The funny people that don't understand what it means to have this many babies

Last week we had some funny things happen. Most of the time when we tell people what is going on, they understand the gravity of the situation. Occasionally, however, there are people that just don’t get it. For the last few months the Austin Blood and Tissue center has called us a few times a week to see if Rachelle could donate blood. When they first started calling, we would tell them that Rachelle was pregnant and that she couldn’t donate blood. After about 6 or 7 times, I finally decided that we needed to tell them what the situation was so that they would realize that it was much more difficult than just a normal pregnancy and that she would likely not be able to donate blood for another few years. When they last called earlier this week, the conversation went something like this:

Lady: “Hi, this is the blood and tissue center, is Rachelle Wilkinson available?”
Me:“No, she isn’t and I don’t think she will be able to donate blood for a while. She is pregnant with quintuplets.”
Lady: “Oh, I see. Well, when is her due date?”
Me: “Well, her real due date is in September but she will probably have them in July.”
Lady: “Well, you know, she can donate about 6 weeks after the delivery.”
Me: “Did you hear what I just said? She is having 5 babies. Do you know what that means?”
Lady: “Well, can you give me an email address that we could use to let her know about our blood drives?”
Me: “No. Do you realize that we probably won’t even be able to leave the house for 6 months after this happens.”
Lady: “Well, thank you for your time anyway.”

I am pretty sure that there are a lot of people that either don’t get it or think that we are lying. Rachelle also had a similar experience when she went to the bank to see if they could possibly set up a fund of some kind that we could put on our web site for people that wanted to donate. The young woman Rachelle was talking to basically treated it like it was twins and said that she didn’t think our issue was important enough to even ask for that kind of fund. She said that it would have to go to the regional managers and she already knew that they would reject it so it wasn’t even worth it to try.

It is understandable that people, especially young men and women who have never had any children, would not think it was that big of a deal. I would guess that there are people out there that would lie about this kind of thing in order to get some attention. It seems like a really bad idea (mainly because of the fact that after about 3 months, you have to have something to show for it).