This is the sixteenth 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:

It seems my blog has been found by fanatical people who are leaving crappy comments about their agenda. I don’t want to be password protected. I don’t want my blog to be a place where we argue the moral and ethical repercussions of fertility treatments, adoption, or loss. I hate the idea of shutting people off, but that might be where I am. I could just turn on comment moderation, but that means I’ll still see these people’s posts. I feel like I have lost my blog.

What do I do now?

–Anonymous

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that most people know not to shit on my living room floor. I am basing this on the fact that no one over the age of four has ever taken a dump in my living room. Therefore, I find it puzzling that the same people who know better than to go into someone’s home and insult their decorating style or spit out their half-chewed dinner onto their plate or defecate on a stainmaster carpet essentially crap in someone’s comment section.

Because what is a blog other than a virtual home for your thoughts?

There are those who say that when you put your thoughts out there, other people have the right to respond to them. And I agree with that, somewhat. As long as we’re following the same social contract that dictates our face-to-face interactions when we operate in the online world, I think that there is room in the comment section for disagreement, challenge, or compliments. If people behaved online as they do when they’re visiting their grandmother in Albany, we would not find the Internet awash in crappy comments, their sole reason for existence to insult and belittle another human being or to push one’s own agenda.

I approach my comment box with this philosophy: my home is my home and I get to choose what remains here. I don’t allow solicitors to hang up ads in my real house. I throw ads out without looking at them when solicitors slip them through my door knob. Therefore, if someone leaves a comment that is obviously meant to sell a product or site, I delete just as I do actual pieces of paper that make their way to my brick-and-mortar home. Of course, this means that I am determining the commentor’s intent without being able to discuss this with them. But I think I’m generally a good judge of what is an ad and what is a helpful comment that happens to include a reference to a product or site.

I also would not invite someone over who looks like they might defecate on my floor. With a blog, I don’t have the luxury of setting the guest list unless I go invite-only. But I don’t need to leave garbage on the floor. If someone leaves shit, I throw away shit. And shit, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But if the comment doesn’t actually address what I’m speaking about in the post and attacks me rather than the idea, I consider it garbage.

Some people leave up hateful comments, but I don’t for two reasons. (1) If it made me feel shitty, it may possibly make another person feel shitty so I remove it and (2) those comments give voice to someone else’s agenda. And they are subjecting my readership to their agenda. And frankly, if their words were worth anything, they would have their own readership. Blogs are free; anyone can start one. Therefore, if you want to create a site spouting off your feelings about fertility treatments, adoption, or loss, you may. And you should. You should express yourself and hopefully, you will attract readers who are interested in your writing–either because they agree with the message or they want to engage in dialogue.

But people should not use your blog in order to discuss their agenda. Which is why I recommend the delete button.

By which I don’t mean that you should delete anyone who disagrees with you but you should delete the comments that are attacking, rude, or admonishing. I think of it the same way we approach language in our home. The twins are allowed to say any word they wish as long as they’re not saying it in anger. Which means every curse word is fine in our house and while they only know a few, I will still feel the same way when more colourful terms are introduced to their vocabulary. I am completely fine with hearing the word “bitch” used in a sentence as long as it’s not snarled at another person as an insult.

Which is a long way of saying that I’m fine with any other person’s idea, but it’s how they’re saying it. If they’re putting down my ideas in order to promote theirs, belittling me, insulting my beliefs, or mocking other commentors, they get deleted. But if they are acknowledging my ideas or beliefs or nodding towards other commentors and then stating their own point-of-view, I am fine with anything they want to say. Not just fine–I want to hear it. That is the point of the comment section for me. It is a dialogue box where people can react to the post and speak to me as they would if I were stating these words to them face-to-face.

Again, intent is determined by the blog owner, and I clearly state that in my “all about me” section the reasons why I would delete a comment. I may delete someone’s comment and they may disagree that it was rude or insulting. If they wrote me directly, and I make my email address pretty accessible, confused as to why their comment was removed and apologizing for any assumed ill-intent, I would most likely replace their comment. But I’ve never removed a comment and had that type of meaningful conversation. Instead, I get a follow-up comment that is ruder. So…I think that probably supports my earlier assumption about intent.

