New to the wonderful world of Infertility? (Did you note the super heavy dose of sarcasm? You should.) There's a lot you should know, but here are the two most important things: what do all those abbreviations mean, and "let's play nice."
Here's a good glossary that I think covers just about all of the jargon you could want. I do my best to define the pharmacy jargon for you, but if you're ever unsure, email me or comment and I'll explain myself.
Let's play nice: In my experience, we arrive in the Land of IF/ALI (infertility/adoption loss infertility) blogs because the world of people around us has failed us profoundly. Nobody understands how much it hurts and so many people you reach out to say well-meaning but hurtful things. We are in pain, looking for someone like us who really "gets" what we're going through. Here's where to find them and here's a great sampling of the various sorts of things folks go through as they journey through the Land of ALI.
In this pain, it's easy to get defensive and decide that either whatever we are going through is the worst thing ever and nobody else has ever suffered OR it's a personal insult if someone going through something similar to us manages to get pregnant or adopt (before us).
We have a term around these parts for this sort of thing, where suffering is compared and someone's suffering deemed invalid because it wasn't "enough" or "bad enough" or whatever. It's the Pain Olympics. You can read a very lovely discussion of its nuances here in the comments particularly. In very short, there are no awards and pain is not a competition (I'd argue it's a binary - something is painful or not, and gradations are only known to the person experiencing it). Let's play nice, support each other, or be bitter quietly without hurting anyone else. Please refrain from attacking someone for expressing themselves honestly, even if you think they're ungrateful or self-centered or whatever (or express that in the most polite way you can manage). Nobody is making you read blogs that make you uncomfortable. Stop if you need to. It's OK. We get it.
And if you find yourself in the weird place of being pregnant or parenting through infertility, know that there's a place for you too over at PAIL bloggers.
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