who she clearly had never met before and who was not a fellow infertile. While the victim tried to appear sympathetic, I got the impression she really didn’t care. During the infertile monologue, I couldn’t help but think of comedian Ron White who once said, “This guy told me his entire life story against my will. This guy raped my ear. This guy forcefully shoved unwanted information into my earhole.” That’s how this infertile made me feel!

I have no problems getting pregnant – I can do that any day of the week! I just can’t stay pregnant! You just don’t know how difficult it is, having miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage! I’ve had like twelve already. The doctors say (something about being unable to fix her crappy uterus) but I’ll just keep trying and see if maybe one will stick!

She wouldn’t shut up! Then she started going into the gory details, so I whipped out my headphones to drown out her mooing! All I could think was that she must thrive on martyrdom and sympathy or why else would she put herself through this? And why would she have to tell random strangers about it?! From what I heard before I drowned it out, she won’t be able to carry a baby, but she insists on repeatedly “trying” to see if maybe this time the doctors are wrong, and who would really do that to themselves? Really? That’s like stabbing yourself every day to see if maybe this time it won’t bleed. What a fool this woman is! Even IF I could understand the desperate need to have a kid (I’m trying) if the doctors have told you that your uterus won’t do it, TRY SOMETHING ELSE!

Hell, where is the pro-life movement now? This woman is intentionally creating people that she knows WILL BE ABORTED and they don’t have a problem with it? Or do they just think it’s GOD’S WILL that she continue to do this so she’ll have a sob story to tell everyone and an excuse to not go out and get a job like other grown-ups?! “Oh, I can’t work. I might miscarry!” Bitch, you’re gonna miscarry anyway! The doctor’s told you so!

Then yesterday I was reading an amusing (but somewhat horrifying) article online about how miserable pregnancy is, and some infertile had to throw in her sarcastic whine in the comments section. Something along the lines of, “Well, don’t ever be infertile and then whine when you’re pregnant or how the baby keeps you up at night, as everyone will throw in your face that ‘you wanted this!!’”

!!!!!!!

Even when they get pregnant and have a baby, they are STILL whining!!! And they are whining about other people getting fed up with their incessant whining!!

Listen, if you so desperately want a baby that you go to any length to have one, you don’t really have an excuse to later complain if it’s not all worth it! You just don’t! If it sucks that bad, WHY did you go through all that? Why didn’t you just adopt to avoid pregnancy and that first year when the kid won’t sleep through the night? It’s bad enough when non-infertiles whine about their pregnancies and their kids, but when infertiles do it, it just seems that much more ridiculous. Don’t go through all that if you won’t enjoy it!

Honestly, is there anything they won’t whine about?

The moral of this story is, clearly, avoid infertile blogs but more importantly, carry headphones with you wherever you go so you can not be ear raped by infertiles. Just a tip.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Registered uses may rate posts

Previous Rant: « Happy Roe vs. Wade day!

Next Rant: Parents Are Not Responsible Part II »

1. Comment by Selenite — February 5, 2010 at 11:07 pm

   The funny thing is that some of us cfers are infertile. They just came to terms with it and decided that their lives can be rewarding just the same.

2. Comment by Lauren — February 6, 2010 at 1:40 pm

   I thought that Skepchick blog entry was great. Those women are brutally honest that pregnancy is not a bag of awesome and that children can sometimes be little bastards. Not all of them have kids, though, and I’m pretty sure some are basically CFers. They just give you the facts, ma’am, which might turn people off from baby-having if they actually knew that the fetus will kick you in the cervix. Among all the other horrors.
   I mean, yes, they wanted the babies. But I don’t think that precludes them from being honest about the reality of it. Pregnancy is a bitch, and women should be allowed to be honest -as long as it’s not unsolicited. I don’t want to hear about it in the supermarket, but if my friend wanted to bitch, I think I could be sympathetic. Not to strangers, though. I’m just not that nice.
   Luckily, I’ve never been ear-raped by any one fertile or in- and have managed to avoid the baby talk for the most part. Alcohol is handy for that, I find.

3. Comment by Amy — February 6, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   It’s always infuriated me that one of the reasons the anti-choice crowd gives for their position is that abortion goes against nature. BUT, they don’t have a problem pumping the infertile up with Clomid and using test tubes, petri dishes, cryogenics and turkey basters to force pregnancy. And let’s not forget multiple births, which these procedures can cause. Since when is it natural for human females to deliver a litter? Don’t even get me started on the financial aspects of the infertility industry. At least for now, health insurance companies generally have a cap of $10K on infertility treatments

4. Comment by Christine — February 7, 2010 at 1:24 pm

   I thought this post was absolutely hysterical. The tone was just perfect. I’ve read some infertile blogs also, and definitely agree with you about the above average whining. I also like that you have an “attention whores” category.

