Category — Barren Advice

This is the fifteenth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. 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.

Hi Mel,

Currently, I have 540 unread posts in my google reader. I feel guilty every time I open it. I feel guilty when I go to one of the blogs I follow and I am behind by a dozen or more posts. Sometimes important things have happened and I have missed them. Sometimes they have come to my blog to support me and I follow the comment back to find I have been gone too long. I have come up with a few thoughts on where to go from here, but I want your advice.

1) Tell everyone I read to stop posting so much. Not more than one post / week.
2) Go through my list and get rid of everyone I don’t keep up with and who doesn’t keep up with me. I have tried this one and found I am still interested even if I am behind, but maybe I can be more brutal.
3) Become more of a lurker and less of a commenter. But then, what is the point?
4) Stop adding new blogs to my reader – doesn’t really help the current situation.
5) Mark all the posts as read and start over – a temporary solution at best.
6) Randomly select one blog / week to completely get caught up on. I feel that if I am going to follow a blog, I should follow it – and comment. Of course this will never solve the problem. It would take more than a year to visit each blog only once. Ug.

You know what is sad? I tend to cover the blogs at the top of my reader better than the ones at the bottom. So if a blog is a DE blog (in a DE folder so at the top) it is more likely to get read than one in “favorites” and if the name of the blog falls farther down in the alphabet, less likely still.

What do I do? What do other people do?

–Kami from The Other Side

We declare blog bankruptcy and start again, tabula rasa. Or we beat ourselves up about it, never actually returning to read through the list until it grows to such epic proportions that Google itself writes us to ask us what is up. Or we start making huge plans on how we’re going to get an organized system and set aside a half hour for blog reading each evening and then never actually implement it.

That’s what other people do.

Including myself.

The reality is that life moves quickly–whether it is online or offline. Friends that I didn’t chat with last week entirely missed out on the twins’ health scare. And unless they happen to read my blog, they will probably never know about it. It rocked our world and was this huge focus for many days. Some people were sucked into it and some people missed it entirely. It is not a statement as to the closeness of the relationship–though certainly, our close friends knew because we speak with them frequently–but more about the speed of life. There is just too much information–shifting and changing information–to keep up with and still live your own life.

I think the answer is to form two groups: a core group that has your focus and a peripheral group that gets infrequent comments and read at irregular intervals–just as you probably have a core group of friends that are always up-to-date on your life (within reason) and some that miss out on things; even the big things. It isn’t a statement about their blog or their writing but simply who you connect with the most–where you draw support and where you want to place your support. The ones on the edge, they’re still inside your life. You’ll keep up with them as best you can.

This probably wasn’t the answer you were expecting since community means more to me than anything. And part of being in this community is reading and commenting. Still, as a community grows, what worked in the beginning may no longer work down the road. In order to keep up with more people, something has to give and that may be commenting for some, putting a cap on the number of blogs for others, or simply choosing a new method for reading.

It’s funny because my Reader also filled over the weekend and I took a break in the middle of writing this to prune. To read and comment, but also to erase a few posts (I am so sorry, Baker’s Banter…the granola bars did look good) off of feeds I want to keep. Because, like you, with the speed of which people post, the desire to keep up with many, and the reality of time constraints–the damn thing is always full.

I think the thing I would most like to know is how people view receiving specific comments from specific people vs. comments in general. I think everyone enjoys knowing their words have been heard or getting feedback on their thoughts. But do they note who is specifically commenting, do they miss the words of specific people who they know are still following their blog (because they comment infrequently or because they’ve mentioned that they’re reading the blog on Google Reader)? And how do they feel about those people when an event passes and they don’t get a comment?

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 fourteenth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. 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:

We live in a country where adoption is not that common, and domestic adoption is usually of children who have been in foster care – it is free to the adopters, but carries all the risks many people will be aware of, and it is very rare to adopt young infants either through this route or through overseas adoption – the usual age range is 12 months to 3 years or older. Both take quite a long time. We are nonetheless currently veering towards foster adoption.

However, I am a US citizen (though my husband is not, and is not a permanent resident either) and we are due to spend a bit less than a year in the US very shortly. I am wondering in a very, very unformed way what would be the prospects of domestic adoption for us if we were to start immediately once we arrived in the US. We could spend longer if we were matched with a child as we have a generous adoption leave allowance, but I’m not sure what the chances are of going through the approval process in the time we have (8 months), getting a match in that time, actually being legally eligible for US domestic adoption if we aren’t permanently resident even though I’m a citizen, as I gather the rules have recently changed us getting a match at all.

