For Steph - The Drama

Okay, for Steph, and those inquiring minds curious about the drama on the boards the other day, here's the reader's digest version. I'm making up names here, because I have no idea what any of their names are. Nothing personal, I'm just really bad with names.

First a disclaimer - The situation didn't really get all that heated. There were a couple of posters who got a tad riled up, but nothing crazy.

So, one of the ladies, let's call her Ann, started a thread asking who else is dealing with MFIF. She also said she and her DH would probably be doing ICSI at some point. One of the responses was from a TTC 12+ grad, Beth, who was more of a lurker before she graduated, but wasn't a total stranger. She and her DH had dealt with MFIF, and had a successful IUI. So she was posting in an attempt to inspire hope in these ladies who are in situations similar to hers, and suggesting to try IUI if they haven't yet. The only things I could find "wrong" in her post are that 1. she didn't put "trigs" and 2. her story was a little long, which some ladies took as her "bragging." But then she reposted the exact same response as a brand new thread, still without putting "trigs". That was a little irritating, but not particularly offensive, IMO. Oh, and BTW, a handful of ladies posted thanking her for sharing her story.

Well, one of the other ladies, Cathy, had just dropped her husband off that morning at the airport for his 1 year tour of duty overseas. Obviously in a bad place already, she went off on Beth for her post. Said something like, we don't need your input, we've all been TTC for over a year and most of us have tried IUI already, who are you anyway, kinda thing. Beth apologized, said she didn't mean to offend anyone, far from it, and got the moderator to add "trigs" to the title of the thread.

Then Dana chimes in to back up Cathy. She adds that the board is designed to be exclusive, even though she is "not trying to be exclusive." She says that she doesn't remember Beth or her story, and basically that it's offensive for grads to come back and post. She suggests maybe it would be easiest for everyone to not allow anyone who doesn't fall under the category of TTC 12+ Months to post there. A couple other newer ladies voiced their agreement with Dana. I posted my comment saying this is getting blown out of proportion and that I didn't want to see the board turn into an exclusive clique for various reasons. And a couple of the "older" ladies posted their agreement to me.

But minutes later, my post, Cathy's post, those agreeing with me, and those agreeing with Dana all got deleted with no explanation. Dana's post and Beth's post are still there.

There were some other posts that day along the lines of, "some days we just don't feel like reading triggery posts, and we shouldn't be expected to hide our feelings about that." And, "you get a free pass to act out when you're having a bad day." Maybe those posts weren't meant to sound petulant, but to me they definitely did not sound like they were made in the spirit of community, support and acceptance. Most of the time these ladies are very supportive, but IMO the "vibe" has definitely changed a bit. It just doesn't feel quite as "nice" anymore. I don't know how else to put it.