Not everyone runs their blog like this and I’d love to hear how others deal with rude and anonymous comments. If they keep the comments up, I’d love to hear why. Who knows–you may convince me to change my reaction.

Of course, this doesn’t solve the second problem which is that even if you engage in some form of comment moderation, you are still subjected to the rude words. You are reading them in order to delete them or post them. For that, you will need to ask someone else to take over the job of moderating comments on your blog. Or you will need to see these types of comments as shit on the living room floor. You wouldn’t look at someone else’s feces as commentary on you–you would see it as a statement about their own lack of manners. And, perhaps, that is the only way to deal with those types of comments. Know they are spoke
n by people who do not have your best interests at heart. And dismiss them with a little bit of pity that no one taught them good manners.

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.

The NICU reunion is this strange event. I mean, you are going back to this place where you felt tremendous emotional pain for a party. Balloons, music, basketball players helping the kids throw balls. Bouncey castles, costumed mascots, and then the strange item which brings you back to surreality–a state-of-the-art transporter on display, festooned with ribbons. There is cake and ice cream and oxygen tanks and wheelchairs. It is this one day out of the year where every single person in the crowd knows somewhat how you felt because they went through the same emotions too.

We spent a lot of our time off to the side, the ChickieNob gnawing on what she insists my mother calls a “yummy stick” (though my mother has no recollection of ever using this term)–a chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream popsicle–while the Wolvog held his hands over his ears and cried, “too loud! too loud!” Once you looked around the crowd for a bit, you saw many children had their hands over their ears or bodies cringing or their hands outstretched in front of them to create a foot or two of invisible breathing space.

Big crowds are not the sort of thing that usually work for preemies with lingering issues. It’s sort of like celebrating your weight loss at a clinic with an enormous cake.

Overall, they had fun as they have every year, though I thought about it last night–how long I will have them return–and I arbitrarily said to myself, “when they’re seven.” Seven times will be enough. And then, I heard this woman speaking today about how her twins went every year for 21 years and I reconsidered. Why not? It’s good to give thanks.

I went there with an agenda, needing catharsis, something that was going to get me out of the damn preschool. I was trying to create this perfect moment and I was going to do it with N, this fantastic nurse who had kicked my ass 1000 times before from pointing out my wussiness when I was scared to untangle the wires and take the twins from their incubators to pointing out my wussiness when I’d let them control a feed. The theme, of course, is that I am a wuss.

She was not down in the reunion but we saw a different nurse who told us that she was upstairs. We went up to the NICU where she came out in the lobby to hug the twins and catch up with us. And she was great–but she didn’t kick my ass. She asked how I was doing with the preschool and I admitted that I hadn’t left the building yet and I only got a sigh and an “oh Melissa.”

And then it was time to leave.

We stopped by the bathroom that has now entered family lore. I actually had to pee, but the twins like to hear the story about how I locked myself in the bathroom and cried like an animal the first night I had to leave them in the NICU.

Not to be the most dramatic girl on the block, but I truly thought I was going to die that night–it seemed entirely possible that you could cry so deeply that your heart could simply stop. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over that night (or any of the subsequent nights that we had to sleep away from them for weeks, albeit in a hotel nearby rather than the first night which was spent an hour away at our home). I think a lot of the grief I feel about leaving them at preschool is tied to that first night.

Because it’s grief. It isn’t fear. I trust their teachers, trust them to be there for one another, trust them to stick up for themselves. It’s just this deep, deep grief and the crying I have been doing feels again like that animal-like crying that I did as I was led out of the NICU. I think the reason that I have not taken up anyone’s gracious and kind offer to be with me (on the phone or in person) when I leave the preschool for the first time is because I do not want to be embarrassed when I cry like that. And I think my body needs to cry like that. It would be like asking me to breathe through a straw while I run. I wouldn’t be able to suck in enough air. And crying with reservations just isn’t enough to reach that deep grief, that animal-like grief. Perhaps preschool is the closure to that NICU night. Or, perhaps, I will always feel this way whenever I am separated from them. Even when that separation signals a good thing such as moving away for college or getting married or becoming parents themselves.

I wanted this perfect moment at the reunion and I thought I’d get it from N. And then I thought I could create it by visiting said bathroom. We drove out of the parking garage and Josh asked me if I had found catharsis and the path to leaving the preschool and I thought that I hadn’t because everything felt so rushed and wrong while we were there. Like someone was playing a song and I could tell that something was off–one guitar string wasn’t properly tuned?

