Who's going to have a baby next???

[Poppea]

Lets see 100 women in the room.  Eliminate the ones over 40.  That leaves  65 women.  Eliminate the ones already currently pregnant or recently post partum.  (Women at a baby shower tend to be the  rough age of the MTB or her own Mother).  That leaves 50.  Eliminate the ones that already have children.  That leaves 25 (the OP did not specify secondary infertility).  Eliminate the single ones.  That leaves 15.  Eliminate the ones married within the year.  That leaves 10.  Then eliminate the ones that had specifically stated "Oh we're waiting until we buy a house/finish grad school/go to South Pole.  That leaves 8

Yeah if I had eight possibilities I could easily speculate which one was suffering from primary infertility.  Especially when a few of the eight make a point of saying "well its not me!"

[MommyPenguin]

I agree with the others that it's okay to talk about pregnancy, personal plans, etc., but I think there's a big difference between that and speculating who will have a baby next, which is more like gossip.  And it does have the potential to hurt people, and not just the infertile.  It could probably also be hurtful to the woman who wants to have more kids but her husband says he's done.  Or make the woman who doesn't want more kids, but her husband does, to feel guilty about her choice.  It could make the woman who decided *with* her husband not to have children/more children feel like people are expecting her to, or make her feel guilty that she doesn't have a handle on what she's already dealing with enough to add children/more children to the mix.  I think the kind of speculative talk that the OP mentioned has a much greater potential to hurt, because it's directed towards each woman (in a general sense, since they're talking about "who in the group will have a baby next"), and so each woman takes it to heart.  Whereas asking a specific woman about her pregnancy, or discussing an upcoming baby shower or expected baby, does not have the sense of pointing to each woman in turn.

[Hmmmmm]

Based on the above post, I think I have a very different idea of the discussion occurring than MommyPequin did.

MommyPequin are you willing to give up ever mentioning your parents or expect your friends to give up mentioning parents because it hurts me?

[*inviteseller]

I agree that it is fine to talk about pregnancy and babies in groups is fine but speculating on who is next is not.  That is making assumptions about people (and as one poster said, coming close to speculating on their scrabble life). I had a friend who, bless her, tried for 5 years before it finally happened.  She told virtually no one, kept quiet when talk turned to babies, and was gracious when someone got pregnant, but there had to be that one shrew in the group who had to say "oh my X, you and Y have been married for so long, when are you going to get to it and have a baby??"  Friend would just smile and shrug her shoulders but I knew how bad it made her feel.  It is rude IMO to discuss anothers reproductive decisions..someone could have made a decision to not have kids, may be infertile, may have had a miscarriage. 

[WillyNilly]

... Recently, I was in on a conversation with a large group of women from church, and two of them starting throwing jokes around about who was going to be pregnant next...

...No, there was no way that she could guess- there were over 40 women present and I made sure we had complete privacy, out of both sight and earshot from everyone else, to tell her...

I'm trying to picture how on earth a group of 40 women were all conversing with each other at the same time, and yet it was easy enough for two to slip away into a private conversation without it being noticed and a kinda big deal.

IME when its a group of 40 women talking they aren't all talking to everyone, they are broken down into smaller groups of 2-5 women per group, chatting. And that scenario makes it easy to see how two could have a private word for a moment. But if that were the case (broken into smaller groups) it also means it would be easy enough for the one woman who was upset by the baby conversations to just avoid the sole two women who were having them. If it were all 40 talking together, like at a meeting, I don't see how you could discreetly pull someone away for a private chat to ask them to stop.

[edgypeanuts]

MommyPequin are you willing to give up ever mentioning your parents or expect your friends to give up mentioning parents because it hurts me?

But the correlation to mentioning parents would be mentioning babies or pregnancy, which pretty much everyone is saying is fine.

The correlation to asking who will get pregnant next or when you are going to have a baby would be asking someone when they think their parent will die. 
Granted one is generally regarded as a good event and the other not, but they are both major life changing events that you may or may not have control over.

I lost my Dad a few weeks before I turned 16.  There were a few times when friends complaining about their parents bothered me, but they were talking about *their* fathers, not mine.  While I missed my Dad, and their comments may have made me think of him, it was not like they were saying that their fathers were annoying and I was lucky mine was dead.

