Posts from — January 2009
Barren Advice: Twenty-Six
This is the 26th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.
Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.
Dear Mel,
Has IF decimated your sex life? I would love to hear if any fellow mules have had their once healthy, happy love lives destroyed by the stress of prolonged stick-peeing, head-standing, and mucus checking. And even better yet, has anyone figured out a way to cope? Please help!
I don’t know why a sex life would take a hit. I mean, it’s pretty romantic to inspect your toilet paper for cervical mucous and use that to get in the mood. Or to fuck through a lupron headache. Or to make sweet love in under twenty minutes because you want to get it over with before you have to time that injection. Or to have sex knowing full well that afterwards, you’re going to be in that most erotic and sensual of positions with your ass on a pillow and your legs in the air. Smokin’! Sultry!
Just writing about it is enough to get you wet.
I’ve always wondered what chefs do. You know, to eat. I mean, I can’t imagine after standing in a kitchen all day cooking food for others that they want to go home and start cooking a fancy meal for themselves. I’m just thinking about how I feel when I’m pulling together a meal like Thanksgiving that takes a few days to cook. Those meals in between the making of the pumpkin pies and stuffing tend to be of the boxed pasta variety. Or take-out Thai. Or microwaved vegetarian bacon and eggs. In other words, I’m not going to make cranberry sauce to serve our guests the next night and then turn around and make a full Thanksgiving Eve meal for the twins and Josh. I am just too damn tired and I can only focus on one thing.
And it’s fine to stop cooking full meals a few times a year, but what does a chef do who has a job to stand in a kitchen day in and day out? Who is around food all day; thinking about food, working with food, worrying about food? Do they come home and cook? It seems like some do–Alton Brown crushes Cornish game hens at home. And some don’t–Grant Achatz asked if ramen noodles count when questioned about his go-to homemade meal.
The same seems to be true in the infertility world. There are some who can have all the baby-making sex AND all the regular, let’s-just-do-it-in-the-kitchen sex. There are some who can fuck through the lupron headache and others who suggest sex at 8 pm instead of 9:40 pm when they have a 10 o’clock injection. There are those who can still laugh through it. And then there are the vast majority who cry or exist somewhere in the middle where their sex life is neither terrible nor wonderful. It simply is.
The point is that you can’t be someone you’re not and your relationship can’t be something its not. So let’s focus on what you’ve got–the type of relationship you have and your emotional tools–and work with that. It’s much easier to make what you have better than try to make what you have different. Get what I’m saying? Be yourself. And let your relationship be itself. Don’t worry about what anyone else is or isn’t doing.
Back to sex.
I can’t speak to the cooking world and how they balance that dance of food and work, but I can speak to the infertility world and I think the way you keep trucking in bed is to separate out procreative sex (your job) from intimate sex (your relaxation time). Same act but a different way of looking at it just as Alton Brown must separate out what is cooking for work and cooking for his family at home. In both cases, he’s in front of the stove, but he must take a different attitude in order to crush those Cornish game hens rather than grumble about how sick and tired he is of cooking all. the. time.
Because he does have to cook all. the. time. Get it? He has to eat. He can’t just cook at work and come home and say, “I’m done with food!” He still has to put something in his mouth. Just as you need to keep bonking each other right before ovulation as your job, but your relationship needs sex too in order to remain healthy. If Alton didn’t eat, he’d shrivel up like dried herbs and if you don’t have raucous, intimacy-drenched sex, your relationship is going to shrivel up…like a cake of Follistim at the bottom of a vial.
The first thing you (and every chef out there who doesn’t want to shrivel up like dried herbs) need to do is reframe. A chef needs to separate out cooking from eating. Cooking is something Grant Achatz does for others. Baby-making sex is something you’re doing for someone else…namely, the baby. I mean, you truly get nothing out of it. An orgasm, maybe, just as Alton Brown gets to taste the sauce he’s preparing. But it’s not for him. It’s for someone else. And that is his job; that’s cooking. And baby-making sex? That’s not sex–that’s procreation. That’s something else. We can stop calling it sex if we’re getting the act confused with the leap-across-the-bed variety of sex. But sex to create a human being–that’s a job. That’s for someone else. That’s the equivalent of cooking in a restaurant.
Down-and-dirty sex or making love–that’s eating. That’s preparing food at home. That’s personal and intimate. When Alton cooks at home, it’s about eating. He is making something for himself–it’s not for others. Even if someone else gets to share the food after he has made it, the point is to make it special for himself, to think about himself, to think about his tastes and his wants.
