Posts from — August 2009

I am happy that in the first 24 hours, we already had over 50 people playing Blogger Bingo, but frankly, I want more. Because…well…the more people playing, the easier it is to find posts because you have more blogs to search. So, my goal is to have 100 for this first round.

Think of it this way, what if one day the whole world starts playing Blogger Bingo and it becomes a late night game show and people are walking around sporting “I freakin’ love Blogger Bingo and gave up my home life in order to play it incessantly” t-shirts? You could say that you were in on the very first round and were immortalized on the participant list to prove it.

Yes?

No?

Thank you to everyone who has signed up to play Blogger Bingo. Not just because it took three showers and a car drive to mentally piece together all the elements of the game, but because it is an enormous distraction right now. We are worried about some appointments this week; lay-in-bed-and-stare-at-the-ceiling-at-2-a.m. worried. But in the end, it’s not my story to tell, therefore, I don’t feel like I can be the one to tell it here.

I have tried other distractions. We cleaned the house tonight in preparation for a friend coming over, our heads down over piles of paper, sorting and tossing and filing and speaking about nothing. Cleaning is usually enough for me; organizing, settling, straightening. But after a half hour, we both stopped. I apologize in advance to my friend for the shoes in the front hallway but I’m not going to bother with them tonight.

Instead of focusing on what is happening this week, I will transport you back five years ago to this very time period, when the twins were finishing up their stint in the NICU. Some time during their second week in the NICU, I had bumped into a nurse practitioner by the elevators around 11 p.m. She asked me how I was and I sort of did that head nod thing you do when you don’t trust yourself to speak because you’re afraid you’re going to cry.

Even though I was on my way to pump (oh for the love, I was always on my way to pump), she steered me towards her office and had me unload all of my fears, starting with the smallest ones (that my breast milk would never come in…which…er…turned out to be true) to the largest ones (that the twins would die). And tucked somewhere in the middle of no breast milk and death was this event looming inside my head–my son’s bris.

The reality is that no mohel would touch him. He was two pounds with an inability to regulate his body temperature for longer than twenty minutes. I didn’t blame them and I knew we were exempt from the 8 day rule with circumcision, but I was terrified of putting him through a bris at home. He came home on a heart monitor for tachycardia and I couldn’t imagine how we’d get through the service emotionally. Not when he was so small, so fragile (and at the same time, so ornery, so feisty).

The nurse practitioner, an orthodox Jewish woman, told me that she couldn’t help with the breast milk thing and she couldn’t make promises about their future health, but she could solve the bris problem. We could hold the bris in the hospital on the day before they went home.

And that is how we held my son’s bris in the conference room at a Jesuit, crucifix-on-the-wall hospital. We found a mohelet who was also a surgeon. The nurses came down to help us care for the twins and be there in the event of an emergency (and one exclaimed afterward in her thick Southern accent that she was just so tickled to be part of something so exciting!). We brought some family and items from the two men the twins are named after. We had the traditional Jewish service and the nurses sensitively turned off his heart monitor for the moment of the circumcision so we wouldn’t need to hear the alarms going off when we all knew they would be going off.

After all of the worrying, all of the fretting, in the end, I got the traditional Jewish service I wanted. The service I needed. It may not have looked like the service we planned when they were still in-utero, but it was beautiful and unique and we made it our own.

I am distracting myself from everything going on this week by remembering how things have always turned out fine in the end; that people have helped us through and that the important things have always been cushioned with a safe landing. That so much of the worrying (except that damn breast milk thing) has never come to fruition. That humans are flexible and we roll with new information because we have no choice but to roll with new information. That we have been lucky. That regardless of anything else, coming through that beginning, we are one of the lucky ones.

The bris itself is the better story. More than how I locked myself in the bathroom and the mohelet had to come inside and listen to me cry for a half hour and only charged us her regular rate even though she also provided some on-the-spot therapy. Or how I was insane by that point, a reaction to the Reglan I was taking for the non-existent breast milk. Those aren’t really pleasant things to talk about and I am distracting right now.

I am placing my head back in the sand. Thinking about the bris. My grandfather’s hat on a chair. The melting ice cream. The ChickieNob’s head tucked under my chin as I bit my lip.

Welcome to the first ever game of Blogger Bingo. The prize for this round is a $20 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. Please read the directions below in order to understand how the game is played and sign up if you wish to participate. Sign up closed on August 23rd at 11 p.m. (EST). Once sign up closes, you will need to wait until the next round to sign up to play.

Why Blogger Bingo? Why not? And I need something to battle the late summer blues and this game will spread around blog traffic, hopefully increase commenting, and celebrate blogging in general. And I felt drawn to the idea of making up a new game. And even if you don’t win the gift certificate, you will definitely win increased blog traffic (read below to see how this will happen). So…it’s win, win?

These bloggers are currently signed up to participate in this round of Blogger Bingo. If you would like to be added to the list, keep reading below the list.

