There are two separate, but equally valuable months devoted to raising awareness for separate, but awful, experiences.

A friend of mine recently posted a link to a site devoted to “October: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.” Her friend, who obviously meant no harm, and by all accounts is a lovely person replied “I think we just celebrated this in April.  Is it every month now, lol?”

YEEEOOOUUUUCH!

Just an example of people typing to their screens without thinking.

My reply, which was another result of reacting without totally thinking it through, was:

“While I’m glad that you haven’t had a reason to “celebrate” either month, I do think it’s important for you to know a couple of things. First, April is Infertility Awareness Month (April 15- awareness day.)  Infertility is when someone has the inability to conceive a child.  A lady, begging to become a mother, tries for a few months after “removing the goalie” and is upset when she fails to become pregnant.  Every month, she cries, but keeps moving on, as strong women do.  She knows women who sleep with random men after drinking too much at a bar continue to become pregnant.  She tries a little harder the next few months: tracks her ovulation dates, pounces on her mate, and hopes the timing worked.  With still no luck, she buys ovulation detectors, and pees on them each morning, finding the very best conditions before the pounce.  After a year, she finally goes to the doctor, where she takes a medication called Clomid, which forces her to ovulate, all but guaranteeing she’ll get pregnant.  When that still doesn’t work, she goes back, and tries a few more things, like Intra Uterine Insemination, hoping that this will be the last step.  And when it isn’t, she begs her husband to borrow everything they can against their home, so they can have enough money to afford the expensive In Vitro Insemination.  This is infertility.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month (more specifically- October 15^th is the day.)  Pregnancy loss and infant loss is when a baby has been conceived and the mother miscarries, has an ectopic pregnancy, blighted ovum, or for some other reason the pregnancy didn’t thrive, and the baby dies.  Or that a mother goes through labor, gives birth, and learns that her child is stillborn.  Or that she goes into labor early, too early, and her baby (in my case babies) aren’t mature enough to survive.  Or that a mother brings her child home, and goes into their room one day, to find her sweet child is no longer alive.  Or that for any other awful, horrifying, completely unfair reason, her child is taken from her too early.

I hope that you never have to suffer through either of these scenarios, and I hope that you are now able to differentiate between the two. In the future, it would be nice if you don’t include “lol” on topics related to infant loss or infertility.”

Yeah, oops. I am not perfect, and feel badly when I fly off of the handle.  I admit that I am passionate to a fault at times.  I did private message the lady, and apologize for the rudeness of my reply.  I only hope that people, including myself, can think before reacting and ask “Is this hurtful?”  and act accordingly.  Had I been in different shoes, I might not know the difference myself.  I hope my emotional story hasn’t depicted me as a bitter, angry, righteous pig, like my response above did.  My goal is always to help, to understand, and to support, because those are the things I truly appreciated while going through infertility and infant loss myself. Message of the day to myself: be kind to everyone.