5. Comment by frances — February 7, 2010 at 4:09 pm

   I’m an atheist, so the whole god’s will argument never held any credence to me, but to those women who aren’t, wouldn’t it make sense that if they are infertile, that maybe it is god’s will?

   Shouldn’t all these insane attempts to play god and create life when mother nature has done everything to prevent it be considered against god’s will?

6. Comment by Phoena — February 7, 2010 at 4:14 pm

   I have to agree. If abortion is against “God’s Will”, then fertility treatments are doubly so!

7. Comment by Sthis — February 9, 2010 at 2:44 pm

   This post totally struck a nerve with me as I was dealing with someone like this not very long ago.

   I was recently diagnosed with endometriosis and may be facing impaired fertility. My husband and I are a family of two and honestly have no idea if that number will ever change. But still being told that I may not be physically able to have children rocked me. Then when I was confiding in a “friend” she said “whats the big deal, I thought you didn’t want kids anyway”.

   I was/am struggling with coming to terms that my body isn’t functioning right. But mostly I’m having trouble because what I thought was my CHOICE (not having children) may not have been a choice after all. It sucks. But its yet again another place where those of us who choose to not have children get shuffled aside for those who worship at the alter of parenthood.

8. Comment by Peggy — February 9, 2010 at 3:17 pm

   I’m so glad to find some people who agree with me that fertility treatments are indeed “playing God” and going against nature. I just completed a master’s course in bioethics and I was the only person in my class of about 25 who argued that fertility treatments are unethical. I did a paper on the subject — during my research I read some articles about women who needed to “selectively abort” some of the multiple fertilized eggs in order to improve their chances of delivering one or two healthy babies that wouldn’t have to spend their first year of life in the neonatal intensive care unit (something OctoMom should have done). These women didn’t want to do this because they felt that would be like playing God. Give me a break! What do they think they’re doing in the first place by having multiple embryos artificially implanted in their uterus? And the thing that really kills me is that insurance companies are paying for this selective procedure–and paying for all those triplets, quadruplets, etc. that wind up in NICU. Makes me sick!

9. Comment by Maria — February 15, 2010 at 2:08 am

   Infertiles who keep “trying” are, in my opinion, the most self-centered egomaniacs on the planet and they have no souls. When I think of all those kids in foster care who come from shitty families through no fault of their own, it’s only my knowledge that I’ll render them even worse off that keeps me from adopting one of them. But infertile wannabreeders, they WANT a kid, but those needy kids? Oh, they’re not good enough! Fuckers.

10. Comment by Infertile Dan — February 15, 2010 at 8:07 pm

    Wow – for a blog called “Happily Childfree” neither you nor your commenters seem too happy! I found this post generally hateful, devoid of real humor, and symptomatic of extreme, uncontrolled rage. Hey look, don’t go to infertile blogs – it’s your prerogative. But do you really think the writing here is any better? Is your blog full of rants at every sort of parent under the sun any less whiney and assaultive than the so-called whining of “infertiles”? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m less unsympathetic to your cause than you might guess (I love STFUParents, for instance), but this place is pretty seriously dismal. He who throws stones ought not live in a big old glass house.

11. Comment by Infertile-But-in-Denial Rageaholic Dan — February 15, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    Hmm – I appreciate your need to change my handle to belittle my comment (based on your incorrect assumption about my fertility), but aren’t you kind of violating your own policy?

    “For the love of all that is holy, do not identify yourself as a parent in your user name. If you have no identity outside of your kids, you’re the exact kind of person we don’t want posting here.”

    I identified myself neither as a parent, nor as a non-parent. But I imagine it makes you feel better to attach a word you clearly consider an epithet to my name, seeing as to you, I have no identity outside of my capability or lack thereof to spawn children. I await with baited breath the surely cleverer witticism you’ll prefix my name with this time. [last comment ever here, you have my word]

12. Comment by holly — February 17, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    OMG, don’t even get me started on infertile women. They have to be the most aggressively self-pitying group on the planet. Absolutely insufferable. The only thing worse is the finally-fucking-conceived woman – now THERE’S someone to avoid at all costs.