1. Stirrup Queens
2. Late for a Very Important Pregnancy
3. Production, Not Reproduction
4. Confessions of A Cocktail Napkin
5. Weebles Wobblog
6. Baby Smiling In Back Seat
7. Building Heavenly Bridges
8. I’m a Smart One
9. Just Another Mommy Blog
10. Infertili- T & A
11. Opposite of Oops
12. A Little Sweetness
13. Just Multiply by 2
14. Sippy Cups Are Not For Starbucks
15. You expect my uterus to do what?
16. Mommy Someday?
17. Making Me Mom
18. Dragondreamer’s Lair
19. Relaxing Doesn’t Make Babies
20. I Digress
21. My Pathway to Motherhood
22. My Little Drummer Boys
23. Maybe Baby?
24. Baby’s Breath (tales of a brown-eyed-girl)
25. Okaasan Mommy and More
26. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings
27. In Due Time
28. Woman Anyone?
29. My Life In Stirrups
30. Mrs. Spit Spouts Off
31. Conception Deception
32. Our Someday Family
33. One Who Understands
34. Elana’s Musings
35. IF You Only Knew
36. Once an Infertile
37. Semi-fertile
38. Twists of Fate
39. Thinking Miracles
40. Sparkly Things Distract Me
41. Perchancetodream
42. happy-go-lucky
43. Scarlet Baby
44. Justamere IVF
45. Our Family Beginnings
46. From Chaos Comes Clarity
47. Creating Motherhood
48. Yes, We’re One of THOSE Couples
49. Tantrums and Tequila
50. Child of G-d
51. Not Just About Cancer
52. Parenthood for Me
53. Alana-isms
54. Trying to get Knocked up by Another Man
55. Rottweilers Ate My Laptop
56. Three is a Magic Number
57. TheNewLifeOfNancy
58. We got hitched. We bought the 4 bedroom house. Now what???
59. Raining Raining
60. MeAndBaby’s Blog
61. All Aboard the Pity Boat
62. The Life and Times of KitVonD
63. Life, Family and the Pursuit of Sanity
64. HopeinBriarrose
65. In One Ear
66. Getting There
67. Infertility Instability
68. The Mis-Adventures of a Modern Day Farmer’s Wife
69. Beautiful Mess
70. All Grown Up
71. Blurbs By Jennifer
72. My fertility journey with PCOS
73. BillieGirl
74. Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…
75. Exile In Kidville
76. Isn’t TTC Supposed To Be Fun?!
77. Life After Infertility & Loss
78. Not a Fertile Myrtle
79. All My Peccadilloes
80. Run Amok Amok
81. Once A Mother
82. Reproductive Jeans
83. A Page In My Book
84. Are we there yet?
85. Ambivalent Womb
86. The Unfair Struggle
87. What a Shame about Me
88. Salvageable
89. Hold My Hope
90. Three of a kind working on a full house…
91. little birdhouse
92. Confessions Of A College Angel
93. Birds and Squirrels
94. Project Kjetil
95. The Light at the End of Our Tunnel
96. The Queen’s Rambles
97. I Won’t Fear Love
98. PCOS Blogger
99. Life with Endometriosis and PCOS
100. Sorry; the list is now closed. A new round will open soon.

How to Play (yes, it seems complicated at first, but if you read carefully, you will see how simple it is in practice):

1. Sign up to participate. If you are not on the list, you will not be eligible to win. You will need to provide a blog name, blog url (yes, you need to be a blogger to participate), the number for the card (see below) which you wish to use, and an email to use to contact you if I have questions. The categories on all the cards are the same though the order varies. Unfortunately, like IComLeavWe, you cannot participate if your blog is password protected. And another unfortunate thing is that sign up closed on August 23rd.
2. Please place this code on your blog and keep it up until the end of the game. It will help connect people to the project and show other bloggers who are participating that you are on the list. You will be sent a reminder to remove it when a winner has been named. You will not be added to the list until the code is in place.
3. The Participant List can be found above these directions.
4. You randomly chose a bingo card colour during sign-up. Scroll down to the bottom of this post and click on your card. Then print out a copy so you can have it at home. Feel free to take notes on it. You cannot switch cards after signing up.
5. Starting August 24th, I will pull one card each day. Each card has one category on it and that category will be listed in the top, permanent post on my blog (the one that contains a link to the current issue of the LFCA). I know, tricky isn’t it? You will need to keep on top of things in order to have the best chance of winning because the card will be erased after 24 hours and a new one pulled. As I said, the card states one of the categories that you see listed on the bingo cards at the bottom of this post. For instance, I may pull a card that states: “find a blog post that mentions coffee.”
6. In addition to pulling a card, I will also list a date. The post you are looking for comes before, after, or during that date (more below). For example, now the command might state: “find a blog post that mentions coffee written after April 22, 2008.” The date matters.
7. Read blogs that are contained in the participant list to look for a post that matches the card of the day. For example, if I pull the card that says, “a post that made you sad before August 15, 2009,” you will look for a post prior to August 15th that made you sad on any of the blogs on the participant list. You may not list a post from your own blog; it needs to come from another person. All posts need to come from someone on the participant list, it cannot come from a blog that is not participating.
8. Leave a comment on that post (even if it is an old post) and then keep track of the url of that post at home (bookmark it somewhere). When you call Bingo, you will need to turn in the posts you used to “mark your space.” Please leave a comment that shows that you read the post. Just writing, “nice post!” does not count as a comment.
9. Once you have found a post on a person’s blog, you cannot use that blog again during this round. In other words, if you use a post from my blog as your “a post that made me sad” you cannot use another post from my blog the next day when a new card is drawn.
10. When you get five in a row, email me with the word “Bingo!” in the subject line. In order to win you will need to provide the five blog posts that fit the cards drawn as well as prove that you left comments on those posts (and have the comments be left on different days–not clumped together timestamp-wise after realizing you have Bingo).
11. The first person who emails me with a winning card is the winner. The winner will be listed at the top of my blog in the space that normally holds the daily category.
12. If all goes well, I will do this game again soon after we have a winner.

