Category — Barren Advice

This is the 30th 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:

At what point do you stop trying to repair a relationship, and just move on? What if this relationship is with someone you’ve hired to care for your child?

The situation in brief is: my babysitter e-mailed me that she was quitting, because she disagrees with how we’re putting V. to sleep. She’s been trying to do it our way but has been very frustrated. We’ve been e-mailing back and forth about it since Friday. I’m waiting to hear from her whether she’s willing to give it another shot, making some compromises but not doing it her way (15-min CIO), but at the same time I’m wondering whether the relationship will be sustainable in the long run if we have such philosophical differences.

It’s like, do you quit the RE who proposes a plan you don’t feel right about?

—Elizabeth

I always believe in listening to others; especially if they’re adamant. Who knows–they may make a really good point and make me see the world from an entirely new angle. You can pick up advice in places where you least expect it. But I listened to your babysitter, and she didn’t change my mind.

You’re the parent, you make the rules.

This is not to say that there can’t be differences in the way you do things or rules that apply when they’re with some people and not with others. But those changes need to still reflect your overall philosophy and how you put your child to sleep–one of the first ways we nurture a child–is usually tied to a larger picture of how you want to be as a parent or what you believe works best for your family.

In other words, our twins can have an extra sugar when they’re with grandma because complete hedonism is part of our family philosophy (I’m joking…but only a bit…there is only so much joking in my joking), but they can’t break kashrut. It just isn’t allowed in our family and anyone who wishes to be alone with our children needs to respect that. It is too hard to teach a child the basics of life when they are getting conflicting information. I can’t expect them to keep kosher if they don’t see the point of it and I can’t expect them to see the point of it if we only follow it when it’s convenient. Or if they only follow it here or there. It is just too important to our family’s overall philosophy to let that one change from caregiver to caregiver.

Sleep training is very similar–it’s something that you are teaching your child. So it is understandable that you want consistency. And it sounds as if your feelings about sleep training are tied to an overall family philosophy. In addition, from your blog posts, you sound far from inflexible but you also sound like you’ve given this a lot of thought without dismissing the babysitter outright. In other words, you heard how she wants to put your child down for a rest, considered it, and decided that it didn’t really work right now with your family.

And that decision should be respected. She is free to quit, but she isn’t free to give you advice on everything from the way she likes to do sleep training (if it differs greatly from your method) to which toys she believes you should be buying to how you set up your home. She gets to do all of those things in her own life, but she doesn’t get to go into another home and tell them how to run it. The only exception to this thought would be if you were doing something that was physically or emotionally detrimental to your child, and this, of course, is a slippery spot. I am talking about things that would fall under the guidelines of CPS (child abuse or neglect) and not differences in parenting.

It’s funny that you used the example of an RE because when you hire an RE (because that’s what you’re doing when you use his clinic), you are asking someone with specific knowledge to fix a specific problem. The RE should be focusing on your ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes–he should not be focusing on your marriage, cooking advice, or what he thinks of your wardrobe. At the same time, you may have opinions on how he should do his job, but ultimately, what you are paying for is his expertise and therefore, you should take his advice because he knows more than you on the topic. Plumbers work on pipes and not in doling out commentary on your choice of wall paper. Interior decorators should be concerned with the choice of wall paper but not with the contents of your refrigerator and your caloric intake. Most of the people you will hire have specific knowledge that you are paying to access.

But here’s where the analogy fails–a babysitter is there to fill a need rather than fix a problem. The need is that there must be someone at all times with the child and if it isn’t going to be you, it needs to be a replacement you. The babysitter is not hired for her expertise (and with the exception of a sleep trainer or Super Nanny, is not there to fix a specific problem), but for a very specific reason–she can replicate you. She can provide nurturing as you provide nurturing; she can provide education as you provide education; she can provide safety as you provide safety. Which is why I have a deep respect for babysitters, nannies, and caregivers–they are the parents when the parents cannot be there.