I really do believe that the right people come to you at the right time and if you’re not busy, as I was at the reunion, trying to orchestrate your world, you will notice people lazing about, ready to hand you the answers when you’re ready to listen.

The nurse who told us that N was upstairs.

I hadn’t seen C in four years but I immediately recognized her since she had been such a huge part of our experience there even though she was only assigned to the twins twice during our stay. I didn’t expect her to remember us at all and thought she must be bullshitting as I did when I bump into old students and pretend to remember them. But she said, “oh, they were in the isolation room in the back and you were always there.”

I was always there when they were in the NICU just as I’m always there now when they’re in preschool. I couldn’t leave. I would get there around 8 a.m. to prepare for the next feed at 9 a.m. and then stay through the final feed of the night, usually returning to the hotel room around midnight. And doing the same thing the next day and the next day and the next day. I was burned out, but I couldn’t hold them very often–only a few minutes every three hours or so–and I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity.

This nurse, C, sat me down during my second week of this schedule and pointed out that I was trying to squeeze too much parenting or what I believed to be parenting into each day. And there is a parenting experience in the NICU that is very different from parenting at home. And taking her thought a step further into this day and age, it is all very different from parenting children in school. But letting them go, giving them their space, encouraging them to set out on their own–that is all part of parenting. Not just holding them close.

I really suck at the letting go part.

I don’t even remember how she convinced me–perhaps I just needed permission from someone other than myself–but we did cut back a few hours. Not to what she suggested, but I did sleep in a few times and we had dinner out a few evenings. And it was good. It was good to go to familiar places when life felt so out of sorts. It was good to eat Thai food and look at pictures and imagine what life would be like when we got home.

I thought about her all day after we left.

Weebles Wobblog runs Perfect Moment Mondays. Post about your own perfect moment from your week and add it to the list.

When we got to the NICU reunion, there were Good Humour carts scattered around the pavilion. There is nothing greater than free, unlimited ice cream when it is 98% outside with high humidity. The perfect moment came watching the ChickieNob tackle a chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream popsicle (with fierce concentration) and thinking about how there was a whole world of ice cream treats to introduce her to over time. We would hunt down the Big Chief Crunchy (which, folklore tells, is still sold at the Air and Space museum. Could it be true?). We’d go to Israel and I would get her a Shoko Bo (do they still make this? I googled it for an image and I can’t find it. It was a chocolate bar on a stick, coated in vanilla ice cream, and then covered with a chocolate shell). I’m just thankful that ice cream exists and for moments when you can have an unlimited amount if you’re willing to cop to your own gluttony.

Welcome back to Show and Tell. 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. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

While the Phantom Tollbooth is my favourite book of all time, a close second is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (as well as Through the Looking Glass). A long time ago, people would buy me Alice memorabilia and copies of the books. And then this stopped with the exception of a copy of Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations that I bought for myself several years ago.

The guinea pigs, just because guinea pigs are a hot topic in our home right now and Josh lives in fear of the day that he comes home and finds one happily living in our guest room.

The Mad Hatter scene because for a long time, it was my favourite passage in the book.

I just loved the way Oxenbury captured Alice’s grief with this drawing. Don’t you feel that way some days?

My brother asked me today what I wanted as a belated birthday gift. I want to bring back the Alice. I am asking for one of three copies: illustrations by Lisbeth Zwerger, Alison Jay, or Mauro Evangelista. Aren’t they incredible?

What are you showing today?

Want to bring something to Show and Tell?

• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can’t do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don’t just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.
• If you want it…
  I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.

Um…it hit me out of nowhere tonight that when we used to carry around rabbit’s feet–you know…hanging from our belt loops and dyed bright blue–we were carrying around THE SEVERED REMAINS OF AN ANIMAL.

I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

I remember as a middle schooler sitting on my bed reading, absentmindedly stroking my rabbit’s foot against my cheek. Seriously, how could a mother who kept a house so clean that we often ate off the floor just to prove that we could allow me to carry around an animal appendage? As a lucky charm, no less.

It all reminds me of Monsieur Three-Leg.