Posts from — November 2009

No, I didn’t just do a secret cycle.  We’re still poor and still on the fence about when to return to treatments.

A woman named Lynsee just gave birth online and I didn’t watch. Perhaps it is a testament to how greatly I’m affected by the stories of loss I’ve read, but knowing what can go wrong in birth, I didn’t want to witness a live-feed of emotional anguish. Also a testament to how greatly influenced I am by my own story and those of others in the community, knowing what can go right in birth, I didn’t want to witness their enormous joy knowing how out-of-reach it is for 7.3 million Americans.

In a day-and-age where we obsess over celebrity pregnancies, magazines hold polls over who will become pregnant next, and organizations pay millions of dollars for first baby photos, it was never too far a jump to get to a live-feed of a birth (as opposed to a taped birth). Essentially, it’s just reality television on the Web. And just as we follow the stories of musical contestants or weight loss achievers week after week, it makes sense that people would be interested in the constant updates from conception to birth from just your average, American, knocked-up girl. Lynsee didn’t just aim a camera at her vagina the day of the birth (actually, I don’t know if people were actually able to see the baby crown. As I said, I didn’t watch it, but I have to imagine that the vulva would be the most interesting location to observe during a birth). She roped in viewers by covering every small detail of her pregnancy in blog posts leading up to the event.

It’s the ultimate in reality television interaction. Viewers could subscribe to be part of her group and chat with her DURING THE DELIVERY. Did I have to scream that? Perhaps, and again, this is a testament to how greatly I’m affected by the loss blogs I read, but could you imagine the emotional implications for Lynsee if birth had not gone according to plan? If she had fallen on the other side of the statistics? I am trying to imagine even my twins’ premature birth being played out over the Web and having viewers at home IMing me unhappy faces when the doctor announces their low birth weight. How I would feel to read newspaper articles written after the fact and blog posts? It’s one thing for people to comment on my commentary. It’s quite another for them to be witness to this intimate event.

But taking that into account, isn’t the next frontier a live-feed of fertility treatments?  Especially since we’re so obsessed over which celebrities have used them to build their families?

Watch our hypothetical blogger, Sarah, start injecting lupron. Watch her flip out on her partner via a Web cast and then sink down onto the kitchen floor sobbing from the hormones. Watch her nurse a nasty headache and beat herself up over drinking a cup of coffee. Watch her go in for a lining check and follicle scan, watch the sonographer make an off-colour joke while he has a camera in her vagina. Watch her opening the clinic bills and sitting on hold with the insurance company for 38 exciting minutes! Watch Sarah give herself injections directly into her stomach until it resembles a milky way constellation only marred by bruises that she counts as black holes.

Watch Sarah go for the egg retrieval and learn they got 24 eggs. Watch her get the fertilization report that only 10 fertilized. Watch her cry when she gets the phone call that through additional attrition, those 10 embryos are down to 4. Watch her experience mild OHSS! Watch her return to the clinic for the transfer and find out that they only have two decent-looking embryos to transfer and nothing currently left to freeze due to fragmentation. Watch her drive home from the transfer staring out the window completely numb.

Watch our intrepid Sarah go through bedrest, standing in front of pregnancy tests in the store and willing herself not to buy them, and returning to the store and purchasing three different brands of tests and a Snickers bar. Watch Sarah receive a pregnancy announcement via email complete with sonogram picture. Watch her lean over the bed so her partner can inject PIO into her ass (okay, it’s more her hip, but we’ll call it her ass because it will bring more viewers). Watch her attempt to massage out the PIO lumps. Watch her wake up at 4 a.m. and use one of her pregnancy tests only to see a stark white space where the additional line should be. Watch her chuck this pee-soaked test in the trash can and then fish it out five minutes later to check again. Watch her sit through a baby shower, unable to drink because she might be pregnant but unable to get through the event without a strong gin and tonic. Watch Sarah go in for that final blood draw, unable to give up hope that she might get a good beta despite the negative pregnancy tests at home.