Lest I sound like a hardass just with hired babysitters, I want to reinterate that I feel this way about anyone you trust with the care of your child from five minutes to five days a week. It doesn’t matter if they’re friends or family or someone you hired from a nanny agency–everyone should want to know about how you do things and should want to work with you rather than against you in raising your child. They can be the nicest person who knows how to entertain children for hours with origami butterflies and making macaroni-and-cheese from scratch. But those things are secondary–I’d rather have someone that I trust will be forwarding the core beliefs of our family or the necessary rules than someone who is going to teach me how to be a parent. And this isn’t to say that we can’t learn from one another and pick up tips from babysitters or other parents. But once you’ve weighed the advice and decided that it doesn’t work for you, everyone should be respecting your decision.

If she believes that your family isn’t working, it isn’t her place to fix it. It is her place to match with a family where everyone works well together. I think Super Nanny has gone to some people’s heads, but truly, unless you are asking for advice in terms of core parenting issues, she should not b
e weighing in on the main issues: food, sleep, and discipline. And therefore, even though there are drawbacks in changing caregivers–major drawbacks that need to be considered too–weigh the drawbacks against your feelings on your core beliefs and see which one weighs heavier.

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.

This is the 29th 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:

So there’s definitely a divide between people I read (“friends”) and people I interact with (friends that I happened to meet online). And I’m willing to bet that many of the people you’re ditching once they get that positive are people you read. You haven’t built up a friendship therefore, the happiness you are supposed to express comes from emotional slush funds that are empty.

Wait, I need to back up for a second. You need to think about this in terms of banking. Every relationship you have is an emotional bank account. You bank figurative money in the form of trust, support, comfort. And you have a separate account for every close person in your life. Once you’ve placed “money” in, it can’t be taken out unless the bank messes up or you overdraw…in other words, this is why we can return to some friendships after months of not talking and jump right back into a great space full of trust. One of my best friends and I do this all the time–we won’t speak for a month or two and then we have a three hour phone call to catch up and we can tell each other the most intimate things regardless of the time that has passed since our last phone call. It’s because we put a lot of “money” in that account back in our college years and we replenish the account often enough that we can live off of it for the rest of our lives.

You also have an emotional slush fund. This “money” isn’t earmarked for a single person–it’s what you have to spend at your own discretion. And frankly, from your description in the question, it sounds like your slush fund is empty. It happens from time to time–everyone goes through points in their life where they just don’t have emotional energy to spend on others when they really need to use all of their resources on themselves. Of course, it becomes a problem when you are always without an emotional slush fund, but that is a topic for another day. When you’re emotionally in a great spot, your slush fund is overflowing and you can reach out to others. When your slush fund is empty, it’s time to turn inward and work on self-preservation.

And no, you can’t really open an emotional bank account with every person you meet. There has to be a hierarchy of relationships in your life or you’ll go crazy. Partners, siblings, parents, close friends–they get their own account–everyone else pulls from the slush fund.

So if you’re happy, you tend to have deep emotional stores in the slush fund that you can pass along to anyone. It’s sort of the Mary Poppins effect–if you’re twittering about, singing about spoonfuls of sugar and can see the world in this rosy way, you also have emotional money in the bank so to speak. You can lend it out freely knowing more exists. But if you’re already emotionally bankrupt, it is hard to give out what doesn’t exist in your pockets. You can’t hand out money you don’t have and you can’t hand out happiness you don’t have.

I would be willing to bet that it’s harder for you to walk away from the blogs where you have built a relationship with the author. Where you have been trading support and therefore building up capital in your emotional account. I’m obviously assuming that you’re talking about walking away from blogs where you’re simply a reader and an occasional commenter. In those cases, I would probably say it’s part of the nature of the blogosphere. You are free to walk away when times are good for that person and come back (or not come back) when times are bad for that person. I wouldn’t feel badly commenting again–they probably didn’t know the conscious choice you made to avoid their blog.