But at the wedding of a close relative, a distant relative felt it was appropriate to ask me when I was going to get married and have kids.  I had recently broken up with a long term fiance (relative knew this) and was facing the fact that I may end up alone and childless.  This was much more personal and painful then mentioning a pregnancy.  I broke down and missed most of my close relative's reception as I was crying outside.  I would try to come back in and then burst into tears again, it was awful.  I even ended throwing away the new dress I had bought for the event cause it reminded me of the evening.  I for many years wished I had responded to this older relative with an answer of "right after your funeral" which I am now glad I didn't, but honestly- what kind of an answer do people want when they ask such a question?! 

I would have spoken up in the OPs case as well, because back then I was too emotionally fragile to do so and wished I could.  I probably would have just went with do you know how hurtful that is to someone who cannot have a baby?  Not because I am speaking for someone else, but because I am speaking for the me I was a few short years ago. 

[Hmmmmm]

MommyPequin are you willing to give up ever mentioning your parents or expect your friends to give up mentioning parents because it hurts me?

But the correlation to mentioning parents would be mentioning babies or pregnancy, which pretty much everyone is saying is fine.

The correlation to asking who will get pregnant next or when you are going to have a baby would be asking someone when they think their parent will die. 
Granted one is generally regarded as a good event and the other not, but they are both major life changing events that you may or may not have control over.

I lost my Dad a few weeks before I turned 16.  There were a few times when friends complaining about their parents bothered me, but they were talking about *their* fathers, not mine.  While I missed my Dad, and their comments may have made me think of him, it was not like they were saying that their fathers were annoying and I was lucky mine was dead.

But at the wedding of a close relative, a distant relative felt it was appropriate to ask me when I was going to get married and have kids.  I had recently broken up with a long term fiance (relative knew this) and was facing the fact that I may end up alone and childless.  This was much more personal and painful then mentioning a pregnancy.  I broke down and missed most of my close relative's reception as I was crying outside.  I would try to come back in and then burst into tears again, it was awful.  I even ended throwing away the new dress I had bought for the event cause it reminded me of the evening.  I for many years wished I had responded to this older relative with an answer of "right after your funeral" which I am now glad I didn't, but honestly- what kind of an answer do people want when they ask such a question?! 

I would have spoken up in the OPs case as well, because back then I was too emotionally fragile to do so and wished I could.  I probably would have just went with do you know how hurtful that is to someone who cannot have a baby?  Not because I am speaking for someone else, but because I am speaking for the me I was a few short years ago.

I completely disagree.
Saying who's having the next baby is the same to me as the following:

Who has to spend X  holiday with your parents.
Who is arguing with here mom about wedding dresses or braid dresses
Who's dad wants absolutely weird song for the father daughter dance
Stories about GPs spoiling the grand kids and everyone telling their own stories
People asking if my mom is coming to stay after the baby is born and giving recommendations

[LifeOnPluto]

OP, just out of curiousity, did the two women in the OP mention anyone by name? Or was it just a vague, general comment. Eg "I wonder who in the group will have a baby next?"

[MommyPenguin]

I'll agree that that can be hurtful, too, Hmmmmm, and that questions like, "Okay, who here has parents who are absolutely driving them *crazy*?" can be very painful to somebody who has lost their parents.  And I would certainly hope that if somebody knew that a friend had lost her parents, it would be unkind to say such a thing, especially as directional as that (whereas I would consider somebody just talking about how her own parents were driving her crazy, while it might still hurt to listen to, more along the lines of people talking about their own pregnancies or childbirth in general), I think it might occur in a general conversation where people don't know.  The pregnancy question is, I think, more likely to be a problem for more people (as I mentioned, not just for the infertile, but for other women in different situations as well), but especially as a group ages, the parental thing may be true for more and more people. 

There's still a part of me that somehow doesn't see the two things as being the same, but I can't pinpoint why I have more of a problem with "So do you think Mary's gonna be the next to get pregnant?" versus "So do you think Mary's mother is going to come over after the baby is born to help out?"  Maybe something about the personal aspect of pregnancy, the woman's body, the Scrabble that leads to it, I don't know.  It does feel more gossipy, more digging for news, than just talking about somebody's parents, but it's hard to say why.

[TootsNYC]

I completely disagree.
Saying who's having the next baby is the same to me as the following:

Who has to spend X  holiday with your parents.
Who is arguing with here mom about wedding dresses or braid dresses
Who's dad wants absolutely weird song for the father daughter dance
Stories about GPs spoiling the grand kids and everyone telling their own stories
People asking if my mom is coming to stay after the baby is born and giving recommendations

I don't see them the same way at all.

There's pressure in the "who's going to have the next?" that doesn't exist at *all* in the "My grandkids are coming to visit."