And that’s why we’re all so damn bitter–because there are people out there who get to cook at home and we are people who cook as a job. We cook for others, first and foremost, and take care of ourselves at the end of the shift. Whereas others get to make love at home. They’re just cooking for themselves, but they get this bonus of getting a child out of it as well. It’s the difference between taking care of yourself and taking care of others. And who the hell wants to be a chef when they’re so hungry themselves?
Seriously, having sex when you’re infertile is the worst salt on the wound–thinking about how you can’t use the act to actually create a baby or how stressed you are with everything surrounding sex (especially the timing) or how sex in your mind leads to loss (who the hell wants to have sex when that’s your association?)–it would be like starving a chef for several days and once they’re ravenously hungry, ask them to prepare a meal for others. How can you possibly stand aroun
d smelling that food when you’re so hungry yourself?
And how can you possibly have sex when you are so miserable with infertility and sex is part of the definition of the condition?
You do it because you have to. Because it’s your job. It may be a job you hate at the moment complete with a bad boss (wait…that sounds like a menage-a-trois), but it’s your job and you can’t walk away from it in this economy. It pays the bills. And you have to do it if you want to get what you want. BUT, just because your restaurant job (a.k.a. baby-making sex) sucks, doesn’t mean that cooking at home needs to suck too. Cooking is the act, but distinguish between the bad restaurant job and the fun of cooking at home. Sex is the act, but distinguish between the suckiness of infertility and the fun of bonking your partner.
What you’ve stopped doing if you’re letting infertility seep into how you view your sex life is that you’ve stopped cooking in the kitchen. And you need to start doing it again by separating out what is work from what is play. Get back to the basics: why do you have sex…I mean, beyond that whole orgasm thing? Because it’s intimate. It’s special. Unless we’re cheating on our partner, it’s one thing that we do with them and no one else. It reconnects the two of you. Some people recommend giving it its importance by penciling it in on the calendar, making sure you make time for it.
But I think that just brings it back to resembling work. To me, that is the equivalent of taking Alton Brown or Grant Achatz out of their work spaces and sticking them at home to prepare a dinner party for 12. It’s a little bit better than the stress of restaurant work but not much.
I don’t think you can schedule sex as an appointment and bring back what is missing right now. I think what you can do is separate work from play by closing figurative doors around procreation sex just as you separate out work time from home time. This is harder than a job that takes place in a separate space that you can leave (since all sex is taking place inside the home rather than sometimes in a different space and sometimes at home), but with work encroaching on the home in the form of blackberries and emails, you’ve had some practice carving out time that is strictly non-work time. However you did it in regards to the far-reaching effects of technology, you need to mentally do it with your sex life.
Make sex for love completely different from sex for procreation. Literally. Schedule your baby-making sex as you would an appointment and keep the lovemaking spontaneous. Make baby-making sex all “yes, ma’am” or “yes, sir” and keep lovemaking sensual. For lovemaking, lie on your sides facing each other and whisper a conversation. Transition from a massage into sex. Wear something you would never wear for baby-making sex.
In other words, take your baby-making sex and stop pretending it’s intimate and wonderful. Don’t stand in your restaurant and pretend you’re cooking at home. You are not at home when you’re at work so cook accordingly. If it helps, keep your shirts on for the baby-making sex–downplay that act of baby-making sex rather than trying to punch up the normal sex. No one says the lovemaking has to get sexier–you can also take the other approach making the baby-making sex more perfunctory.
And be realistic–if you had the flu, sex would be the last thing on your mind. Understandably. And if you have a lupron headache, you do not need to beat yourself up for feeling like shit and not wanting to have sex. Treat infertility as the medical condition that it is and act accordingly. You may still need to go to work with the headache, but you don’t need to cook a full meal at home when you’re feeling like shit. That’s a night for carry-out, my friend.
Infertility, baby-making sex = job.
Screaming with the orgasm sex = fun.
So stop mixing business with pleasure and see if separating the two jump starts things in the bed again. Sometimes all you need is a different way to view things rather than stretching and trying to change the act altogether. A new way to view the world is a lot cheaper than immediately jumping to purchasing sex toys.
Though…you know, sex toys never hurt.
No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.
Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.
January 27, 2009 Comments Off on Barren Advice: Twenty-Six
The Book-y Sort (Children Mentioned)
I am a book-y sort of person, the type who likes to get a lot of books when I’m about to embark on a new experience. I am a fan of the travel guide, the cookbook, the home improvement book. When I started trying, I bought every pregnancy and baby book I could find. When I started wondering if there was a problem, I bought every infertility book I could find. You get the picture.