    Loved this post. Dead on and hilarious.

13. Comment by Sil — February 27, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    Could you imagine if people with MS, breast cancer, autism, etc. whined as much as this infertile person did? Perhaps she should learn a lesson of humility and acceptance from those who have it way harder than her. And on insurance– it baffles me that insurance companies will pay for the fertilization work, but won’t cover hearing aids.

14. Comment by ehartsay — March 20, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    “And of course she hated the childfree because how dare we take our fertility for granted! She felt that we should be the ones cursed with infertility.”

    I want to share in reading the crazy and see what she has to say about the CF. Could you give me a link to this?

15. Comment by elizabeth — April 21, 2010 at 5:08 pm

    Although I usually have more sympathy for women who are infertile (imagine wanting something so bad and just being dealt a crappy hand), it’s true they can be whiners! I knew a girl who had horrible health problems but was trying to delay the treatment that would make her infertile, her medications made her overweight and tired, she came from a crazy family, and she really wanted to get married but hadn’t had a boyfriend in years. All this really sucks, but she literally did nothing but complain! Any conversation topic could be turned back to how crappy her life was.

16. Comment by Demonhype — May 12, 2010 at 5:06 am

    You think infertiles constantly trying to defy nature are irritating, just listen to this one!

    When I was growing up, there was this girl in my grade at my school who was deformed. Serious birth defect, and everyone knew she wasn’t going to grow up. She used to waddle painfully rather than walk and she had this loud, wet-sounding way of breathing that did not sound like it was pleasant for her.

    The thing that always ticked me off was that she was her mother’s second attempt–years prior, she’d had her first, who turned out the exact same way, and it was explained to her that she had some kind of serious reproductive issue and she had an almost-nil chance of having a non-deformed kid who would grow to adulthood. It was horrible to think she’d inflicted this horror upon this child because she absolutely had to have a child made out of her own DNA, not some other person’s kid–and that this was the second time she’d done it! (It was never explained to me whether she knew about her condition prior to the first.)

    She volunteered at the school, mostly in the library, because she needed to stay close to her daughter, so we saw a lot of her. I never liked her–there was this strange uncomfortable feeling we all tended to get around her–and I never realized why until I got a little older. It was because she seemed to despise all of us kids. There was real unbridled hatred in the way she looked at us when we’d take our books up to her, and I couldn’t understand as a child why she would hate us all so fiercely.

    To tell the truth, I still don’t. I realize the trauma of what she was going through, but I still can’t fathom holding that much hatred for someone else’s kids just because you can’t have normal kids–I didn’t choose to be born normal any more than her kid chose to be born deformed. In fact, it might be argued that she chose it for her kid, given that she knew of her infinitesimal chances of successful reproduction and went ahead anyway. I felt sorry for her daughter, but not her. I might have if this had come as a genuine surprise to her or if she had handled herself with some kind of grace and dignity, but watching her blame us with her eyes as if we were somehow personally responsible for her situation just pissed me off.

    And I still find her disgusting for putting her kid through such a trauma just because she had to have “her own” kids–keep on trying because maybe this time the doctors are wrong and such, and knowing that, being Catholic, if the kid starts developing a deformity you aren’t about to get an abortion.

    Why this insistence on “I have to have a baby made of ME!” There are other things to pass down or inherit–like an emotional or intellectual inheritance that you could give to an adopted kid. That’s what I told Momma when she said “well, go ahead and be child-free, but you’ll regret it and you’ll be lonely and you’ll wish you’d had kids when you’re my age!”–I said “if I get that desperate for kids when I’m older, I’ll adopt or foster”.

    Which led to another thread of conversation in which she tried to convince me that “other people’s kids” are filled with “teh drugs” and “teh mental disorders” and are defective and you can only trust kids that pop out of your own personal vagina. Which also pissed me off and was totally hypocritical of her, given that her own mother abandoned her at an early age and also, she has constantly told us kids our whole lives about how she never wanted to have kids and she only had us to please Dad. But that’s another conversation for another topic, isn’t it?

    Besides which, she’s laid off a bit in her old age. In fact, has come to compliment me on my smartness for not wanting to marry or have kids, mostly on the tail of my siblings’ various relationship problems (for example, my brother is dating a girl who’s greatest ambition is to be a mommie, but also has endometriosis and smokes like a chimney).

17. Comment by Samantha — June 6, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    “That’s like stabbing yourself every day to see if maybe this time it won’t bleed.”

    Love it!!!

Leave a comment