The Things People Say

I'm reading a book on infertility (When Empty Arms Become A Heavy Burden, Glahn and Cutrer, 1997), and one of the chapters is about what to do when people say the wrong thing. To break the ice, it lists some of the "favorite" comments that the authors and others have heard, often along with either an interpretation of why the comment hurts, or what they wish they could say back. I haven't heard too many of these personally, though I think Luta might have. But I've gotten to the point where reading them is funny, even though if I were to hear them it would hurt.

The chapter broke the sayings into groups. Here are those from the "Miscarriage" category:

"You know it's for the best."

"The baby was probably deformed--this is nature's way of taking care of it."

* "You're young." *

"You can always have another."

* "At least you know you can get pregnant." *

"At least you never knew the baby. It would have been harder if it were five..."

What really made me laugh? When we first decided we needed to start seeing medical people about infertility, since it had been a year since we saw a doctor about our miscarriages, the nurse we saw said one of them verbatim. And she might have said another, and said some other things not on this list which were equally unhelpful, like "A year is just an average. It takes some people longer". Hers are marked with a *. Which is one of the reasons we aren't going back to that medical group anymore...