Does IF only apply if you have had IVF?!

Went out for a meal on Saturday with an IF group that my friend knows (when she did her IVF cycle). It was a little frustrating. We went for a Mexican, there were only four of us so I will introduce them to you, naming them after the dish they ate in the restaurant.

Chicken Burritos is my friend with an 8 year old boy and now twin girls from her first cycle of IVF. Nachos is a woman who has a 4.5 year old son and is 11 weeks pregnant with her second child following her first cycle of IVF. Chimichanga is a 39 year old woman who looked about 29! She has a 7 month old child which she conceived naturally on her first cycle after her second IVF attempt. She had been trying to conceive for 4.5 years and had one miscarriage shortly after starting ttc.

They spent a lot of the night talking about people I didn't know (from the IVF messaging board) or their children. I didn't feel totally out of it though as I enjoy hearing about other people's attempts at conceiving, pregnancy, birth and baby stories.

The only thing that really pissed me off was the way they were about my situation. I felt like they were being a bit snotty towards me. I don't know, perhaps I am being unfair as they were also very helpful and were sharing things with me that I hadn't considered but there was just something about them, Nachos in particular. Chimichanga made me feel really small when she asked how long I had been trying. When I said just over two years she said that that wasn't long at all and I went on to say that it is difficult though because you tend to put your life on hold and she replied with how I shouldn't do that! Now, the thing that really got to me was that this woman, a woman who had spent a lot of time trying to conceive and who had been through 2 lots of failed IVFs thought that it would be OK to say what she said. Does she not remember how she felt after two years of ttc? Did she really not put her life on hold when she was ttc? (She went part time to try and reduce the stress) Did she really not think that she would ever have a child until AFTER her two failed IVFs?

Now, I'm not asking for sympathy from ANYBODY but a bit of understanding wouldn't have gone amiss. I vowed on the way home that if I EVER speak to anybody who has got past a year of trying for a baby I will make it VERY clear that I can fully understand what they are going through and that it is HARD and hopefully the outcome for them will be a positive one. I don't want to measure my failure to conceive against anyone else's and I certainly will not feel at all smug if we do eventually manage to conceive a child of our own. I almost felt like I should apologise for not knowing the procedure of being referred to hospital for further tests.

I have noticed over the past two years that IF brings with it a lot of people and that these people all have their own time frame/story/heartbreak/despair but I do not, for one minute, want to compare myself to these people or make these people feel like they do not have the right to call themselves IF because they haven't been trying "that long" or they haven't been through IVF. We, my husband and I, may decide never to go through IVF and if that is the case does that mean that I am not worthy enough to call myself IF.