I’m excited because I get to go book shopping today for Lindsay! There is nothing quite like living vicariously through friends.
I know I usually write about infertility, adoption, and loss books, but today I’m going to write out a list of newborn, baby, and toddler books that worked for me and hopefully, you will add a few that worked for you or for people you know. This may be a post that you don’t feel like reading now but want to bookmark for the future (and it is labeled “read me” so you can find it in the future). I can promise you that I’m working on a fun sex question for Barren Advice for tomorrow so…it’s back to infertility then?
Since she will have a lot of time to read without visitors during her stay in the adoption state, my plan is to get everything I liked and everything I know other people liked and let her sort it out herself. These are my picks for baby books and you can add your own below if there are ones that you liked that either (1) were helpful or (2) gave you confidence.
In no particular order:
I have never heard someone say anything bad about Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block. I am not certain we would have made it through the first few months without it. His 5 S’s were so good that I typed up an executive summary for Josh that I still mail out to people who announce they are at their wits end. I’m sure someone will say in the comments section below that it didn’t work for them, but as I write this post, I have yet to hear someone say that this book wasn’t the most useful thing item a new parent can own.
I read the book when the twins were in the middle of that crying stage that lasts from about week 6–week 8. Josh was at work and when he came home, I set one of the twins down so they would start crying. Then I picked them back up and quieted them in under 15 seconds. After 2 weeks of crying (that was so bad that I wore a construction worker headset because I couldn’t handle the constant noise) it was like magic. The off switch.
His next book for toddlers didn’t work as well for us and by “as well” I mean “not at all.” But his first book was gold. And actually, in the grand scheme of books out there, his second book was bronze.
For most things, we turned to Elizabeth Pantley. She will be happy to know that we still use our key words before bed and the twins are now 4 1/2 years old. They have literally heard the same words every night for about 1460 days. The first book we used was her No-Cry Sleep Solution. We waited a long time to actually do any sleep training, but we accomplished it in two nights with this book and our kids have never had to relearn sleep habits. Plus, they go down and stay down until morning.
She now has a new book that is specifically for naps called the No-Cry Nap Solution. I actually got a copy of it even though we are past the nap stage. It focuses on newborns and babies, explaining how and when to drop a nap, how to lengthen naps, etc. All I’m saying is that our kids took a 3 hour nap until quite recently–I mean, when they were three, they were still taking a monster nap in the afternoon and going to bed from 7 pm to 7 am. Have I mentioned that I love Elizabeth Pantley?
I know every child is different, but her techniques really worked on the twins. We potty-trained with only one accident or so per child with her potty-training book and I like one of her books, Perfect Parenting, right now because it is organized by problem and gives an explanation for the behaviour and five or six solutions.
We were not a Weissbluth or Ferber family, though I’m picking those up today in case they work for Lindsay. We were also not big Sears and Sears sorts even though we own a bunch of their books. I liked the What to Expect series, though they sort of freaked me out a bit too.
The Baby Whisperer was fantastic for us. Not her first book, but the follow up one that explained more, The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems. She didn’t actually solve all our problems since, you know, our biggest problem was the whole premature thing. But she did help us figure out how much to feed them and other sorts of things.
I love Marguerite Kelly for her straightforward advice. We have the Mother’s Almanac, Father’s Almanac, and the Family Almanac. There’s a lot of overlap between the books, but she always makes me feel better when things are going to shit. She’s like a cup of hot tea.
We didn’t get to breastfeed and I got rid of all the breastfeeding books I bought in a moment of anger. But we did make all of our own baby food (the twins only ate from a jar once) as our comparable-pain-in-the-ass-feeding thing and the book we thought was the easiest was Mommy Made. I wish the “Daddy too” in the title wasn’t an afterthought because Josh spent a lot of time peeling apples and chopping string beans. But there you go.
We had a few twin books, though none that impressed me completely. A few preemie books, though none that impressed me completely.
What else have people found that have really worked for them? Which books would you give a second recommendation to on the list?
January 25, 2009 Comments Off on The Book-y Sort (Children Mentioned)
Circle Time: The Show and Tell Weekly Thread (Baby Stuff Mentioned and Shown)
Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.
Let’s begin.
So, it was a pretty rockin’ week. We got a new president and the ChickieNob got a new obsession; the bra I went to purchase today was so deeply on sale that I ended up with three of them; and…oh…wait…did I mention that Lindsay matched with a baby? Who is being born right now?
If you’re not having a good day, you may want to stop right here. I say this as a warning because there is a lot of baby stuff in this post and it may be difficult to read.