To give you an idea of where we are coming from: We are both professionals, and I work in a very child-centered field. I’m just over 40 and my husband is about 10 years older, we have led what we regard as principled lives, and are liberal politically. We aren’t planning to become full time stay-at-home parents (but as I mentioned we get very generous adoption leave, and part-time work is also an option), we could certainly give a child a very varied set of experiences (especially regarding travel, obviously) and we would be very open to the idea of open adoption (all domestic adoption in our home country is either open or semi-open), including returning to the US to visit birth parents. We’d also be open to the idea of adopting a mixed-race child (we are white).

We will be living in the state I last lived in, and where I think open adoption is the most common kind. We would be renting though we own our own home where we normally live. From reading potential adoptive parents profiles, we are not typical in a number of ways. But perhaps that is good (she says, hopefully)? I’m at the stage where I’m just rolling this idea round in my head, really, so perhaps some good hard common sense would be best for me!

–Anonymous

I’m unfortunately going to have to pee in your cheerios and come at you with some…well, it’s not common sense insomuch as its things you need to consider. There are huge logistical hoops that US residents (who are not on a time line) need to jump through in order to pursue domestic adoption including finding a slot with an agency, collecting paperwork, fingerprinting, letters of reference, completing a home study, house inspection. Some of those tasks are within your control (if you want to put your nose to the grindstone, you can choose how long it takes you to fill out the forms) and others are not. If you cannot be fit in for several weeks for your home study, you have lost several weeks from the back end (the waiting period) of your process. So, with eight months, you’re looking at a tight squeeze even with a best-case scenario.

Domestic adoption takes (on average) between a year and a year-and-a-half. Most domestic adoptions take place within a two year period. Average is the operative word. There are people who match a few weeks after getting in the books. There are others who take a lot longer.

But think about it this way: someone who is dating and wants to get married can do a few things to speed along the process. They can put themselves out there, untangle themselves from dead-end prospects early on, and aggressively pursue set-ups. But they can’t do anything to ensure that they can get married within a time frame. I’m sure someone could do a study and say that people who aggressively pursue marriage on average get married within two years of beginning the marriage process, but think back to when you were single: was it truly within your control when marriage occurred? It felt for me, at least, like statistics be damned. I had no clue whether or not I’d get married and I can’t imagine the pressure I would have felt if I had a time frame where I needed it to happen.

Which is actually the part that worries me most–the emotional journey you’ll put yourself through having an end date (however loose) in place. If you put yourself through all of that work and it doesn’t happen, will you be able to go home without a child and several thousand dollars poorer?

If the answer is that you could walk away with peace of heart at least knowing you tried, I can give you three pieces of advice. There are probably going to be those who will write in the comment section below about how this arrangement isn’t fair to expectant parents (and I have to be frank, taking a child immediately and permanently out-of-country goes against part of the philosophy of open adoption) or to the child, but my concern with this question is you, the question-asker. Therefore, I am only addressing your side of things.

(1) Be absolutely honest and clear when conversing with expectant parents what your limitations are in terms of open adoption. They need to know where you live in order to have their own peace of heart with the decision. Don’t make any promises that you can’t keep.

(2) Expand your search to national rather than keeping in-state. This means you must be willing to travel at a moments notice and you will possibly need to remain in the state where the baby is born until you are cleared by a court and given permission to take the child out of state. It’s one more hoop, but a national search is going to move faster statistically over an in-state search.

(3) Start the process from home right now, working with a US agency and perhaps securing an adoption attorney for the state where you’ll be living. They are going to know the laws that apply not only to all US adoptions but to laws specific to each state. Yes, it will add another cost to the process, but an attorney can guide you through choices in the interest of time. There are specialized attorneys working in the field of adoption and ART (Elizabeth Swire Falker, for example, works out of NY and her practice in family law specifically covers adoption, donor gamet
e contracts, etc) and I’d search for one by state and then check credentials (please do this–there are a lot of people working within adoption who are not kosher and you want an ethical adoption).

Sending a lot of luck for the journey. I don’t know how feasible it would be to move back to the US for a few years right now rather than just a few months. If that were the case, it would change some of the information above and take a lot of the pressure off the process. In the end, you want to love your life and bring a baby into it rather than have a baby be the element bringing peace to your life (in other words, a child should be the cherry on top and not the dish holding the ice cream…um…and in this analogy, the ice cream is you). Therefore, if your happy life is back in your current home, I would never recommend moving because a dish full of ice cream is still sweet. But if “home” is simply your marriage and you want a new adventure together, moving to a new place could open a lot of doors in the pursuit of the cherry on top.

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. I would love to hear from anyone who has pursued domestic adoption and the time frame you faced with the process.

