Not Yet

This morning I went for breakfast with a group of women whose husbands are all employed by H’s company. They meet a couple of times a month for different events and I figured that as I know absolutely nobody in WA apart from H, I should go to meet some new people and get some tips on things to do and places to go in WA. As I sipped my iced tea on the restaurant’s balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean, I learned that at least one thing I considered to be unique to the Middle East actually is not.

In Qatar, H and I frequently (and by frequently I mean almost daily) got asked if we have children. Upon hearing our negative response, the person would say, oh, “not yet,” and the next question would be if we were expecting a child. Upon hearing our negative response to that, the next question would be when we got married. At the less than a year mark, we were told oh in’shallah, soon it will happen. After we had been married for a year, we worried that we would start getting fertility clinic referrals. The widespread expectation there would be that if you were married, you would procreate as soon as possible. I went for a pre-employment medical and the physician asked if I had children and if I was pregnant. Upon hearing my response of no and no, he wrote down on my medical form next to those two questions, “not yet.”

But apparently, those questions and that response are not unique to the Middle East. At breakfast this morning, each woman I met, introduced herself, asked my name, asked if I had children, asked if I was expecting children, and when I said no and no, said to me, “oh, not yet.”

To those people who view these as appropriate questions, they’re not. What if I have been actively trying to get pregnant and have been unable to conceive? No, I haven’t been trying to become pregnant but if I had and had been unsuccessful, all the “not yets” would make me feel pretty bad about myself.