Unsolicited advice

So, I have this one work "friend", S. I have put the word friend in quotes because although we sit and chat together, and get along pretty well, I often walk away shaking my head and wondering whether we'd ever be friends if we didn't work at the same place. We don't have all that much in common, apart from being the same age and both wanting kids, although she's usually very nice (except when she's being all Republican on me, but these days I usually ignore her on that if I just can't be bothered to get into it yet again on whatever topic she's going on about). However, she does have this annoying habit of giving out unsolicited advice, which is highly annoying. And, as she's now 3 months pregnant, she has deemed herself to be the pregnancy expert. And the infertility expert because it took her and her husband 2 years to conceived. She's also the vitamin expert, by the way, because she used to work for a vitamin company. Not on the research side, where she might be expected to actually know something, I hasten to add. No, she was an admin assistant, but still regards herself as the expert.

Now, while it took them 2 years to conceive, she didn't want to listen to me when I gave her the usual "how to conceive" tips like: take your BBT and chart your temps to find out when you're ovulating and have sex around and before then (too much effort), have sex every other day after the end of your period (that was just too much sex), use OPKs (she tried them one month and couldn't read the lines very well, so decided they were too confusing). She also didn't want to go to a doctor to have any testing done, just in case there was something wrong, because she didn't want any intervention. It seemed like she just wasn't all that bothered about having kids, and seemed to be doing it to placate her husband. Whatever.

So, all along she's been offering me advice, like how her friend in Miami got pregnant through IVF and I should switch to that doctor. I'd tell her I was very happy with my doctor, and anyway, Miami was a long way to drive for daily monitoring, to which she replied that her friend is the type to research everything (like I don't?), and therefore HER doctor must be the best, and after all, did G_loria E_stefan's IVF, so must be good. I guess there's really no answering the "oh, if a celebrity chose him, he must be good" opinion of doctors.

Her latest advice from yesterday is that I mustn't think of myself as infertile, because look at her, it took 2 years for her to conceive, and it worked in the end. I was like, but I AM infertile. I tried to explain that "infertile" doesn't mean that you can't or won't conceive, it just means you're having difficulties. I have tried to explain the definitions of infertility, and that even if I didn't qualify on any other criteria (which I do), you'd think that 2 failed IVF's would be enough in anyone's book. And I tried to explain that I no longer see the label "infertile" as a bad thing. It just is what it is. It doesn't mean that it won't ever work. And, in some ways, it is reassuring to claim the label for myself and to say "OK, this is the situation, but here's what I'm going to work towards doing about it..." But she was having none of it. And she suggested I changed doctors, again. And that I should relax. And that I should be careful what I wished for, because morning sickness was no picnic.

Oy, don't you just love friends like that?

In other musings for the day, why is it that every two weeks as I am frantically tidying the house before the cleaning people come, I swear that I will keep it tidy from now on, and two weeks later I am doing the very same thing? I guess if I was a natural neat freak or wasn't so damn lazy I wouldn't need the cleaning people in the first place, but honestly, it's all a bit ridiculous. I usually manage OK the first week, and then it all goes downhill rapidly. Especially when I've had a hangover day at the weekend!