What’s in a name?

Most people refer to the room in their house where a sleeping baby lies as the nursery. This seems to be a pretty common occurrence. Some people who are convinced of their uber-fertility in the world will even start referring to a room in the house as the nursery long before a child has ever been conceived. I have friends who used this term from the day they bought their house. It always made me nervous because I knew that there was always a chance that something could go amiss (and this was before I ever started trying- long before I knew about my own infertility). I just became nervous when I would hear them talk about the nursery in matter-of-fact terms. Thankfully, they only had to “stop not trying” for one month to conceive their beautiful son. At that point, I had already been trying for a year and a half but had kept the news from most people. I was thinking to confide in my friend, wondering if she was experiencing the same thing, when she called me with her good news. At that point, I kept my mouth shut about my own problems because I didn’t want her to have to censor her words. I was genuinely happy for her and wanted to hear every little detail that she would share.

But back to the “N” word. I reached the 23-week mark today. Pretty damn good for an infertile who was 100% convinced that her IVF would never work. I get it that I am very lucky. But I am also so convinced that calling a particular room in our house the nursery before there is a living, breathing baby is going to cause the bowels of the earth to swallow up my dreams. I still call it the extra room. To get even crazier, I have even purchased items for said “extra room” and have no mental objection to taking that kind of action. But calling it a nursery just seems unnatural.

I’m looking forward to painting so that I can call the room by its color.

You can take the infertile off of the island, but you can’t take away her infertility.