Watch Sarah wait until 4:31 p.m. for the phone call telling her that all of her work was for naught.

Maybe that’s why we’ll stop at obsessing over which celebrities utilize IVF instead of setting up reality television shows in clinics. Because the reality is that treatments are depressing. Even when they work, those pregnant don’t instantaneously release their breath. Assisted conception isn’t the Lynsee-like joy of going to doctor’s appointments and picking out nursery colours. It’s about holding on to something tenuous. And when they don’t work, it’s about anguish and frustration and anger and future hope.

Personally, I think an assisted conception live-feed would be even more meaningful considering the stakes. Considering what it took to get there and the viewpoint of the pregnant woman. Of seeing the larger forest of childbirth and family building beyond the initial trees of sex=baby.

But perhaps the general public isn’t ready for that yet.

Cross-posted with BlogHer.

I am currently between two big trips.  The first came this past week.  I went up to New York to take part in the In the Know Film Festival.  You can currently go over to the sight and watch the three films, and they’ll soon have up the webcast that went out live on Thursday night.  I think I remembered to tuck my hair behind my ear.  After I sat back down, I started panicking, trying to remember if I did it.  I get sort of a deer-in-headlights thing going when I get up in front of people to speak.

It was actually a very cool event and I was lucky to get to watch all the films.  Two of them made me very weepy.  The finalists were all there, so I got to talk with them afterward.  Before each film was shown, the finalist got to get up and speak and for the second one, the couple said happy birthday to their child at home who was turning two.  During the film, there was a line where they said that if she wasn’t pregnant by the time her child’s second birthday rolled around, she was returning to IVF.  And it was moving to be there for that shrug, that cusp when you know what you have to head back in and do.

Seriously, I look like a random child who has wandered into this picture.  Why am I so damn short?  This is a picture of all the finalists and judges.  Barb Collura, the head of Resolve is over towards the right.  And the two doctors, Dr. Stillman and Dr. Hummel are on either side.  And David Stern from EMD Serono is in the back.

Oh my G-d, the man next to me is bending over and I STILL don’t even come up to his shoulder.  This is me with the finalists.

Plus, I got to spend the night with Magpie, who is so much fun.  We met at BlogHer this summer.  She told me all these great stories about ballet that I brought home to the ChickieNob.  It was nice to have a friend there.

The next trip is much bigger.  I’m flying out to Chicago to film this amazing documentary for PBS.  I’m really only there for a few hours.  Early the next morning, I fly to Detroit to visit a friend and do a reading.  And then it’s back home again.

I used to be fantastic at travel.  I would pick up and go…anywhere.  Everywhere.  It didn’t matter if I didn’t speak the language.  I would learn a few phrases before I left and then start picking up the new language in a matter of minutes after landing.  I traveled with friends or I’d travel by myself or I’d go over with friends and then split up for the day and do my own thing.  And it never phased me.  One time, I was looking for the Kiku Mistu and I couldn’t find it, but I met up with a random American woman who was in the same neighbourhood looking for underwear because she had lost all of hers (and it didn’t even occur to me to ask her how this happened) and I brought her back to our apartment at the top of Las Ramblas and we went out with her for the next two nights.

And as I’ve already said, nothing phased me.

And now, I am a terrible traveler.  If my brother hadn’t been with me in New York, I wouldn’t have eaten.  I would have gone back to the room after the event and sat there cross-legged on the bed until it was time to go to sleep rather than simply stepping outside and grabbing dinner in a restaurant.  I’ve become a nervous traveler who is often so overwhelmed with Herculean tasks such as tracking down coffee that I give up and go to sleep instead.  I’m not a nervous traveler when I’m with Josh; I’m just a nervous traveler when I’m alone.

Has anyone else changed like this over time?

