People who “diagnose” themselves with fertility issues before they even start trying

@katrina2017 I think if you have obvious symptoms like absent periods or very long/irregular cycles, it’s probably fair enough if you suspect you might have some issues that need looking at, but I agree that a lot of people are just speaking from a place of general, baseless anxiety.
 
@madtilly62 The people i am referring to havent had issues with periods. I can understand the anxiety if women aren't having regular periods though. It would be relatively normal to worry if you are having one period every 3 or 4 months etc but that's why tests are important.
 
@manitouscott I think some people do this bc they are trying to set themselves up to not feel disappointed or to disappoint others when it doesn’t happen right away. I agree it can be annoying but I haven’t noticed it happening very often among my circles.
 
@manitouscott You're describing my cousin. Her forever-boyfriend who doesn't seem interested in marriage or children what-so-ever is hidden from her Facebook posts about it all too... it's such a strange thing to watch.
 
@manitouscott Nobody knows more about fertility than those of us who have fertility issues, I’m somewhere in the thirties for miscarriages, one six year old. Learnt I wasn’t ovulating and just got lucky with my son. Starting letrozol six years later to try for a baby before he’s too old.

I feel like ur friends with these “issues” are simply the type to create hurdles to leap. Issues to gain attention, that need treatment that get attention, and then overcoming the created o sticks that also gets attention. Unfortunately there are many people like this out there. Usually there “type” (I have types in my brain like a Rolodex) of people are harmless, and super irritating/annoying, and sometimes they’re heading toward Munchausen by proxy .. lol just an opinion. Some people can’t live without attention, like others can’t live without drama, some have issues with telling the truth, and some talk too much and write comments that are too long to afford them to say every thought crossing their mind (me, it’s ocd, I’m okay though). But yeah like I said, I have ocd, like clinically, like the tv show monk, like my house doesn’t look lived in, and I die to make it that way in an unrealistic urgency and feeling of impending doom to motivate my obsessions and compulsions.. weirdly enough it’s a disorder about dis order... and only somebody like me would figure out that the order, of the dis order is the main idea of the disorder.. haha anyways to get to my point, I have friends that say “it’s alright you don’t have to stay home and clean, come out and hang!” And my brain says what, don’t clean ? Are you some kind of effing terrorist.. and of course I stay home because I cannot skip my obsessions and rituals, unless other obsessions or rituals like up to the correct ridiculous unrealistic rule that allows change...

These people are the same who say “omg I was like so OCD yesterday and I cleaned my entire house”, once every couple weeks. And it’s like getting a wild hair to clean for one day when you don’t on a regular basis is called normal, talking about it like you’re bragging, is absolutely not ocd, it’s a wild hair and you feeling accomplished, and you’d definitely skip it if somebody asked you to hang out.
At the same time those are the people who say “omg come to my house, and organize” and I’m like I’ll throw all ur belongings away.. I think some people just need attention, and use inappropriate terms for their reality, and create issues to overcome so they seem, what is the word, better? Smarter? Better off? More successful? It seems as though humans have resorted to competing in all aspects... who has better advice, who’s more ocd, instead of who has ocd. I have worse ptsd than you, I mean it’s kind of ridiculous that life itself and over half of many peoples lives, events, comments, actions, and other verbs they do, are literally bullshit..... how run on sentence is that ?!
 
@manitouscott I get when someone is like “I don’t have periods. I don’t know how I’m gonna have a kid”.
Or “my period never stops, and they make me pass out. I think I could have endometriosis, and I’m scared what that means.
I have a friend who had bad eating disorders. She was afraid ruined her chances. But she got pregnant the first month she tried. But she attributed that to she got lucky that she didn’t mess her body up.
Not that she cured herself.

But the allergies is funny.
I get people being scared, but to totally think their advice surpasses others is different.
 
@manitouscott My wife (32) is convinced we're going to need IUI or IVF because we've been trying since January with no luck + she thinks she's getting too old. We had one chemical pregnancy in Feb, so I keep trying to assure her everything's fine, it's just going to take time. She's definitely putting an unnecessary stress on herself every month.
 
