A long post ahead: it simply grew and grew and grew. I broke it down with asterisks in case you wanted to read a little now, come back later and read a little more. Think of it like the verbal version of a bag of pretzels; you eat a handful now, you eat a handful later. Or, you’re just deeply in the mood for pretzels and you finish the whole bag in one sitting.

Do you remember Show and Tell from elementary school? You agonized each week what to bring to show the class and then ended up grabbing a random He-Man character as you were running for the school bus (“um…this is She-Ra. And she’s a friend or something of He-Man. And she comes with this little plastic snake.”).

If you didn’t have Show and Tell at your school, it was pretty simple: you brought in an object and got up in front of the class and spoke about it for a minute. Then, if you had a nice teacher as I had, the teacher encouraged you to let it be passed around the classroom. Everyone examined your object and then it made its way back to you. And you were the kindergarten equivalent to the Rock-Star-Bat-Mitzvah girl that day.

I’m kicking it old school and reinstating weekly Show and Tell starting…now.

Here’s how it works.

If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Friday (or, since you didn’t know this was starting until now, post some time over the weekend this week), 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.

Extra points if you take us down memory lane, teach us something new, or make me cry. Label your post “Show and Tell” each week (Show and Tell may move off the Friday Blog Roundup at some point if the Roundup starts getting too long. Um…as it did this 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). You can make your Show and Tell post a separate post or include it as a small section of a larger post. Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.

So, classmates, let’s begin.

Since books are a huge part of my life, I thought I would begin by showing you my favourite book of all time: The Phantom Tollbooth.

The first time I read it, I was in first grade and I brought the school library’s copy to class as a Show and Tell object. I loved this book so much that I always refused to read the last page because I thought that if I didn’t read it, the book didn’t end. I am terrible with endings.

I think I loved it so much not because I wanted to be like Milo, risking life and limb to save the princesses (okay, so not really life and limb, but the Terrible Trivium was pretty damn scary), but I loved the idea of a world where a random gift could pop up one day in your bedroom. I used to wrap gifts for myself in the morning and will myself to forget about them so I could be surprised in the afternoon. It didn’t really work.

This is the book that made me want to be a writer.

What are you showing today?

Pssst. Look over at the right side bar. You see that Gift Monkey ad? It’s from a woman who wanted to help U.T.E.R.U.S. But she’s doing more for U.T.E.R.U.S. than just bidding on ad space. “Starting when my ad is placed on your blog, and we will run this through the summer time (so ending August 30th) we, The Gift Monkey, will donate back to you 5% of a sale that is $50.00 US dollars thru $99.99. Sales of $100.00 US dollars or more will get a donation of 10%.” In other words, buy some gifts this summer through The Gift Monkey and U.T.E.R.U.S. will be able to add a few extra dollars to the pool for Cali (or the recipient at the time). Pretty cool, right?

If you signed up for the listserv, hold tight. First messages coming soon. We’re organizing ourselves for a final push to get Cali set for her FET.

And now the blogs:

Click away if my kumbaya-ness makes you sick, because I loved this post by What Wuz I Saying. It boils down to this: “In any case, and no matter whether I am right or wrong, it is still no reason to make others feel bullied and ashamed of their own feelings.” And comes back to this perfect conclusion: “So, let’s all be there for each other, and not try to comment on the comfort of another’s shoes when they clearly don’t fit our feet.”

I don’t think my own kumbaya-ness is a big secret. I think I’ve been pretty clear from the beginning that I only say what I would be comfortable and think appropriate to say to someone’s face. Words of kindness? I’m pretty comfortable being effusive in the face-to-face world so I’m pretty comfortable gushing over here weekly with the Roundup or the Lost & Found. Words of anger? I have them sometimes. But the thing is that I would say everything I wrote in that post to Aliza Shvarts’s face. In fact, when we were driving back from the Cape and passing New Haven, I considered asking Josh to pull over so I could check out the local diners and see if I could catch her chowing down on a stack of pancakes so I could have a word with her. But bitching about another person just for the sake of bitching–I do that via email and I do that over the phone. I’m hardly a Pollyanna and I’ve never been good about the whole lashon hara thing.

