Making conversation

It was during one of my regular Gynae visits 5 years ago that I boasted about my pregnancy to the stranger next to me, not knowing that she was there to discuss IVF and couldn’t have children of her own. This was long before I knew my Gynae was also a FS, about, IUI’s & IVF’s and the 10 famous tips of TTC. I just assumed she was pregnant, that everyone just falls pregnant easy the day they decide to have children. I did not know what to say, I was quiet for a moment and then I asked her her name, which was Petra, and then I said that I am sorry and will pray for her. After that I counted down the minutes to see our Gynae, I realized we shared for different reasons.

It was on my own path of trying to conceive for 3 years to have our second child that I met some extraordinary women. Women who are happy for you, but not happy for themselves. Women who would do anything to conceive. Women who fell pregnant and miscarried, some of them 3 or 4 times, but still manage to wake up with a smile for the world to see, but inside they were crying and all asking the same question:”When is it my turn God?” I know the pain, I was one of them. You read of mothers who use drugs and alcohol while pregnant, mothers who abandon their babies in public toilets and you wonder why that baby did not end up in your womb in the first place. Is there a message to all of this? Again you ask yourself why…

I never stopped thinking about Petra. I will always wonder if she did conceive in the end and if her arms is filled with a loving baby or is she also living with an emptiness that won’t go away. I never stopped praying for her. I hope that we meet again, maybe someday on the sport field when our children are participating, in the supermarket while we are checking out, or in the parking lot busy loading our babies into cars.

I went to the Gynae last week Friday. Somehow I have learnt my lesson, when the stranger next to me started a conversation, I replied with a question: ”Are you pregnant?”. For all I know she could be another Petra.