We were leaving this morning to go to the mall (to purchase said bra) and as I walked to the door, I saw an email pop up on my computer. And I swear to haShem, I knew in that moment that I had to go look at what it was because it was going to be something important. And it was Lindsay.
We got in the car and I immediately called her and she promised to call me back the moment she heard definitively. I clutched the phone (which, for those who know my dislike of cell phones, was a HUGE deal) the whole ride and only noticed when we reached the mall that I was dressed in all black but wearing furry brown shoes.
She called as we were nearing the Apple Store with the good news. I shared the news sentence by sentence with Josh as she filled me in on the details. The Wolvog sighed, “I am going to make that baby laugh” while the ChickieNob informed me that she was going to teach the baby how to swim.
I went to purchase the bra and discovered it was on sale. The saleslady went back to the rack to help me find two more in my size so I could have three for the price of one. She was this elderly lady and she was squinting at all of the tags with me and I just grabbed her and said, “this is the best week ever. We have a new president, my bra is on sale, and my friend just became a mother today!” This elderly saleswoman and I had an emotional outburst of tears–right amongst the push-up bras. I just wanted to add that in case years down the road, this post is still up and the baby is a middle schooler and reads it. I just want them to know that I shared the news of their birth with a random stranger amongst push-up bras.
Not to embarrass them, or anything.
I met up with Lindsay and some friends at the baby store. You know how sometimes you go to a wedding and you’re happy and all for the person but it isn’t really your happiness? Well, my sister’s wedding this summer was one of those events where everyone was happy. Literally. Every guest was grinning through the ceremony. And that’s what today was like. It was Lindsay’s happiness and we were all just along for the ride, but damn, we were a pretty joyous group.
Paying for a shitload of stuff
Hells yeah, throw another stuffed animal on the pile
If Mr. Badger had his way, it would be three-piece suits all the time
Clothes!
The first of many bottles of Dreft she’ll buy this yearWait, you want to see that happiness one last time?
Adoption match bumped sugar flowers down the queue!
What are you showing today?
Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.
ead of the Class:
| 1. Weebles Wobblog 2. Bottoms Off 3. Life After Infertility & Loss 4. An Unwanted Path 5. Delenn 6. Michelle’s Path 7. WiseGuy 8. Cara 9. Share Southern Vermont 10. Kristin/TheFertileInfertile 11. angry 12. Fractured Rainbows 13. Baby Smiling In Back Seat |
14. The Steadfast Warrior 15. The Life of Liv 16. TandCookies 17. Cara (parenting after loss) 18. dreamscometruesometimes 19. Pamela Jeanne 20. Mrs Spock 21. My Reality 22. On The Road to Baby 23. Busted 24. In Due Time 25. Rebecca @ Clumsy Kisses 26. Michelle |
27. Tales of the Phoenix 28. Michelle 29. Little Bluebirds Fly 30. Dora 31. Diana 32. a very open book 33. Holly 34. Momofonefornow 35. Vintage Mommy 36. Life Induces Thoughts, mostly random 37. The Real Bean |
- If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Saturday night (or earlier in the week or on Monday if you can’t do the weekend), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item. The list opens every Saturday night and closes on Tuesday night.
- You must mention Show and Tell and include a link back to this post in your post so people can find the rest of the class. This spreads new readership around through the list. This is now required.
- Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink for the post via the Mr. Linky feature (not your blog’s main url–use the permalink for your specific Show and Tell post).
- Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week. And everyone loves a good “ooooh” and “aaaah” and to be queen (or king) of the playground for five minutes so leave them a comment if you can.
- Did you post a link and now it’s missing?: I reserve the right to delete any links that are not leading to a Show and Tell post or are the blogging equivalent of a spitball.
- If you want it…
I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.
January 24, 2009 31 Comments
Friday Blog Roundup
I randomly taped footage of the Inauguration on Tuesday night, letting the VCR run for about 2 1/2 hours before I remembered to shut off the tape. I collected a random assortment of ball footage, photo montages of Barack Obama in his youth, and a great roundup of the day on the 11 p.m. news. I taped the footage because the ChickieNob requested it. Apparently, Inauguration Day was so much fun that the twins have decided it would be best to relive it every single day.
So at 6:45 each night this week, we’ve sat down on my bed to watch a half hour or so of the footage. Which, you know, makes it all kinds of trippy because we’re reliving the same day over and over and over again. I have watched Beyonce sing “At Last” at least fourteen times. I literally can mimic every single one of Michelle Obama’s facial expressions from her dance at the Mid-Atlantic ball.