Except here.

There used to be a wall at my college in a bathroom where women could write messages about people. The idea probably began with good intentions: warn others. That is a completely acceptable use of lashon hara and I love the part in the wikipedia article that explains the difference: “There are times when a person is obligated to speak out, even though the information is disparaging. Specifically, if a person’s intent in sharing the negative information is for a to’elet, a positive, constructive, and beneficial purpose, the prohibition against lashon hara does not apply. Motzi shem ra, spouting lies and spreading disinformation, is always prohibited. And if the lashon hara serves as a warning against the possibility of future harm, such communication is not only permissible, but, under certain conditions, compulsory.” But the wall became a space where people wrote harmful things about others as a way to hurt them emotionally rather than actually w
arn others and it finally became a space where no one knew what was truth and what was lie and the whole thing ceased to be useful.

And then it was painted over and the last time I visited the campus, it was a simple, clean wall.

Anything you say to your friends via email or the phone can get back to a third party–that’s just a fact of life. Anything you place on your blog you must assume will get back to that third party. Even if you don’t link, it’s a small Internet world and I often stumble across things written about me. Thankfully, most of it is kind and it’s nice to be surprised when you click on a friend’s blog and see something kind written about you. But, it is also the way I found out that my kumbaya-ness makes one blogger sick.

Some would say that if you can’t take the criticism, get out of the blogosphere. But that attitude doesn’t really work for me. In a world where there are so many mediums to get all the lashon hara out of your system discreetly (and yes, I am admitting that I am a huge bitch and speak lashon hara all the freakin’ time), I don’t see the need to post it where the whole world can see–including the person discussed. There are simply too many accidental slights that occur on a daily basis to think that intentional cruelty is okay. And discussing another person negatively so that they can see it is intentionally cruel.

There are people getting hurt–not just a sting for a few minutes while they muse over words like kumbaya-ness, but the words are rocking their world. Perhaps those with thicker skin can’t fully grasp what words can do to the thinner skin girls. But as a thinner skin girl, I beg you–there are too many times when we say the wrong thing and affect each other unintentionally. It is hard to read about the times when it is happening intentionally.

If kindness isn’t for you–and it may not be–click away. There are plenty of other blogs out there to read. And if my kumbaya-ness makes you feel queasy, then don’t spend time over here. And if the Jewish stuff annoys you, there are non-Jewish blogs to read. If you wish I would blog more about the twins then I can point you toward this excellent twin blogroll that Stacie keeps and if you wish I would blog less about the twins then I would point you away from any blogs on that blogroll including my own. The point is that you can’t keep everyone happy all the time, which is why haShem invented the computer mouse so we can click away when we start to read something that we wish we weren’t reading.

Fuck. I’m getting off my soapbox now and going back to discussing the blogs. I apologize–I do hate getting all Pollyanna on your ass, but I care if there are people out there upset over things written about them (including myself).

Vee at The Sweet Life has a post about infertility and cancer and the order in which they came into their lives. Perhaps it is simply reflective of Vee’s enormous heart, but she worries about the newly diagnosed who are thrust into infertility and finds a version of the silver lining: “In some ways I am grateful that we have already dealt with infertility because it would be truly challenging if I had to deal with that now, I really don’t think I could have coped. My heart goes out to those that have to deal with both infertility and cancer simultaneously.”

B at The Shifty Shadow is in the valley–the 5 days between the birth and death of her daughter, Maya. Today was her birthday. Earlier this week, she had a post called “The Stories They Tell” that affected me deeply. It begins with what they told B before Maya was born to assuage her fears and it continues through the stories that are told after death, the stories that come with IVF and adoption and the world beyond. She writes: “These stories have always given me the shits. It is the unwillingness of the listener to actually listen. They already know the outcome. It happened to a friend of a friend. They have raced ahead to the end of the story, which, they are sure, is a good ending. A few months after Maya died I started telling people how unhelpful their stories were. Which kind of throws people. They think they are giving hope, when in reality they are trying to make the moment more comfortable for themselves. Or else I say ‘that’s nice for them’.” B puts into words what so many people have thought in their hearts.