Okay, so you’ve waited to sign up until you read all the rules–good for you. Here is a second space to sign up for this current Blogger Bingo round. Remember, the list will close at August 23rd at 11 p.m. (EST).

You have a lot of questions about Blogger Bingo? They are hopefully answered here. Scroll down to get to the Q and A session. It addresses what to do if you are reading this post after the game has begun, how I’ve deterred cheating from happening, and what to do if you can’t find a post that day.

The Point: this game fulfills three things that I think are fun: using blogs to get people to think and feel, ensure that people leave comments, and create community.

More questions? Didn’t find it on the longer post about Blogger Bingo? Then email me…

Here is the master list for the 21st tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

This particular book is open to the larger, non-infertile community, though I ask that you write “children mentioned” at the top of your post on post day if you write about your children in the post.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: It Sucked, and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita
Author: Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce)
Start Date: August 18
Question Due: September 30th
Question List Sent Out: October 2nd
Post Date: October 5th

(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)
Something New: the participants on this tour will choose the next book.

About It Sucked, and Then I Cried…: Obviously not an IF book, but relates to blogging. I’ve seen so many people say they’re reading it that it made sense to read it together. If not sure if her m/c is mentioned in the book, but it is an interesting story AND postpartum depression affects IF women 4 times more than the general population. So an important topic too as it relates to PPD and post-adoption depression. And it’s in most libraries if you don’t want to buy the hardcover.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On October 5th, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on It Sucked, and Then I Cried…. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on September 30th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters
The Road Less Travelled
Wild Women of the Universe
Infertility Instability
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
Sticky Feet
PCOS Blogger
Desperately Seeking Baby

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on September 30th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read It Sucked, and Then I Cried… by September 30th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on September 30th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on October 2nd, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on October 5th, people will begin to post their entry. I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

Welcome to the twentieth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: Moose
Author: Stephanie Klein
Start Date: June 30th
Post Dates: August 17
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)

About Moose: From Amazon: “Whether Klein is describing her life as a chubby adolescent camper–getting weighed on a meat scale, petting past curfew, and “chunky dunking” in the lake–or what it’s like now as a fit mother, having one-sided conversations with her newborn twins about the therapy they’ll one day need, this hilarious yet grippingly vulnerable book will remind you what it was like to feel like an outsider, to desperately seek the right outfit, the right slang, the best comeback, or whatever that unattainable something was that would finally make you fit in.” Not an infertility-related book, but it will be a great jumping board to a discussion on body as it relates to infertility.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. You’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Moose.)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (below this post)
Weebles Wobblog
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
The Road Less Travelled
Baby Making Journey
All Things Deb
Trying for a Baby
The Dragondreamer’s Lair

Even if haven’t read Moose, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The current group chooses the next book. The 21st tour will be It Sucked, and Then I Cried… by Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce). Obviously not an IF book, but relates to blogging. I’ve seen so many people say they’re reading it that it made sense to read it together. If not sure if her m/c is mentioned in the book, but it is an interesting story AND postpartum depression affects IF women 4 times more than the general population. So an important topic too as it relates to PPD and post-adoption depression.

The Details: Tour #21 will start August 18. Participants will read It Sucked, and Then I Cried… by Heather Armstrong. On or before September 30th, everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you by October 2nd. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on October 5th. I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

Though the book club is usually closed to those in the ALI community, I think that postpartum depression is a topic that needs wider discussion. Therefore, I’m opening this book to the larger community with sensitivity in posting. If you have a friend who wishes to join along for this book, they can join along too.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #21, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The participants on the It Sucked, And Then I Cried… book tour will choose the book for tour #22.

Happy reading.