Sometimes a way to come to terms with infertility and losses is to reflect that it's made you a more compassionate and understanding person - not perhaps in the throes of IVF or in the white hot grief of a loss, but afterwards, when everything has settled.
I suspect everyone who has been through IF knows someone who, privately, they think would rather gain from empathy gained in this way. Not from an actual loss or long term treatment or anything very bad. Just, maybe, a little delay before falling pregnant with #2 or #3, to make them realise it might not be as easy as just relaxing.
A pair of my friends, it turns out, are going through the horrible process that is repeat testing to check the viability of a pregnancy. Both of them were immensely kind to us during the dark days of IVF failures and loss. They've already been through one loss themselves.
It just makes me angry, godammit. There are plenty of other people out there in the world who weren't as nice as them to start off with. There are lots of couples who deserve a pregnancy less, who haven't tried as hard, who haven't had a loss. They don't need to go through a journey, to reflect and think "That was crap. But you know what, it did make me a better person in the end, and I'll be a better person as a result." Because they've always been lovely to people going through bad times, and don't need the wisdom that bad things sometimes bring.
Except, it doesn't work like that. There aren't a finite number of pregnancies or miscarriages or failed cycles in the world. You can't allocate good outcomes to people who are kind or have been through enough already. You can't share the minority's pain of long term treatment, multiple losses or invasive diagnostics amongst the "oh, gosh, I just need to look at my husband. Maybe you should try acupuncture?" brigade, or even the people who have had very little going wrong in any area of their life, to make it all even and fair.
I still wish you could, though.
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