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 thirteenth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related. Baby stuff is mentioned in this post.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. 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:

We are starting to think about furniture and other gear for the twins and I was wondering if you have any sage advice for me? I think we are convinced they should each have their own crib and we are thinking of putting them in the same room, although we do have room to give them each their own room if we decide to. Is there anything you wish you had done differently or that you found worked great (with nurseries, baby gear, etc.)?

–Denise from Freezer Buns

Let me start by saying that less is more. Having fewer things in your house to navigate, utilize, and store later will make you happier in the long run. The goal of the baby industry is to get you to buy a lot of stuff. Your goal should be to ignore them until you need to listen.

My other piece of advice is to buy along the way. Don’t commit to big ticket items until you need them and only then after you’ve tried them out. Take your baby/babies to the store and try the item there or go over to a friend’s house before you plunk down $40 for a swing or bouncey seat. Remember that each child is different and one may love the swing while another hates it. Therefore, hold off on buying two of any non-essential item.

NOMOTC is the umbrella organization of local twins clubs. Make sure you get involved with your local branch for at least the first year simply for the sales they hold each fall and spring. While you’ll want to purchase some items new, the sales are a great place to pick up gently-used items for low prices. I purchased our car seats new; I purchased the snap-and-go frame through a sale for a quarter of the price. This is a huge point since you use so many of these items for a short period of time.

If you’re buying as you go, you only need a few items to kick off life with twins. Everything else can be purchased during a Target or food store run as needed. In fact, it can make guests feel helpful to be sent on an errand. Hospitals often give you some items to help you start life with your baby/babies too.

Essential:

• Place to sleep and essential bedding (plus a super-sheet or the like): I don’t want to say crib because I know many who started out using pack-n-plays or co-sleepers
• Two car seats
• A few night gowns, onesies, swaddling blankets, and wash cloths.
• One or two bottles if you’re planning on bottle feeding (hold off on buying many until you see which nipple your child likes)
• A pack of diapers
• A bottle of dreft

Nice to Have:

• Snap-and-go frame or a carriage
• Play mat
• Baby carrier (bjorn, ergo, or the Maximom which is specifically for multiples)
• Bouncey seats–lots of them. We had many throughout the house because they’re a safe place to put down a child.
• Baby tub
• Glider or rocking chair
• Diaper bag (though we used just a regular backpack most of the time)
• Mobile
• Monitor (depending on the size of your home)
• Boppy or breastfeeding pillow if you plan to breastfeed

Do Not Buy Until You Know You Need It:

• Breast pumps (they’re non-returnable, you don’t know how breastfeeding will go, and hospital grade pumps are a better use of your money until you establish a supply)
• Swing
• Highchairs (you won’t need them for a bit and take some time to think out whether you’d like a free standing chair or a booster that snaps onto a regular kitchen chair)
• Lots of toys
• A lot of clothing (especially because you won’t know your child’s size at each season)
• A lot of diapers (same reason)
• Exersaucers and that ilk
• Gates (unless you have pets)
• Gadgets (wipe holders, bottle warmers, and the like)

It’s hard to hold off when you’re registering, but gift cards (or a lot of store credit) is more helpful down the road so you can purchase things as needed rather than having a lot of clutter. Some things will also fit your lifestyle though they’re not important to someone else. For instance, you may want a backpack carrier, though we rarely ended up using the two we owned. On the other hand, I was a bouncey seat fanatic and other people found them useless.

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. I would love people to add to the lists above because I’m probably forgetting some important items.

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 twelfth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. 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:

My husband and I are in the early stages of preparing for IVF treatment. We are doing the tests required by the fertility clinic. I have been searching everywhere for information about the payment process, specifically regarding paying for multiple cycles. When I spoke with the clinic’s billing office, they stated that you do not get a refund if you become pregnant on the first cycle, even if you paid for 2-3 cycles. At this particular clinic, it costs $6,900 for the first cycle and about $11,000 if you pay for 2 cycles. So, you save money if it takes you 2 cycles to get pregnant but you lose a big chunk of money if you get pregnant on one. This doesn’t include medication costs of course.

Is this standard procedure for most clinics? I understand that you are happy just to get pregnant but it seems like they are taking advantage of desperate people. I can understand if they don’t refund you the entire amount but what is the reasoning for not refunding any money at all? Do you know of anyone who has successfully fought back against this policy?

–Anonymous

Shared risk is a great plan for those without insurance coverage with the emphasis on the word “shared.” You are sharing the risk with the clinic; meaning, if you don’t get pregnant, they ate a lot of the cost and if you do get pregnant, you may have eaten an extra portion of the cost. But the risk is shared by both parties.