Because it's a question. And we feel compelled to answer questions.
It's also stating a pretty big expectation as if it is a *given*, when it's not.

I do think the "asking if mom is coming to stay" is getting closer to the problem.

[Psychopoesie]

I completely disagree.
Saying who's having the next baby is the same to me as the following:

Who has to spend X  holiday with your parents.
Who is arguing with here mom about wedding dresses or braid dresses
Who's dad wants absolutely weird song for the father daughter dance
Stories about GPs spoiling the grand kids and everyone telling their own stories
People asking if my mom is coming to stay after the baby is born and giving recommendations

I don't see them the same way at all.

There's pressure in the "who's going to have the next?" that doesn't exist at *all* in the "My grandkids are coming to visit."

Because it's a question. And we feel compelled to answer questions.
It's also stating a pretty big expectation as if it is a *given*, when it's not.

I do think the "asking if mom is coming to stay" is getting closer to the problem.

To me asking someone "So are you spending the coming holidays with your parents?" without realising their parents are actually dead comes closer to unwittingly asking someone who can't have kids or is struggling with fertility issues "So are you going to be next with baby news?"  Even then, the former is a less intimate question, IMO.

I lost my dad 10 years ago. I am sometimes reminded of my dad by all sorts of things that can make me emotional - a friend talking about doing stuff with their dad, an old guy dressed a bit like mine, an expression of my brother's. None of those things is personally putting me on the spot like the pregnancy question would. Or the eternal favourite of my relatives, "so when are you going to get married?" There is social pressure there, an implication that you've failed somehow by not being able to say yes plus a push to know more about my private business. It's just rude.

[lowspark]

I would have spoken up in the OPs case as well, because back then I was too emotionally fragile to do so and wished I could.  I probably would have just went with do you know how hurtful that is to someone who cannot have a baby?  Not because I am speaking for someone else, but because I am speaking for the me I was a few short years ago.

I don't see anything wrong with speaking up if the topic of conversation bothers you, if you are speaking for yourself.

In the case of the OP, she made it crystal clear that she was speaking not for herself but on the behalf of someone else. Someone else who , we can assume, did not ask the OP to speak for her.

"I know you didn't know this, but there's at least one person here that is dealing with infertility right now.  If you and Other Friend want to joke about this, can you please keep it private so she doesn't have to listen?" 

[lowspark]

To me asking someone "So are you spending the coming holidays with your parents?" without realising their parents are actually dead comes closer to unwittingly asking someone who can't have kids or is struggling with fertility issues "So are you going to be next with baby news?"  Even then, the former is a less intimate question, IMO.

For me the difference between these two questions is that asking someone when they are going to have a baby is never appropriate. But asking someone if they are going to spend the holidays with their parents certainly can be. If I have a friend who I happen to know has parents living in another state, there's really nothing at all wrong with asking if she will be spending the holidays with them.

But I can't think of a single instance where it's ok to ask someone when they are going to have a baby. It's simply none of anyone's business to ask that, whether there are fertility issues or not.

[Psychopoesie]

To me asking someone "So are you spending the coming holidays with your parents?" without realising their parents are actually dead comes closer to unwittingly asking someone who can't have kids or is struggling with fertility issues "So are you going to be next with baby news?"  Even then, the former is a less intimate question, IMO.

For me the difference between these two questions is that asking someone when they are going to have a baby is never appropriate. But asking someone if they are going to spend the holidays with their parents certainly can be. If I have a friend who I happen to know has parents living in another state, there's really nothing at all wrong with asking if she will be spending the holidays with them.

But I can't think of a single instance where it's ok to ask someone when they are going to have a baby. It's simply none of anyone's business to ask that, whether there are fertility issues or not.

I agree.

[LadyL]

To me asking someone "So are you spending the coming holidays with your parents?" without realising their parents are actually dead comes closer to unwittingly asking someone who can't have kids or is struggling with fertility issues "So are you going to be next with baby news?"  Even then, the former is a less intimate question, IMO.

For me the difference between these two questions is that asking someone when they are going to have a baby is never appropriate. But asking someone if they are going to spend the holidays with their parents certainly can be. If I have a friend who I happen to know has parents living in another state, there's really nothing at all wrong with asking if she will be spending the holidays with them.

But I can't think of a single instance where it's ok to ask someone when they are going to have a baby. It's simply none of anyone's business to ask that, whether there are fertility issues or not.

I agree.

POD. My reproductive schedule is private medical information.