When I was in Oslo, Norway, I went to two sites for the two different Vigeland brothers.  The first was the famous Vigeland sculpture park, which is filled with these gorgeous, rounded, granite statues depicting beautiful scenes of parents cuddling children, lovers embracing, and people dancing.  There is a piece called the monolith that consists of 121 granite people climbing over each other as they reach towards the sky.  The park is beautiful and someone told me that Gustav Vigeland is buried on the grounds.

A little bit outside the city is his younger brother’s mausoleum.  Where people can go to the park all day long, the mausoleum is only open for a few hours every week.  It’s hard to find and few get to see it.  It is this dark room and you need to bow down to enter the tiny doorway.  His ashes are above the door and there is this feeling of bitterness, making each person bow to him though he never got the recognition when he was alive that his older brother got as an artist.

The story is that the two brothers stopped speaking to one another when Gustav claimed that Emanuel was mooching off his vision.  I sort of prefer Emanuel’s art to Gustav’s.  I mean, I love Vigeland park and spent a lot of time crocheting there, but Emanuel takes risks that Gustav never took.  And entering the mausoleum is a sensory experience.  Sound hangs in the air so every movement you make is audibly recorded and remembered.

The mausoleum walls are covered with paintings and they convey all of the emotions missing from his brother’s work.  Babies are simply born and cuddled in Gustav Vigeland’s artistic vision.  In Emanuel’s, they are dead or raw and bleeding from childbirth or climbing over one another with disregard for anyone else.  The embraces aren’t loving and gentle.  They are frantic, anxious.  Lovers are gripping each other in ecstasy, skeletons are having sex, and in every painting and sculpture, there is all of the anguish of life coupled with the carnal realities that also make it beautiful.

Emanuel sometimes feels a little more real.

I told the story of these two spaces to Josh as he drove me to the train.  I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about them except that they represent how I react to travel as of late.  I think my earlier years were very Gustavian, beautiful and soaring and seeing all the good around me in new experiences.  And travel as of late has been a little more Emanuelian, noticing the fleeting safety in life in both the physical and emotional sense.

The only other way that I can describe it is that there are two cats.  One is fluffy and white and clean and purring and wants to sit on your lap and be stroked.  And the other has three legs and the hair is matted and there’s dried blood on his tail BUT he also shits gold.  I think we can all see the immediate good in the first cat, but the second cat has his good points too.

I don’t think it is necessarily a terrible thing that I am complete immobilized emotionally from travel.  I think it speaks to how much I love my home, how much I love Josh and the twins, how much I hate to be apart from them.

I got off the train (and the story of the two men sitting behind me talking about their cat child–“the little fellow”–will need to wait for another day because this post is getting too damn long) and my mum picked me up with the twins.  We swung by the food store and then I spent the afternoon making vegetable stock from scratch, turning it into butternut squash soup and potatoes dauphinoise.  I cleaned up the house and played legos and we read Shel Silverstein poetry.  And I thought to myself, “this is what I do really well.”

I may not travel much anymore alone, I may not pick up random strangers off the street and go bar hopping with them.  I don’t randomly choose a country and take off for a few weeks.  But I am really good at being at home.  Though I don’t shit gold.  Yet.

Picture a swank hotel inhabited by the most gorgeous guests in the world.  A tattooed model-like man lounges shirtless in the hallway to get better cell phone reception.  Every woman is dressed in identical knee-high black boots with three-inch heels.  Even the man at the front desk is metrosexualed within an inch of his life, with stylishly tousled hair and manicured stubble.

Oh, and then there’s me, Dumpy McDumperstein, sitting in the lobby wearing clogs and cords so I can use the free Internet access.

I picked up my computer in the room and told my brother that I was going to go downstairs and sit in the lounge so I could write the Roundup.  “Like that?” he said, sort of dubiously.  He mentioned the fact that I’m not really dressed for the bar area.  That I might stick out a bit.  Except here’s the thing–even though one of these things is wholly unlike all the others, no one is looking at me.  Literally, it’s like they catch a glimpse of my Earth shoes out of the corner of their eye and they will themselves not to look at the blight on the lobby.