Lastly, many people have linked to it this week, but I also loved JoySuzanne’s post at Trusera. 13 perfect thoughts that you simply want to cut-and-paste and send to everyone in your address book.

The roundup to the Roundup: if I did not drive you away from my blog with my rousing rendition of Kumbaya and if your arms aren’t too tired from being wrapped around each other’s shoulders, I have brought the figurative milk and cookies and I’m ready for Show and Tell.

I heard a great phrase this week: emotionally busy. The person was describing a period of life where six separate life crises were merging together–some terrible; some wonderful–leading to this state of emotional upheaval. Because a life crisis is not always a bad thing. Planning a wedding, having a book published, winning American Idol–these are all a crisis in the American Heritage dictionary sense of the word: “a crucial point or situation; a turning point.”

Therefore, it seemed like the perfect term to sum up infertility. It is a period of being emotionally busy. Unlike some events that continue on a single, dirge-like note, infertility has hope embedded within the disappointment and self-anger and frustration and anxiety and unfathomable sadness. And this is what makes infertility emotionally busy; crisscrossing lines of silver hope against the darker hues of grief.

a crisis with a single note

infertility

While a crisis with a single note can be equally soul-crushing, there is something about having the rug pulled out from under you over and over and over again that creates a lack of self-trust even when we know intellectually that the self isn’t in control. It is living inside the anticipation of the other shoe to drop that creates emotional busyness–careening between hope and doubt and assuredness and despair. It is exhausting.

Treatments and adoption are emotionally busy because until there is nothing left to try or no money left to spend or no emotional capital left to use, there is always the next thing. The protocol that can be tweaked or the medication that can be swapped out or the book that you find that teaches you how to chart your cycles or the stirrup queen who slips you information about a blood test that you didn’t even know existed. There is always a chance that your call from the adoption agency could come today; your referral could come today; something could happen today. And so you live in a state of emotional busyness–not for a few weeks or a few months or even a few seasons. People live in this state of emotional busyness for years on end.

And I’m not sure there is ever an end to the emotional busyness that accompanies loss–the elation of knowing that a child existed. The indescribable grief of knowing that a child is not here. The childless mother. The childless father. That child becomes part of the definition of the self even if that additional limb is never acknowledged or even discerned by those around you.

And where is the stopping point for those living child-free after stepping off the roller coaster. It is like the sensation we take with us when we get back on land after being on a boat. The ground feels as if it is rocking. And that is the emotional busyness that must come out from time to time regardless of how much one moves beyond the experience.

It is something I’ve noticed parenting after infertility too. We parent going through the grief and wistfulness of those who are raising their final child while simultaneous going through the hope and anxiety of whether there will be another. We are thinking about the next child while we are still in the delivery room. We go through the raising of the final child for as long as we are building our family since we never know if there will be another. And even those who are grateful to have one or two and know they lack the funds or emotional fortitude to attempt parenthood again raise that child with the wishfulness of wanting something out of reach, especially if their earliest mental images of family had them surrounded by a small army of toddlers to teenagers.

I don’t even know where it ends. Is it menopause–when you know without a doubt that your reproductive years are over? When you pass the final cut-off age for an adoption program and you know that opportunity is behind you? I think when you live so intensely cognizant of your fertility; of what your body can and cannot do, it is difficult to walk away and leave it behind. Even when you know your family is built.

Emotionally, I am fine–I just thought it was an interesting phrase especially in how it summed up so perfectly all of these interconnected facets of infertility and loss.

This is the fourth 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:

Basically, I have a mad, burning crush on my RE—let’s call him “Dr. Love”. It’s totally innocent, all in my head of course. He is a very good-looking guy, extremely accomplished yet also very sensitive, charming (and damn, he gives good ultrasound). I’m sure I’m not his only patient who shaves her legs extra, extra-carefully if I know I’ll be seeing him.

