A Message for the Stepford Wives of My Life

Many of the wives of my husband's work colleagues are part of a "group" which is supposedly for support purposes. To be an active, viable member on the "A-List" of this so-called "support group" (and I use this term loosely), you must have the following Stepford Wife-esque characteristics:

• You must have children ("My husband and I had sex one time and suddenly we were pregnant with little Jenny!!")


• You must be a stay-at-home mom.


• You must have minimal or no career aspirations. As a woman in your late 20's/early 30's, you tell everyone that "career days" are over - now your focus is your children. Perhaps you'll do the world a favor and "volunteer" someday.


• You absolutely do not believe in day care of any kind as it is a destructive influence to children and research says as much!

So, this week I received a group e-mail from one of them (I guess someone forgot to remove my career-driven, infertile ass from the mailing list). Here's a summation:

"We have many babies on the way, and we want to start planning meal delivery to each of our new moms! Would you believe we have 3 babies due in October and 5 in November?! It's a baby boom! Please let me know when you'll be available to deliver meals to each of our new families!"

Today, this e-mail entered my mind, and I became enraged when I thought about how all these women care about is a traditional, perfect world in which fertility treatment is not necessary and if it were, it would be spoken about in hushed whispers. If a woman actually trusted these people enough to divulge that kind of information (which would be amazing in and of itself), she would be pitied and discussed behind her back.

So, I started fantasizing about a "Reply To All" response. It would go something like this:

"Dear Mary (and the rest of you fertile people),

Thank you so much for your e-mail, but I think you left me off your meal delivery list. I, too, will be in need of prepared meals as I undergo IVF over October/November. My doctor has told me to prepare for discomfort and bloating as my ovaries work over-time to produce massive numbers of follicles, and something tells me that the last thing I'm going to feel like doing is cooking for my man. Also, so you'll know my "timeline" (or "due date" in language you ladies comprehend), I expect the egg retrieval will be sometime in early November, and this will also be an uncomfortable time. I will also need meals post embryo transfer as I'm supposed to remain on my back for 48-72 hours or so. However, after all we're going through to get to that point, it's going to take a forklift to pull me out of bed as I'll be so worried about our embryo(s) detaching from my uterus as a result of me returning to work (I'm sure you would advise me I should quit working if I'm that serious about getting knocked up!).

Hopefully this timeline will give you all plenty of opportunities to bring meals to L. & I since this is after all, supposedly a "support" group. Many thanks in advance. Yours, L.L.

Perhaps this all sounds a little bitter, and maybe it is. It's not that I see anything wrong with staying at home with your child - hell, after everything we're doing to get to that point, I can actually see that happening in our family. It's just the fact that these women never stop to consider that there are other times in a woman's life when support is needed outside of childbirth, playdates and first birthday parties. This lack of comprehension is simply because infertility (and other issues that affect a lot of women) is so outside their realm of experience.

Needless to say, I have little to do with these women anymore. And after re-reading my post today, I think it's time for me to request that my name be removed from their mailing list!