Feeling all kinds of classy right now.

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I came up with the most brilliant idea ever while I was on the train.  When people ask me where all my ideas come from, I tell them two places–driving and the shower.  That’s where I think of everything.  So a train, where it’s essentially driving, but with all need to pay attention to the road removed meant that my brain was on overdrive.

So, what if the Creme de la Creme was blogosphere-wide?  I knew I couldn’t write that many blurbs, so it won’t be exactly the same, but think of the Creme on a much wider scale with bridges being build between communities.  So, the Creme is only for us, but the Golden Haiku is for EVERYONE, including us.  Anyone in the ALI community can (and should) do both lists, which will post a few weeks apart.  People outside the ALI community can only do the Golden Haiku list.  Please spread the word to blogs you read outside of the ALI community.

Thank goodness for long trips.

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If you live in or near Detroit, I’ll be reading there next Sunday (the 15th).  The reading is at 10 a.m. in West Bloomfield.  Please let me know if you’ll be there.

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The Weekly What If: (before I ask this what if, Josh wants all of you to know that he came up with it AND it was thought-up under the threat of violence.  I told him I would punch him in the ass if he didn’t tell me one).  Built on the idea of the new show, Flash Forward, if given the opportunity to see two minutes of your future, would you take it (remember, it could bring you peace, or it could bring you absolute misery for the time leading up to it) and what day specifically would you want to see yourself on?

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And now, the blogs…

Babymaking 101 has a post about why she dislikes Halloween.  It’s not the reasons you’re thinking of and you’ll need to read the story in order to learn what made her hate the holiday.  It’s a personal story, but I think I’ll remember it every Halloween.

Sunnywithachanceof has a post about remembering to breathe.  It is a moving post about her relationship with her husband, about hurt and forgiveness and learning how to move forward.  She writes, “He can’t understand why I would forgive him. Why I would continue loving him. He is part of my little miracles. He helped make them breathe with me.”  I was moved to tears from her words.

Weebles Wobblog has a post about a parenting after adoption moment that will make you bow down to her brilliance.  It is literally the epitome of great parenting, where she helps her child move through tough emotions, keeps perspective for herself, and emerges out the other side with all parties unscathed.  It is a must read–not just for those parenting after adoption, but has great lessons on when (and how) not to take words to heart.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post about the life outside her front door.  She writes, “It really hit me then: there was a whole world out there that, until that point — sheltered as we were in our cozy, childless cocoon — we really weren’t aware existed. (Dimly, perhaps, but not in a real, tangible way.) A world beyond our grasp, beyond our comprehension.”  It is the end of the post that will make you hold your breath as you consider all the possibilities unlived and how the simple shifting of hours can open up insights into other worlds.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am really tacky.  I thought up a new project.  Answer Josh’s Weekly What If.  And lots of great blogs to read.

Before we start, please read through this whole long post because there are some small details you need to follow in order to have this run smoothly.

Those in the adoption/loss/infertility community know that I’ve created the Creme de la Creme list for the past four years, a compilation of a single post from every participating blog.  As I’ve said before, the impulse behind this list are the ubiquitous award ceremonies that crawl out of their hiding spaces usually around December or January. Awards are nice–it’s good to honour someone and mark big accomplishments. But we all have a best post tucked into our archives. We all have words that have moved another person or ideas that have kicked off a series of musings. Bloggers are writers and all of us deserve to be celebrated.

As I sat on a train recently, I thought about how cool it would be if this were a blogosphere-wide project where all could participate and become exposed to other corners of the blogosphere.  Where book bloggers could meet political bloggers and cooking bloggers could meet deaf bloggers and we could also catch a small glimpse into each other’s worlds.

