Dear Charlotte:

This is a little awkward because we don't really know each other. I mean, I know you: I've been to the spa with you (and by "been" I mean that I sat in my friend's living room watching your spa escapades on the screen while I drank a latte), I've been to your art openings, I've even...er... watched you have sex with a man from Chabad. Just trust that I really do care about you even if half the infertile world wants to impale you with the heel of your Jimmy Choos.

Listen, does it happen? Do people adopt after infertility and then become pregnant sans treatments? Yes--the number often quoted is that this happens 3% of the time. You know how many people don't adopt after attempting fertility treatments, give up on trying, and get pregnant? 3%. And that whole relax-and-it-will-happen myth? Infertility causes stress; stress doesn't cause infertility. Beyond that, you would think all the trips to the aforementioned spa and the Cosmos you downed would be relaxing enough to keep those hormone levels in check.

Can you see why we're all getting cranky with you? You were our hero--infertile girl on the small screen. Sure, infertility may have ended your marriage and struck fear in our hearts, but we could always blame it on Trey and his freaky mother. You were out there, fighting for love and family and what girl didn't wish as they were daydreaming in the clinic waiting room that you'd be sitting there primly, an open copy of Vogue on your lap, waiting to be called back for blood work and a sonogram too?

Listen, it's not just me. Sunny from My Journey Towards My Little Miracle said,

We all know Charlotte is part of our infertility community. She longed for a family. Well she finally adopted a beautiful little girl and is very content. As the movie begins to wrap up guess what she announces? YEP, she's pregnant! I was happy for her but then I felt it coming. The words an IF NEVER wants to hear EVER spoken aloud!

"I'm pregnant. I guess if you relax and adopt like they say, you will finally get pregnant on your own!" I am not sure if these are the exact words but they are what I remember.

Guess what I did? You won't believe it! I first gasped! You could feel the row of my girls do the same thing. Then I stood up, gave an ugly hand gesture and called her a 'not so nice' word very loudly. I am blaming it all on the cosmos! Then I sat myself back down and cried. I just couldn't believe they had to add that line into the movie.

And you know she loves you, but damn, no one who is working this hard to build their family wants to hear you discuss your daughter as a means to another child.

Lindsay at Our Family Beginnings got that the movie was about everyone achieving their personal fantasy--and getting to experience pregnancy was one of your personal fantasies. No one is begrudging you that, sweetie. But as Lindsay said,

Everyone gets the happy ending they want. So, therefore, OF COURSE she gets pregnant. Now, as an infertile, it’s a slap in the face. It’s perpetuating the myth that it is all our fault, that we are just too tense. And making it Charlotte, who has always been the most uptight of the bunch - even worse. It’s a stereotype, and a crappy one at that. So, do I look past it, as I do Carrie’s endless acceptance of Big? Or do I bitch and moan and not get the joke. I don’t know, but me and Lea Bee sure had fun that night flipping the bird at the screen.

The Other Shoe points out the largest problem of all--the source for all of this misinformation and perpetuation of the stereotype:

But then they had to elaborate. And Charlotte said that her doctor told her -- her DOCTOR, people, not her mother or the girl at the checkout counter at the grocery store -- that she had known this to happen to several of her patients. Not only did the movie make the low, ill-informed choice to perpetuate the infertility myth that refuses to die, they used a doctor as a mouthpiece to do so.

You guys made shoe designers famous and kicked off a wavy of cursive name necklaces. How can we not fear the backlash we'll have to endure from those grasping for any advice they can pass along to help us on our way? The "just adopt" myth--it's offensive. It's reductive and dehumanizing and treats one child as a means for another. And seriously, as one of us--at least fictionally--we expected more from you.

And, frankly, as fans of the show, we expected more from the writers who invented you too. If there's ever a follow up film, they may want to spend some time with the bloggers featured at Adoption All-Top. It really sucks when great resources exist and people don't use them.

Does the myth happen? Sure, 3% of the time.

But I would run from placing a storyline on those odds in a New York Minute.

Love,
Mel

Melissa is the author of the infertility and pregnancy loss blog, Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters. She keeps a categorized blogroll of over 1300 infertility blogs and writes the daily Lost and Found and Connections Abound, a news source for the infertility blogosphere. Her infertility book, The Land of If, is forthcoming from Seal Press in Spring 2009.