In my last post I wrote about how two of my sisters are currently pregnant and how I suspect the third is as well. As I've processed all of this I've tried to see things from their perspective.
The sister with the baby due in February found out in September that her job would likely be eliminated and her company will close by the end of the year. Even though it's illegal to discriminate against someone for being pregnant during the hiring process, I think we can all agree that she's unlikely to find a new job before the baby is born. Right now I think that her plan is just to hang on for as long as she can and then collect unemployment while on maternity leave (so she will at least have some income coming in) and then start really looking for a job after the baby is born. It must be scary to be facing a layoff while pregnant. I certainly wouldn't want to trade positions with her.
The sister with the baby due in June, my youngest sister....I'll be honest, I'm having a hard time not judging her. She's 24, hasn't worked in over a year because she got fed up with her previous job and quit without a backup plan. Her husband is also unemployed and they live in my parent's basement. They already has two kids, both unplanned, and yet weren't using any protection at all. You would think that after two kids they would have a clue how babies are made, but I guess not. It must be scary to be facing a third unplanned child (they'll have three under 4.5 when this baby is born) when there are no prospects for employment and you live in somebody else's house. I wouldn't want to trade positions with them (though I can argue that I never would have put myself in that position in the first place). Let's all keep our fingers crossed that after this baby is born that they elect for some form of permanent or semi permanent preventative measures so there isn't a fourth child that they can't support in the future.
As far as my third sister goes, I don't know if she's pregnant or not. She's very private so the chances are good that if she is pregnant that I (or anyone else) won't find out officially until she is darn good and ready to share the news. My Spidey Sense is telling me that she probably is though, and my Spidey Sense is rarely wrong. My brother-in-law did share with my husband that they had an early miscarriage over the summer, so I just feel like the timing is right for her to get pregnant again. While her pregnancy will hurt, particularly if I get the trifecta of sisters pregnant, hubs and I will be genuinely excited for them.
And then there's my situation. It really couldn't be more different from my sister's situation. Funny how that works.
I've been thinking about how fertility is completely random, and there is no explanation why some people get pregnant so easily and some can't get pregnant at all. I think that if logic or a higher power had anything to do with it that I would certainly be a better candidate for parenting than my youngest sister. There is no good reason that someone addicted to drugs, who has had children taken away from them for abuse or neglect, or somebody who lives off of the taxpayer's dime is able to get pregnant easily but that someone who is educated, employed, and financially stable isn't able to. There's just no explanation. My default reaction for the majority of this week has been to just laugh at the absurdity of it all, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry (or drink).
Now if I could just get my mother to stop shoving fertility treatment and adoption down our throats. Fertility treatment has a low probability of success for our situation thus we don't see it as being a good investment. As far as adoption goes, it's just not an option that we have any desire to pursue, and I don't feel like we need to explain our reasons to anybody. We're perfectly confident and secure in the decisions we've made, even though those decisions mean that we will never be parents, and I don't see why others are having such a hard time with it. The last time I talked to her I told her that I wasn't going to discuss our choices with her and I requested that she not try to make our fertility a topic of discussion. She said she'd continue to pray for us (she thinks prayer means something, I think it is a big joke, but my thoughts on religion will have to wait for another post). Most days I regret even sharing our issues with her.
I'll see my sisters for the first time since August in a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving. So I have until then to process this enough to not have a public meltdown and fine-tune my 'shut-up' filter so that I don't say something that is likely to come across as judgement and/or hurt feelings. Thankfully we are hosting Thanksgiving dinner so I will be busy cooking for 25-30 and hopefully won't have much time for conversation. I want to be in a position where I can be happy for my sisters, but I don't think that's going to happen before Thanksgiving, and I'm not going to rush it.
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