If you’re walking away from blogs where you’ve had an account open and a lot of capital in place, well, I guess I have a different answer. If you’ve forged a relationship with the person that goes beyond simply reading their thoughts and offering up a “that sucks!” or “that’s great!” every once in a while, I don’t think you owe them an explanation, but you do need to consider what you’d want in your own future. If you always pull out from the relationship when their weather doesn’t match your weather, it begs the question–why build that emotional capital at all? I mean, why save this figurative emotional money by building that rappo
rt and trust and doing all the work that it takes to maintain a relationship if you don’t want to have that support through your own thick or thin? What I’m saying is that I don’t really understand the point in putting in the work of building the account if you’re not going to use it in the future.

Just as you wouldn’t go around town opening up random accounts at every bank and then leaving the money behind when you move, I don’t really understand the point in building up an emotional bank account with another person and then ditching it. And I mean this both in terms of face-to-face relationships as well as the ones that begin online. If you’re taking the time to invest, make sure you protect and nurture your investments. You would never throw out a 401K account and say, “feh, it’s just money.” So don’t throw out friendship. You can throw out “friendships” but not friendships. See the difference?

In those cases, where you felt a connection while you were both in the trenches and took time to nurture the relationship, I would allow it to continue on–taking the space you need and being good to yourself, but also knowing that it may mean that you need to view their joy even if you don’t need to feel their joy (after all, you can’t make them instantly sad because you’re sad and they can’t make you instantly happy because they’re happy). Which means saying “congratulations” when they get the positive, perhaps holding back and just reading for a bit, and also offering sympathy if all goes to hell.

In the cases (which are probably the vast majority of cases because we all read more blogs than we have personal relationships) where you simply have been reading along and leaving a few comments from time to time, I don’t think it speaks volumes about you as a person. I don’t think that it means you’re mean or that you would do the same thing in the face-to-face world. I think it shows that you know how much emotional capital is in your figurative slush fund and that you’re not withdrawing more than you have on hand and leaving yourself in a deficit.

Therefore, step back with the joy and step forward with the sadness. You’re actually a great person to have around because you have the umbrella up in your own personal rain storm and it sounds like others could benefit from having that umbrella placed over them as well rather than only being surrounded by those who are standing in the sunshine and reminding them of the weather they just lost.

We can do small good things without having everything we do be small good things. It doesn’t negate the small good things–the offer of support in a moment of sadness–nor does it make commentary on ourselves as complete humans. It would be wonderful if we only comported ourselves with joy, doing small good things with every breath. But we are human and we’re messy and we’re complex and even with our foibles, we’re still wonderful. What you consider to be a problem in your personality actually has a very positive side: you are possibly the best person to comfort someone whose misery needs a little company. And that can’t be dismissed as less important. It is just one more way to build support and those emotional stores between two people as you share in sadness.

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.

This is the 28th 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:

Hi, I have looked at INCIID and RESOLVE sites for information on cancer survivors and their experiences with domestic adoption. I also bought a book about adoption and the information on this topic is insufficient (Godwin & Godwin Complete Adoption Guide). Can you talk about this issue?

–Anonymous

The core idea in this question is what are the tipping points for adoption agencies and expectant parents seeking placement–what sorts of things are skeletons you shouldn’t have in your closet or conditions you wish you didn’t have to list when it comes to adoption.

The best advice I’ve ever read on this topic came from Elizabeth Swire Falker’s book, The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Adoption. The over riding idea when she covers the homestudy is that social workers know that you’re human and you’re going to have problems, but it’s how you deal with those problems that makes a difference.

The big red flags for social workers (and by extension, expectant parents too) are lying, felony or child-abuse arrests, and recent addiction issues. With lying, it’s better to disclose everything than to have it discovered later. And with addiction, “recent” is a general term. Showing that you’ve taken steps to treat the condition and that you’ve logged a substantial amount of sobriety time prior to starting the adoption process makes a difference.

But there was nothing in the book specifically about cancer, so I wrote Swire Falker (who is an attorney in the area of adoption in addition to being a writer) this question. Her thoughts on the matter follow idea above–that there are few skeletons in anyone’s closet that are going to wholly keep them from becoming an adoptive parent.