Now I’m guessing I’ve developed this crush as some kind of way to cope with all the treatments, surgeries and pregnancy losses I’ve experienced over the past year or so. I recall, for example, laying on the table after my IUIs giggling to myself as I fantasized about Dr. Love coming in, seducing me and “adding a little extra just for good measure.” Or clinging to the comfort of his gentle hand squeeze before being knocked out for my lap—all giddy like I’d just met Brad Pitt.

It also reminds me of being younger, in the more carefree days before infertility. I’ve always been a sucker for those older, distinguished types. In college I lusted after half my professors. Plus, there’s no doubt some element of wanting to be taken care of by this guy. Wanting to get the best treatment, be his “favorite”, etc. And let’s not forget it’s this guy’s task to actually get me pregnant, which is pretty sexy when you think about it.

My husband has no idea, and I hope he never will. I totally love him to pieces, and we have a fantastic marriage, which I think has even been strengthened by going through infertility together. But I feel sooooo guilty for lusting after Dr. Love! I want to stop finding him so sexy and having dirty thoughts about him. Yet it’s also one of the only ways I can drag myself back to that clinic time and time again. What on earth is wrong with me?! Please say I can blame this all on the drugs…

–Anonymous

You can blame it all on the drugs.

Actually, you can blame it all on being human. Humans fantasize–about other people, about other jobs, about other houses. We are dreamers and our dreams are often reflections of our desires, though, like all dreams, sometimes there is a direct line between “want” and “vision” in our daydreams and sometimes there is a long, twisting path that brings out the daydream’s meaning.

I’ll start with saying that there are two different levels of fantasy–enjoyable what-if daydreams and what I’ll call “I wish” dreams. And I see them as two very different beasts. What-if daydreams include fantasizing about someone you see on the television or in a magazine. You don’t know them and you probably have no chance of meeting them and what you are attracted to is not the actual person (since you don’t know them), but an element of that person. Perhaps you’re attracted to men with brown hair or women who have long legs. Maybe it isn’t a physical trait, but something more intangible–they are a fire fighter and you’re attracted to the bravery or the selflessness in the position.

I think it’s impossible and somewhat boring to pull apart our crushes. I think when we look too closely at the “why” it becomes like putting a toothbrush under a microscope. We’d probably throw up if we looked too closely at what we’re putting in our mouth and cleaning with a rinse of water. So we look away because brushing our teeth is healthy just as fantasizing a bit is healthy. Those fantasies give us a barometer of what we want; of what we wish would be.

The line that you’re worried about is what divides the what-if daydreams from the I-wish daydreams. The I-wish ones are about actual people–people we can touch and see. They are very specific even if we don’t know the other person particularly well. An example in myself–I knew Josh for a long time before we started dating. One night, I was at a film with another man that Josh was introducing. As I listened to him speak, I thought to myself, “I wish I were here with Josh instead of this guy.” I didn’t really know Josh yet though he was a real person that could potentially move from fantasy to reality. I ended up leaving the first man within days because I realized that fantasizing about being with another person was a huge sign that something wasn’t right in that relationship. The difference in statements between I-wish and what-if is huge because one pushes for action while the other one simply muses.

What I think is confusing right now is that you have someone who could potentially be an I-wish daydream since he is right in front of you though you are actually treating him as a what-if daydream. It’s not that you want to run away with your RE–what you want is what you already stated inside your question when you spoke about having crushes on professors. You want the care, you want the knowledge, you want the figuartive arm around you. Most of the time, those things come from your husband. But you have a medical issue within infertility which bypasses your husband’s capabilities–he doesn’t have the knowledge of how to get you pregnant, but this other man does. Your husband can put a figurative arm around you to protect you, but your health and safety is really in the hands of the RE at this point. Since you can’t have a crush on knowledge, the crush transfers to being about the person.

There is nowhere in your question that I hear an “I wish” statement about your RE. Of course, it sounds like you do wish that you didn’t have to deal with the what-if statements either therefore, perhaps a trip to the microscope with your RE is in order to see what really lurks below that crisp lab jacket.

