I guess the key point here is to ask and find out exactly what it is that each person going through assisted conception wants in terms of support.

If someone tells me that they are thinking of me, fine, I can deal with that. When someone wants to get intimately involved with the process, not fine. When someone starts to act like an IVF expert just because they read a newspaper article - NOT FINE!

I guess it comes down to simple respect. My mother has been cut out of the information loop because she could only ask me how "things" were going. If she can't give me the respect of naming my infertility and the treatment I need, then she's not going to be given the respect of being told what's going on.

And just to make things super difficult for everyone - there's times where I'll be super-open about everything. And there's times when I'll want to completely clam up. Take your lead from the person undergoing AC, I don't think it's possible to give anyone a set rule of dealing with it. Even for myself the way I feel about it all changes from day to day, I can't imagine that anyone else would be much different.

BW