Starting an adoption plan isn’t easy stuff for anyone. Most prospective adoptive parents come to the process carrying a hefty amount of baggage. Whether it is from infertility treatment, or being an “older” adoptive parent, or our marital status, most of us are really scared about what a birth family, adoption agency, or even a foreign country may think about us and who we are. There is no doubt that the fear of rejection is daunting. It’s amazing what we do to ourselves through this process. How we compartmentalize our personalities and our features and try to “predict” what it is that might make us more appealing to a birth family or what might make us less “pickable” to another country. It has gotten so out-of-control in some respects that I now lovingly call it the “Pickable-Factor” or the “Pickable List.”

The Pickable Factor is anything that we think might disqualify us or make us less attractive to a birth family, an adoption agency, or another country; ultimately causing her/it to choose another adoptive parent(s) over us or rejecting our application to adopt. Every one of us has our own list of “pickables” that we think will make our wait take longer or stop it altogether.

The reality is that some of your “pickables” may play a role or even prevent you from pursuing some type of adoptions. For example, China has new regulations (don’t get me started!) that require that applicants be married for a specified period of time, not be obese, and not have taken antidepressants. China probably wouldn’t look so favorably on an application from someone with disabilities and/or who is a cancer survivor. I would check with your adoption agency if you have any of the “pickable factors” I just listed before you submit your application. I didn’t say this was fair, I just said these were some of the new regulations that went into effect in 2007.

However, these same “pickable factors” may not play any role in your adoption process if you were open to consider other types of adoption. If you chose a domestic newborn or infant adoption, a foster-care adoption, much if not all of what China disqualifies might not raise an eyebrow for your attorney or your adoption agency. A history of cancer or a history of depression, or any significant item on your “pickable list” should all be thoroughly addressed in your home study, but as long as you are healthy today and have the ability to care for a child, your social worker should be able to navigate successfully around what might have been a huge stumbling block in another adoption program.

I think the bottom line is to be educated about the criteria that various countries and agencies have for accepting applications from prospective adoptive parents, and then see if your list of “pickables” precludes or limits your participation in certain programs. Domestic adoption, and especially foster-care adoption tend to be more flexible avenues than international or some agency-assisted adoptions. But every prospective adoptive parent should – armed with a good home study – have a program or avenue to become a parent. No single criteria whether it be sexual orientation or a history of cancer should ever preclude you from becoming an adoptive parent. Your individual Pickable Factors may mean you have to do more research and be more creative, but unless you’ve got a felony child abuse arrest on your Pickable List, and as long as you’re honest with yourself and your social worker, then you shouldn’t encounter too many problems on your path to parenthood (I mean, other than the 1,001 you’ve already had to endure).

So it would appear that being a cancer survivor shouldn’t affect adoption as long as your disclose this information to your social worker.

Dear Mel:

My RE suspects I have endometriosis, which explains A LOT of things that have been happening to me the past couple of years. The hubs and I are going on 4 years of TTC with one miscarriage 3 years ago and a whole bloody trail of BFN’s. We are currently scheduled to do 2 more IUI cycles, before having a laparoscopy and moving on to IVF in June. I have been reading about endo quite a bit,trying to understand how it works, if there is anything we can do to ease the symptoms, etc, and I stumbled on some blogs and forums where it was stated that there is sometimes a connection between endo, infertility and gluten.

I saw that there are quite a few books written ab
out the gluten free diet increasing fertility. That, and, shazam, I got an email from a dear friend this morning, who has been trying to conceive with her husband for EIGHT years now. She’s pregnant, from real live sex with a man, and believes that going gluten free, combined with acupuncture is what helped her. She had only been gluten free for two months when she got her BFP, so we could say it was a coincidence, but seriously… after eight years of BFN’s? I have a sneaking suspicion that she might be onto something. I’d love to have your take on this. Thank you so much.

—Sassy

First I started in books and when I couldn’t find a lot on gluten-free diets in regard to endometriosis, I took to the Internets (yes, plural, because there are so many of them). I found many forums, but no formal studies. This speaks nothing to how factual it is and more to what avenues researchers are interested in pursuing and what they can get funding to study.