@tallyho My husband mentioned something about this too. He said "all our life, we were taught that it was THAT easy to get pregnant and that having sex just once without contraception could get you pregnant (still true), but now we find out that it is not so easy after all! I feel like I have been lied to my whole life."

I am not surprised if your SIL's friend also naively thought that she would get pregnant immediately after having unprotected sex, hence her claims that she had a "hard time", not knowing that the average woman probably takes around 6 months to conceive.
 
@manitouscott I was always worried I would have a hard time, I take after my aunt in all aspects health related and she struggled to conceive, so I figured I’d be similar? It sounds silly but that’s what I thought when I was younger and it stuck with me. Well it’s been over a year so I guess I was right? I wish I weren’t.
 
@manitouscott Exactly! I’ve been trying for almost a year and am 37 years old. At no point have I labeled myself “infertile”. My OBGYN sees no issues with my fertility and says I just need to get the timing right when I have sex. I even asked about my age, and she even said I’m still young! People shouldn’t label themselves infertile with no evidence of it.
 
@manitouscott I always thought i would be infertile or at least having a very hard time to conceive as i didn't get my period until i was 19. But i never mentioned that to anyone (except for my mom and a friend who has always been super vocal about never wanting kids) because i didn't want to be one of those 'woops im pregnant and i thought i couldnt' people. That wouldnt feel right for me if people around me happen to have lots of Trouble conceiving.
 
@steveng I always suspected something wasn't right with me - I've never felt broody in the way others describe it. Am I dead inside? I have short cycles and wasn't on birth control for very long so I thought I might have DOR. I've not been formally diagnosed but I am lower than I should be for my age. Like you, I never mentioned it to anyone. Despite my lack of broodiness, I just did IVF, waiting to see if it's worked.
 
@manitouscott When I started trying, I figured I might struggle because of my PCOS (then self-diagnosed because I had a shit doctor) and based on the fact that it took my mother a full year the first time. Even then, I thought maybe it would take 6 months, or at most a year like my mother. But those worries were kept to myself. And it was still nothing like actually going through infertility.
 
@manitouscott My friend did this. She was convinced that because it took 6 months to get pregnant with her first (she had her implanon removed right before she started trying so who even knows when her hormones regulated) that she had fertility problems. So after her first she and her husband didn't prevent and she got pregnant again really quickly. They were "surprised." Even then, they weren't preventing because they thought it was a fluke and she had a chemical pregnancy literally her first cycle after delivery of her second baby.

I was like, girl, maybe it's time to acknowledge that you might not actually be infertile.
 
@manitouscott CW: Mention of living child.

I don’t think having some anxiety around conceiving or possibly having fertility issues prior to TTC is uncommon. TBH, I was the last of the ladies I used to work with to start TTC and every single one of them said “it takes longer than you think it will!” One had to do IVF for both of her kids. Another had an early MC. So, I had a lot of trepidation about TTC before we started especially because I remember what my cycles were like pre-HBC. Long and irregular. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that long, irregular cycles could make trying to get pregnant challenging. The surprise and shock I had when we conceived my daughter who is now 2 relatively quickly was genuine. I honestly expected it to take a long time and for us to potentially have problems because of my long cycles. Of course, I have never claimed to be infertile and I’ve never offered TTC advice to anyone in person. Any way, the point I want to make is that, fears about infertility are real and valid and sometimes they take shape as convincing yourself that you’ll never get pregnant before you even start trying.
 
@manitouscott This is happening with a mom friend now. We both started trying for #2 at the same time (supposedly). I'm 31, was diagnosed with secondary infertility (PCOS that I did not have with my first), and cannot ovulate or have a period without meds. I've been tracking BBT, OPK, and progesterone since March 2020. My friend is 41, no diagnosis, no tracking, but claims they've been trying for over a year, so she MUST have the same thing. She and her husband still bedshare with their 3 year old, and have sex once a month (again, with no tracking) when they send their kid to the grandparents. Somehow that counts as "trying". She was greenlit to start IVF before me based on her age + saying she's been trying for a year. When they got the green light, they freaked out and decided they're going to wait another 6 months until she's 42.

I'm over here willing to do anything right now to make this happen. It's really hard to be supportive when I'm annoyed and seething underneath.
 

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