Dear Mel:

We just found out that a couple we know had their baby very early. The mother was dx with preeclampsia and delivered at 27 weeks. So far the baby is thriving. But… she was born about 2 weeks ago. Previously we would have been one of the first ones notified of the birth but things have become strained long before we knew they were expecting. What would be an appropriate response? We would like to let them know that we are thinking of them and that if they need anything to let us know but beyond sending a card/email etc… would it be okay at this juncture to send a baby gift? How have other NICU moms felt about people coming out of the woodwork or so to speak when this happens… did you find it offensive or supportive? The last thing that we would want to do at this time is overwhelm them or put any pressure on them.

–Deb from All Things Deb (read more about the situation here)

The nice thing about helping out is that there are different levels. What would be appropriate to offer if you were her sister is very different than what you could offer if you were a friend or even simply a member of the community. But there is always something people can do and I think it’s better to do too much (within reason) than do nothing.

There is a sociology term called the bystander effect and what it means is that the more people who are around to help, the less likely help is to come. The reasons vary but one of the common understandings of why people don’t help is that they believe someone else in the vicinity is more qualified to help. And within your question, what I’m hearing is also that you feel that you’re not “close” enough to help–meaning, you’ve fallen out of touch and the helping should be done by those closer emotionally to the couple.

But what happens when it comes to the bystander effect and help is that the people closest to the person are not necessarily in the best position to offer specific help. A sibling who may be close emotionally may also live hundreds of miles away and not be in a position to take care of a load of laundry or cook a meal. Each person who sees the need to step in and aid the couple can play a unique role in offering support.

As we can see when a church group pulls together meals for a member who is ill or collects money for a family in the community who has lost their home, we don’t need to be emotionally close to a person to offer certain levels of help and that help is less about the actual action and more about letting another person know that they are not alone. As someone close-by physically, you could drop a meal off at the hospital or send a note with a gift card to be used at an establishment close to the hospital.

When offering help, specific is always good and general is not quite helpful. Saying, “let me know if there is anything I can do” is good as a placeholder as you try to seek out something specific to do, but people rarely utilize general help. What does make a difference is to email and say, “I heard about the early birth and how well the baby is doing. I know it’s hard to carve out time for yourself when the baby is in the NICU so I’d like to drop off a meal for you to eat at the hospital on Tuesday. Could you let me know a good time to drop it off and any food likes/dislikes.” Even more helpful is sending a gift card because it removes any necessary response from the other person. Simply mention the same facts in that note and add that you know that there is a Starbucks adjacent to the hospital and the card should be used to treat herself.

What comes next will be up to your old friend–whether she asks you to come by the hospital and see the baby or whether you simply get a thank you note down the road and no further contact. This is helping for helping’s sake.

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. Make sure you indicate which advice you’re addressing by numbering your comment with a 1 or 2. 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.

We are back. We divided up the driving between 4 days, completing on average about 5 hours of driving per day. Add in an additional hour or two of driving around town and you have over 30 hours of driving. And by 30 hours of driving time, I also mean 30 hours of Sufjan Stevens.

The Wolvog decided an hour into the journey that he would listen to only one singer this trip and that singer was Sufjan Stevens. We alternated between two albums–Greetings from Michigan and Come on Feel the Illinoise–because if we didn’t, he would let out these short, high-pitched shrieks whenever we made a move to put on Ben Folds or Elvis Costello. You pick your battles.

But what happened was that I started needing more and more Sufjan in order to achieve that mellow high and after the third straight hour, it stopped feeling good and it started feeling overwhelmingly claustrophobic–like the walls of the car that had seemed so cozy against the rain were closing in on us, smothering us with soft guitar rifts.

I’ve been tweaking a bit since we got home. In my head, I’ve been repeating all chorus-like statements in duplicate as he does in “Say Yes! To M!ch!gan!” but it isn’t the same to ask Josh, “what do eat? what do eat? dairy or meat? dairy or meat?”

I am sitting on the floor outside of the hotel bathroom, slowly going deaf from the drone of the bathroom fan which turns on automatically when you flip the light switch. The boys are out at the bachelor’s party.