What I did find were books that spoke about that general diet that is used to treat everything from endometriosis to human African trypanosomiasis. While I’m being sarcastic, there is no harm in a diet that is low in refined sugar and carbs, alcohol, caffeine, preservatives, and fried foods–which is the basic rundown of most fertility diets.

You could ask your doctor what she thinks about gluten-free diets and their effect on endometriosis, but she’s likely to tell you that it’s of the “can’t hurt” category along with drinking green tea or chowing down on whole milk ice cream. If endometriosis is your problem, is not eating gluten likely to stop the spread of endometrial cells? Well, no, I can’t really think of any situation where the omission of a food cures a condition (with the exception of food-related illnesses). Removing a food may be helpful in not exasperating a condition, but it won’t cure it.

So what should you do? If sticking to a gluten-free diet isn’t going to make you feel like you are giving up one more thing as a sacrifice to infertility, I say go for it. The only problem I can see arising is not knowing enough about substitutions which could create a deficiency in your diet. But if you look into it carefully and pay attention to your overall diet, I think it’s a great idea. My concern is only if it doesn’t work. Will you feel like it was still worth a shot and a worthwhile investment? Then yes, you should go ahead with the diet. But if you fear that you’re going to look back on this time period and say, “I made myself give up everything I like to eat and it still didn’t do anything; all it made me was miserable,” then I’d forgo it. To be honest, I like my gluten so much that unless a study was unearthed strongly proving a connection between gluten consumption and premature ovarian failure (my diagnosis), I probably wouldn’t try it out just in case. I feel like I’ve denied myself too much as is from events to food. I’d rather be happy in the places I can be happy. But that’s me and my unnatural love of gluten.

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.

This is the 27th 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:

I am looking into acupuncture. It is pretty expensive, so I would like advice from you and others on the prospects of acupuncture working for me. I have been diagnosed with PCOS and Clomid has not been successful in making me ovulate. I will be moving on soon probably to injectables and IUI cycles. Any help, any pros/cons any success stories involving acupuncture, etc. would be great! Thanks!

—He Resoreth My Soul

Unlike other alternative therapies (rubbing yam cream on your inner thighs anyone?), acupuncture has been well-studied in regards to infertility. And that could be because while it’s alternative for us, it is mainstream for a large portion of the world. And NIH simply cannot deny its success rate even though they state that it is “difficult to reconcile with contemporary biomedical information.” In other words, American doctors can’t figure out how it works based on our breadth of knowledge but they do know that it does work.

And, at the very least, it falls in the “can’t hurt” category.

Most of the studies on acupuncture and infertility have focused on IVF rather than IUI. Fertility and Sterility has released articles on utilizing acupuncture to increase the success of IVF. Acupuncture benefits have been studied for cycles where treatment fell during the luteal phase (after ovulation) as well as on the day of transfer during IVF. In both cases, pregnancy rates were higher for those who utilized acupuncture over the control group who received a placebo (non-strategically placed needles? Ouch!).

Acupuncture has also been studied in regards to male factor infertility. A recent study reported through National Institutes of Health (NIH) saw significant increases in sperm production after acupuncture was used and concluded: “acupuncture may be a useful, nontraumatic treatment for males with very poor sperm density, especially those with a history of genital tract inflammation.” Another study also reported by NIH found that not only sperm quality increased after acupuncture, but also fertilization increased.

So nothing specifically with PCOS and IUIs from a medical study, but certainly enough anecdotal evidence on the Web to warrant trying it.

All that said, just as you do diligence to find a good reproductive endocrinologist, make sure you’re comfortable with your acupuncture practitioner. In other words, go with someone licensed. The best bet is to contact your local Resolve chapter because they have lists of recommended practitioners for everything from reproductive endocrinology to acupuncturists who specifically work with infertility.

If you’ve utilized acupuncture in addition to injectable with IUI cycles, share your story below.

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.

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!