odd questions and inappropriate answers

[pantryslut]

There are two comments/questions that I get a lot on my pregnancy these days, My responses, I have noticed, tend to unsettle the questioner. Too bad! I am afraid I am just that kind of inappropriate person.

The first: "Do twins run in your family?"

My response: "No, they don't." I guess if I stopped here, everything would be OK. But I can hear the question behind the question, so I often add, "we were on a course of fertility drugs and hit the jackpot." Or some variation thereof. If I really want to make someone uncomfortable, I joke that we're going to make the kids' middle names "Clomid" and watch them squirm and blush. Folks are clearly unsettled by frank talk about fertility issues. And yet, why else would they ask? Maybe I'm just not supposed to guess at the hidden agenda that quickly...

The second: "Isn't it nice to get it all out of the way first?" (i.e. have all the kids you were going to have all at once instead of serially.)

My response: "Yes, except that we were only planning on one." Well, it's the truth! But apparently it's shocking to say out loud. It's not that I'm unhappy to be having twins -- far from it, I'm excited, and even more so, I am aware that the universe likes to joke around and throw people curveballs and there's only so far you can plan your life out anyway. I'm totally on board this ride. But apparently admitting this isn't the ride I thought I'd signed up for is a bit taboo. As I said, too bad!

Comments

[imnotandrei.livejournal.com]

"Do twins run in your family?"

"No; twins saunter. Only children born by themselves are so undignified as to 'run'"

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I can't understand why the mention of fertility drugs makes people uncomfortable. I have a sneaking suspicion that people kinda sorta nonintellectually think that drug=teratogen, or something.

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

Needing to take drugs implies a infertility issue which implies defect to many folks...

I also wonder how much of it is socialized religious associations with conception and God's will such that anything that affects the conception process is "unnatural".

[cheekytubemouse.livejournal.com]

When I was married to my ex-husband, I got really tired of people asking when we were going to start having children or saying, "You guys are gonna hafta hurry up if you're gonna catch up with Christine & Mike!" (My ex-husband's younger sister and her husband who had two children.) I often dreamed of bursting into tears and claiming fertility problems, but everyone would have just seen it as mean and my ex-husband probably would've gotten pissed at me, so I never did. Still though, just the thought sometimes made me smile.

I *have* made people uncomfortable by replying "ex-husband" or something similar when asked about the source of my back problems. In fact, I was once asked not to talk about my personal experience with domestic violence so openly because it made people "feel bad." All of which pisses me off. If my honest answer to their prying question made them uncomfortable, then maybe they shouldn't have asked it in the first place. And if just hearing about my experience makes them uncomfortable, maybe they should think about what it must have been like to actually live through it. I refuse to treat the time I spent as an abused woman like a shameful secret.

[marrythebed.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful. I do the same with 'rape'. One time someone told me it wasn't appropriate at the dinner table, and I responded in pretty much the same way. These topics need to be out in the open so other victims of sex abuse or domestic abuse don't feel too ashamed to get help/fight back.

The only person who should be ashamed is the perpetrator.


Pantryslut: I would totally ask the twin thing w/out any hidden meaning, but that may be because I don't know anything about fertility drugs. But after I looked it up I thought your middle name joke was hilarious.

[cheekytubemouse.livejournal.com]

These topics need to be out in the open so other victims of sex abuse or domestic abuse don't feel too ashamed to get help/fight back.

The only person who should be ashamed is the perpetrator.

AGREED!

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

Ditto re asking the Q. My mom is a twin and twins do run in our family.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Hell yes.

I get similar anxious flack about mentioning having had an abortion, or being hit by parents/step-parents.

[cheekytubemouse.livejournal.com]

It makes me feel less alone to hear that other people have encountered the same negative attitudes when it comes to talking honestly about their lives, but it sucks that so many of us have to deal with such narrow-mindedness.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

I like to make a point of mentioning my experiences during pregnancy. Hey, I had morning sickness! I had swollen boobs!

Children? Nope, no kids. I had an abortion. And then they maybe look a little green (but I ignore them).

Dammit, that was real morning sickness!

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

They're the inappropriate ones, with those questions. It's one thing to ask a question like that on your LJ where you're asking people to do so. It's an entirely different thing to ask such personal questions in polite conversation.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't feel the same way at all. The first one, in particular, is fueled by mere curiosity and I find it hard to condemn that. I just think they should be ready for the answer :)

In fact, I think the first one *is* people's attempt at asking the question they're curious about as politely as possible (which is probably more aptly phrased as, "how did you end up with twins?").

The second one is loaded with assumptions, and so a bit more problematic. But really only mildly so (to me).

Plus, you know, me and polite conversation per se are not really close allies in the first place ;) The people asking are rarely strangers or casual acquaintances, either, so there's that.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear, I don't mind the questions either, and tend to just go ahead and answer even the most personal of questions, provided I don't feel the person is being creepy. However, I know that my not minding doesn't mean those questions are generally appropriate, and I try not to ask them unless context indicates that they're both expected and welcomed.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

The rude question to somebody who is pregnant is always "is this planned or an accident, and if it's an accident, did you have contraceptive failure or did you not use contraceptives, and if you weren't using contraceptives, why?"

Obviously, y'all are not going to be subject to my rude question!

[sfgabe.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've been guity of the twin question, and this got me thinking about why that was the question I wanted to ask. For me and I would guess alot of other people its curiosity, yes, but also a little bit of envy. Somewhere in my brain is a bored five year old wishing they had a twin and wondering how to get one.

[blue-estro.livejournal.com]

Somewhere in my brain is a bored five year old wishing they had a twin and wondering how to get one.

:} Totally.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

Roomba Clomid does roll nicely off the tongue.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

"Do twins run in your family?" was a traditional, pre-fertility-drugs question. It was asked in the past (you know, in my youth, because I am so much older than you are) in the same way that "Do you want a boy or a girl?" was asked, as a relatively polite conversational ploy. Twins were cool, rare, and tended to be born in families that already had twins. I was crushed when I learned that my uncle's twin brothers had no bearing on whether I would ever have twins, because he was my uncle by marriage.

It's a bit weird to realize that the very same words mean something completely different now, ranging from "Did you use fertility drugs?" to "How many embryos did you have implanted?" to "Gosh, are any of your uncles or aunts twins?"

Of course it's not the ride you signed up for. None of us get that.

[seyewailo.livejournal.com]

I was on a bus once and heard someone ask this stupid question to a pregnant woman on the bus. She said the same thing. The woman who asked moved, all offended. The pregnant woman looked at me and said, "You would think that people would be more careful when asking questions to a person obviously high on hormones." I busted up laughing, and she laughed, too. Then she said, "No, seriously."

Do not fuck with pregnant people. It's just not a good idea.