With a single payment plan, the risk isn’t shared at all. It’s solely on you. Therefore, if you get pregnant, great–it will cost $6900. And if you don’t get pregnant, we’re sorry–but it will cost you $6900. And it sounds from the question that you’d like the risk to be solely on them. And it would be nice if they were willing to work with that, but since you have the option to apply for the program or the option to pay per cycle, it isn’t really feasible for the person requesting the service to also have the service pay them to use them essentially. In other words, you need them. They don’t need you (though they do need customers and they have set up these plans in order to make IVF more accessible to a larger population. Though, “more” is an relative word when you’re talking about thousands of dollars).

Here’s the thing with shared risk: because the clinic is deciding who qualifies for the plan, they are not taking anyone they see outright as a risk. Because that isn’t in their best interests and they are a business and not an altruistic organization. Which sucks to think about because they are doctors, but you can’t think of them in the same way you think of your local emergency room staff. It is simply a different kind of medical service. So if you qualify for the plan, it means they think that you have a greater chance of getting pregnant in one IVF cycle than you do taking two or more cycles to get pregnant.

You can do what you wish with that information.

Some people see if they qualify for shared risk and then decide that they’d rather take the gamble and pay per cycle. If they get pregnant on the first try, they saved a lot of money. If they get pregnant on the second try, they lost a little bit of money. But if they get pregnant on the third try, they lost a lot of money.

Here are the pros and cons to a shared risk plan and who should or shouldn’t use the plan if they qualify:

Should:

• If you are worried about the financial side of things and would rather know a flat end price than pay little bits at a time, never knowing fully how much you’ll spend in the end.
• If you have a lot of stress in your relationship about financial matters and want to argue about cost one time.
• If you want to remove some of the stress inherent in a cycle.
• If you want to have options to try different protocols.
• If you have unexplained infertility or no clear diagnosis.

Shouldn’t:

• If you are doing it to save money (because you might or you might not and you’ll be right pissed if you lose money and this was your reason for entering into the plan).
• If you think you will get pregnant in one try.
• If you have a clear diagnosis with a clear solution.

See which list you fall in and what you should do. I have seen both sides of this fence: one friend entered into shared risk because she thought she would save money. She got pregnant on the first try and is still bitter to this day that she paid more for IVF than she would have if she had paid per cycle. She really didn’t enter into shared risk for the right reasons. I also have a friend who just left a shared risk program having a large portion of her money returned because they couldn’t get her pregnant. She is obviously thankful that she is getting a portion of her money back because if she hadn’t done shared risk, she would have paid for numerous fresh cycles and had nothing for it in the end. She can now apply that money to a different path to parenthood.

And that’s the beauty of how these programs work. The plans are not actually for paying for IVF. They are simply insurance for when things don’t go according to plan. And you need to decide whether or not you need insurance simply because it is offered.

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. I would love people to add their feelings if they used (or didn’t use) a shared risk plan.

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 eleventh installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday (though it’s early this week due to IComLeavWe kicking off tomorrow). 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:

When someone comments on your blog, and you want to reply to them, is it best to email them (what I usually do) or to reply back to them in another comment in the comment section? Do most people subscribe to comment sections on blogs? I don’t…but maybe I should…? Maybe people are replying to my comments in their comments? Since I read blogs through google reader, I don’t always see the comments unless I click on a particular blog…any thoughts?

—Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?

I threw this question out to the blogosphere last Friday and the answers were varied as expected. Some people subscribed to comments; some didn’t. Some emailed back (when possible) and some left a comment on the other person’s blog. Like so much with blogging, there doesn’t seem to be a general consensus on how to do things.

I think two important things that popped up last Friday in the general discussion were (1) how much you want your response to reach the person and (2) how well you know the blogger. Emailing or leaving a comment on the other person’s blog best ensures that they see your response. You may also want to cut-and-paste a copy of the email into your comments section if you think other people could benefit from hearing your answer. But sending it directly to them removes having to wonder whether or not they’ll see your answer.

If you leave a comment on their last blog post, take a moment to read the post and then begin your comment with a nod to what they have written. Use the second paragraph of your comment to mention the comment they left on your blog and then your additional response.

This is where knowing the blogger comes in handy. You may be inadvertently opening up a can of worms in their space if you reference something they don’t commonly write about on their own blog. For instance, a school teacher who writes a blog that is read by her students and their parents probably wouldn’t want me to write about her infertility in the comment section. In that case, I simply left a note with my email address saying I had something to send her and could she email me. She wrote back and we had the conversation privately (and she deleted my comment from her blog so parents didn’t follow it from her space to mine).

As the Internet moves faster and faster, there often isn’t time to move backwards to old discussions. I may go back and reread a post several times, but it’s unlikely that I’d click through to read the comments unless the discussion was the point of the post. I may be missing responses back to me, which is unfortunate.

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. I would love people to add how they decided whether or not to enter treatments.

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.