So the birth of the Golden Haiku, a blogosphere-wide project collecting a single, great post from each participating blog.  This project is open to every single blogger in the world–from those who just started writing to those who have four years under their blogging belt.  For every type of subject matter, for every type of person, from gay men living in Kansas to elderly women living in New York City to mothers in London and political activists in the Middle East.  Literally everyone.  Broken down into small, bite-sized categories for easy navigation.

Here is what you need to do if you want to participate.

• Read through your archives from 2009.
• Pick your favourite post–the one that you think gives people a taste of your blog.  Don’t get hung up on the word “best.”  It’s the one that you’d be really bummed if you ever lost.  Think of it this way–it’s like picking out clothes for a party.  You want to look your best, but we all know that life doesn’t hinge on one outfit.  Just go with the one you like.
• Submit it by filling out this form.  Please pay attention to the directions on the form.  Pretty please.  If you don’t follow the guidelines, I will delete your entry and then you just waste both our times.
• Part of filling out the form (which you’ll see when you click over) is that you need to describe your post in up to 17 words.  If you put more than 17, I will delete from the end of the blurb to get to 17 words.  So your blurb will look funny and everyone will know that you didn’t follow directions.
• Sit back and relax and wait for the list to be posted on January 15th.  And then read to your heart’s content.

Other FAQ-like things:

Why is it named the Golden Haiku?

Because the key point is that the description of each blog post is seventeen words (or up to 17 words).  Sort of like a haiku.  And they’re the best post of the year from each blog–a gold medal sort of post.  And because haikus are a brief look at a complex object or moment and blog posts are small gasps in the larger literary breath.  And because I liked it, damn it.  Can’t you just roll with the name?

What do you hope to accomplish with this?

There are so many possibilities for this project.  For someone wishing to know more about a certain area of the blogosphere, this will serve as a doorway into that world and hopefully build understanding between communities.  For someone new to blogging, it will be a chance to find other blogs writing about the same topic.  And like a red wine reduction, it will be distilled into an intense taste of each blog–a great post rather than the wild-card-and-possibly-mundane post currently at the top of the blog when a person starts reading a new site.  By providing blurbs, you will be able to scan the list quickly and possibly find that as much as you thought you had no interest in a certain area, that there actually are blog posts you want to read on a certain topic.  Yes, I’m essentially creating an index to the blogopshere, but it’s also a snapshot of the year, a meal of great posts.

I’m having a hard time visualizing this.  What will it look like?

There will be a main post that will serve as a portal to all other rooms.  The room will contain a clickable map to the blogosphere, so people can jump straight to a certain category.  Each category will be contained on a single page with links to all the posts and blogs within it.  Each category may be organized into smaller subsections as well.  Because there will be too many posts to contain on one page, this will make the list organized and readable.  It will be easy to find the types of posts you’re looking to read.  I also hope that people will jump over to read categories they never had considered reading before.

What is the deadline?

To ensure that your post is part of the list when it goes up on January 15th, please submit your link by December 30th 11 p.m. (EST).  Anything that comes in after that will be added, but it will go up when I have a moment to add it.  I will continue to update the list until March 1, 2010.  After that The Golden Haiku will be closed for 2009 posts.  I will hold this again next year for 2010 posts and it will open again in November.

How many posts can I submit?

One, just one, and only one.  Do not submit two and put them in two different categories.  I will be scanning the list for duplicates.  If I see this, I will delete out all entries and you will be banned from the list.  The exception is when you have two separate blogs.  The project is one post per blog (so a blogger who writes in three spaces can actually have three posts–one from each space).

Can I switch my post?

Nope–once it is on the list, you can remove your post, but you can’t switch it out for another one.  The reason is that a lot of work goes into compiling these lists and once I do the work, I don’t want to redo it.  So you can drop out of the project altogether, but you can’t change.

I don’t fit in any category, what do I do?

Well, there’s a catch-all category, so you obviously could go there.  I apologize that the list is somewhat limited.  I went with large umbrella categories.  I am not willing to add new categories this year, but there will be a call for categories for next year at the end of this project, so you can make sure they’re on the list then.