Last night, the ChickieNob completely flipped out when we told her (with plenty of advance warning) that we’d be shutting off the VCR and saying goodnight to the Obamas. She threw herself backwards on the bed and kicked and screamed and writhed her way across our pillows. In a moment of panic, she even slapped Josh’s leg and then freaked herself out over having done so by rolling around on the bed further, screaming her need to see Beyonce and the Obamas again. It was the craziest display of love I’ve ever witnessed. Josh stared at her and said, “if I had known that you would become this obsessed this quickly, I would have voted for McCain.”
What do you do with a four-year-old who is softly moaning in her bed, her face stained with tears? Seriously? How will we make it through four years of this?
And even worse, that tape was our single blank tape in the house and now I can’t tape over the footage because if she flips out like a ninja just for turning it off after a half hour, how will she react if the tape was gone?
I am putting up one of our mishloach manot baskets on the Internet again this year. You know, I like to invite y’all into our family’s craziness. Doesn’t everyone want a ton of candy and cookies and our ode to the First Family? So look for that in the next week or so when I’ve pulled my act together and taken photos of the first batch of baskets so you can get a sense of the cool factor in joining out mishloach manot list.
I made Josh take care of it (i.e. remove him from the yard) and as he was walking back there to do so he pointed out the strange coincidence of the event and the post. “It’s almost like the zombie squirrels aren’t just a film idea. It’s like they’re literally coming for you.”
Thanks, Josh, I guess you really wanted to miss out on all your sleep now that I’m going to keep you awake with not only talking about my feelings, but now talking about my fears and zombie squirrels. Good job.
It was the night before my sister’s wedding and we were going to the rehearsal dinner. Josh and I saw it and started snickering. We ended up pulling over and snapping the picture even though we looked like idiots photographing a random hotel sign in really nice clothes. But there you have it.
An Unwanted Path had a post about remembering her miscarriage. The line that moved me most came in the middle: “No, it’s not that I haven’t met him; it’s that you haven’t met him yet. Your disbelief in my acute pain arises simply from your inability to see what I see. But it’s right there, if you look hard enough with your sallow heart.” I had chills when I read: “My child is not simply his death, no matter how much you think he is.” An absolutely gorgeous post that will turn loss on its head.
Dear Monkey had a post that serves as background information for her new blog, but the writing really struck me especially the details about her emotional transformation after recurrent pregnancy loss. The final line of the post will gut you, especially after you read what comes before: “And every night in bed, before I drift off to sleep, the last thing I do is mentally rock an infant in my arms. Dear Monkey. This is for you.”
On to Plan B had a heartbreaking post about an adoption plan which was interrupted after 38 hours as a mother. I cried over the line: “I was totally and completely hers, but she was no longer mine.” Your heart will break for everyone one thousand times and you will also want to hug Pepper tightly.
Lastly, Baby Smiling in Back Seat started a series of posts a few weeks ago (and you can join in too every Thursday) and I really loved this week’s musings on luck. I cracked up over this thought: “Seven years of infertility can turn you into a walking bundle of contradictions. Baby-crazed yet avoid most babies? Check. Can’t stand teenage mothers but hungry for paparazzi photos of Jamie Lynn Spears? Check. Sort of superstitious but not really? Apparently so.” I liked her idea on the power of placebo. Join the conversation on lucky charms in her comment section.
The roundup to the Roundup: We love the First Family; we are already grooving on Purim; zombie squirrels are coming
for me; and lots of bloggage to read. Plus, if you come back her Saturday night, I will show you the cool sugar flowers that I made this week.
January 23, 2009 Comments Off on Friday Blog Roundup
Poking, Nudging, and Whining
children mentioned…
After four years of carefully keeping toy guns and visuals out of the house, my hard work was undone by the other children at school. It turns out that the Wolvog has learned to make a gun out of Legos and has been shooting at his sister which “hurts her feelings.” We had a lecture last weekend about why this isn’t acceptable.
“We are wholly anti-gun in this house. Your dad and I walked in the Million Mom March. If we weren’t such observant Jews, we’d be Quaker. Quaker! I am really really upset by this. We are pacifists in this house. Do you understand what this mean?” I asked them.
“Yes,” they both answered without pause.
“What does it mean?” I asked. “What does it mean to be a pacifist?”
“It means,” the ChickieNob told me coolly and confidently, “that we tease and annoy.”
“No,” said Josh. “That’s what it means to be a vegan. Pacifism is totally different.”
January 22, 2009 Comments Off on Poking, Nudging, and Whining
