On Biting My Tongue

(Note: I realize that blogging about places and times where I've been biting my tongue kind of defeats the purpose of biting my tongue, particularly when some of the people who have said or posted things that have engendered said tongue biting read here. But. Well. Still my blog.)

Biting my tongue (and seriously, with as many times as I just typed tongue, why do I have to retype it for spelling corrections every single time still? Grr. Stupid, strange, word.) has been something of an Olympic sport around here lately. And I seem to have hit my limit. Thus I bring to you a series of mini rants that I felt it was better not to engage in in person.

1)  "Ever since the arrival of your child, I've noticed that the neatness of your living room has slipped below the level I'd come to expect." -- My Father-in-Law

Really? You're going there? I have a 2 year old. I could have a perfectly neat living room if I decided that I wanted to make that my sole mission in life. And we do pick it up every night (he helps) but honestly, it takes him roughly 0.000007 seconds to trash it again in the morning. Do you not watch him? Yes, ideally, he'll learn at some point to put away what he's playing with now when he wants to switch to something else, but I'm guessing that happens somewhere in the 5-7 year old range. Not 2. Also? Have you looked at your house lately? Sure, you have basically no furniture or belongings, but it's still not exactly the pinnacle of cleanliness. Or was this your subtle way of complimenting me on how mellow I am these days? (Which you've said in the past and is, oh yeah, really just a slap at how uptight you think I am.)

2) "Well, if you want to lose weight, all you have to do is eat under 1,500 calories a day and exercise. Maybe you should keep a food journal." -- My Mother-in-Law

Ah, clearly that's it. Pushing aside the fact that you see people with an extra ounce on them as anathema - up to and including that being a sign of unresolved sin in their lives. Though the majority of people out there in the world will never believe that I'm telling the truth (and I realize that my in-laws fall firmly into that camp) - how about you not talk about things about which you know nothing. Like the fact that, oh hey, already have a food journal. And, oh hey, already way under 1500 calories. And oh yeah, also exercising every day. And then there's PCOS which throws all that out the window, as if rendering one infertile wasn't quite insult enough. But then, it just adds fuel to the fire of why you never wanted your son to marry me in the first place.

3) If you have never experienced infertility and all the heart and gut wrenching decisions that go into what kind and how much treatment you are going to do, please withhold judgment about tweaking nature with pharmaceuticals, even if it's prompted by a publicized medical study (that doesn't even look particularly scientific, certainly doesn't look as if it's set up to allow the formation of causal links) and you just thought it was interesting from a "let's noodle this" perspective. For some people, the infinitesimal risk of whatever the flagship cause of the day that may or may not be related to the very first step in infertility treatment that's out there (i.e. ovulation inducing drugs) is worth it. Cause there have been studies since the beginning of it all saying that OIDs increase the risk for Down's, Autism, ADHD, etc. You name it, it's been linked at least tentatively. So really it just adds to the wrenchingness of making the decisions about what you will and won't pursue. And there's nothing conclusive, there aren't any longitudinal studies, there's nothing with large sample sizes that can really lend credibility to causality. So really, other than making men and women who are already facing incredible stress, hardship, and pain even more stressed and pained, I don't really see the point of publishing a study to the greater population (rather than within the research community, which is definitely worthwhile as it can help point people into future research) until it actually has something reasonably conclusive to say.  (And this is the one that I'm most hesitant to rant about, cause I know you read here now and again, and I know you didn't mean anything to be hurtful, but I'm probably not the only person who briefly thought that you don't realize how incredibly blessed you are to have your situation and never have needed fertility intervention even though I know you do know it.)