Tell me more about the blurb I have to write.

You can use your 17 words any way you wish.  You can write out a sentence or two.  You can write 17 key words.  Essentially, this is a tiny taste to entice the person to click over to your post.  You can’t use bolding or all-caps to get someone’s attention–you need to use your words to make the person interested in reading your whole post.  You do have to write a blurb.  Any submission without a blurb will not be added to the list.  You do not have to use all 17 words, but you can’t go over that amount.  Blurbs over 17 words (and therefore submissions) will not be added.

I just started my blog in October. Can I participate?

As long as you’ve had one post in 2009, you can participate. Even if you didn’t start your blog until October 2009. Just choose your best from the last two months.

My blog is password protected. Can I participate?

If your blog is password protected and you want to participate, choose your blog entry and create a free blog at Blogger or WordPress and post that single entry. Then submit that link to the list. I can’t link to password protected blogs.

I’m already participating in the Creme de la Creme, can I do this too? or Hey, what is this Creme de la Creme thing?

Yes, they are two separate projects, so you can do both.  You can use the same post or you can submit two different posts to the two different lists.  The two categories that probably best fit your situation are either “of body or mind” or “parenting and family.”

The Creme de la Creme list is solely for those in the infertility/adoption/loss community.  If you don’t fit that description, you can’t submit to that list.

Hey, I’m not on The Golden Haiku!  Why didn’t you add me?

Everyone needs to submit their own post.  If you didn’t submit it, I didn’t add it.  If you are not on the list and you submitted one, you didn’t follow directions or it didn’t fit the loose guidelines (see below), so I deleted it.  If you have a blogger you love and you want to make sure they’re included on the list, go nudge them into submitting by suggesting a post you think they should add to the list.

What can’t be submitted?

Okay, so I say that the list is open to everyone, but there are a few types of things I won’t include in this project in order to make for comfortable reading for the largest amount of people.  So I won’t include posts that are overtly commercial, essentially selling a product or service.  I won’t include hate speech of any kind–whether it’s directed at a single person or a larger group.  No porn.  You must be over 18 to participate (high school blogs will not be included this year).  Posts do need to be in English–apologies to those writing in another language.  Cursing is fine, sexuality is fine–truly, almost anything goes.  I’m just looking to not have readers squirming with discomfort or feel as if they’re being sold something.

I love this project!  What can I do to help?

You can spread the word by Twittering about it, making it your Facebook status, blogging about it, emailing friends about it, or adding the badge (get the code here) to your sidebar to encourage others to join along.

My question wasn’t answered here.

Sorry about that.  I’m pretty friendly and willing to answer more questions as long as they truly weren’t answered in this post.  What I can’t do is take suggestions for this current Golden Haiku, though I will be sending out a call for suggestions at the end of this project so please hold your suggestions for that time.  So if you have something to ask, send me an email.

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.

A few days before Halloween, the twins and I decorated a pumpkin we named Gordo the Quintops, mostly (but not entirely) because Gordo has five eyes.

He was lovingly covered in letter stickers and feathers and sequins, with a few random shells from the ocean last summer.  Gordo was not placed outside because pumpkins covered in sequins are not fond of the rain.  Instead, he resides in our front hallway so that he is the first thing you see when you step inside the house.

My heart wasn’t into Halloween this year, but we took the twins around to a few houses for trick-or-treating.  Before we left the house, they were concerned because I wasn’t wearing a costume so I quickly made a third eye for myself and slapped it on my forehead and went as a triops.

What is a triops, you ask?  It is a prehistoric shrimp with three eyes.  The ChickieNob drew this lovely drawing of a triops for you so you could get a sense of its greatness.  Please ignore the fact that the ChickieNob’s triops looks like an alien and not like a miniature horseshoe crab as it states on the Wikipedia page.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.