Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Embryo Culture? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Tour by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #11 (The Mistress’s Daughter by AM Homes) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

I started Embryo Culture on a trip and I quickly learned that this book is not beach material. It’s heady and smart and funny and as often as I laughed while reading her account of life in the clinic, I also paused to think as she asked the tough questions that have no clear-cut answers. Anyone who feels stumped for blogging topics only needs to read through this book to have dozens of questions to tackle in thoughtful posts. Beth Kohl manages to make infertility thought-provoking, historical, touching, and amusing–all at the same time.

From early in the book, it is clear that the author ends up with a take-home baby. How do you think this affects her perspective on infertility and how did affect your perception of the book?

Whether or not the author reaches parenthood or not is of little importance to me as a reader unless the genre is self-help (I would want to read about living child-free from someone who is living child-free though when I read adoption books, the author has usually taken one path through adoption and it doesn’t bother me to have someone who went through domestic adoption to also write about international adoption or foster-to-adopt). I would have read Waiting for Daisy if Peggy Orenstein didn’t end up with Daisy and I would have read Embryo Culture if Beth Kohl didn’t end up with her three girls. I just don’t think the end result is the point of these books and I certainly don’t read them to glean any secrets of success.

I think these books ask the bigger questions surrounding infertility. They touch on the ethics or how infertility fits into the larger picture of religion, self-worth, feminism. I think, if anything, reaching parenthood gives her a wider scope–she can remember what life was like in treatments and making hard decisions on that end, but she also has a sense of what life is like on the other side and the processing that goes on in that end. I think she could have written this book while in treatments (prior to parenthood), but I think it becomes a richer text because you get to see the life beyond too.

I’m actually curious how this question gets answered by others. I would like to say that it really depends on the book or type of writing for me. I like the Redbook Infertility Diaries covering someone actively in treatments, though I’ll admit that it doesn’t really phase me one way or the other (I was not upset when the writers were both blogging while out of treatments, but I think it adds a great layer to have JJ actively trying right now and writing about the process). I like Elizabeth Swire Falker’s book about treatments even though she became a parent through adoption. I don’t need my advice columnist to have gone through every situation she is doling out advice on (for instance, I don’t need Carolyn Hax to be a divoree recovering addict with intimacy issues and overbearing parents. I just need her to be broad-minded and creative) and I don’t need my infertility writer to still be trying or not have children by the end of the book. But I know there is a level of annoyance in the community that the only books that are published are those where the author has success down the road through one means or another.

The author also talks about how many embryos should be transferred at any given cycle. Should there be a limit?

I think medicine is an art more than a science and every body reacts differently, therefore I’m always wary about setting inflexible limits that disregard numerous results from the same situation. Yes, single embryo transfers would be the ideal, but I don’t think bodies fit into clear-cut ideals. On the other end, even without hyperstimulation (which you would still need to do somewhat to take into account the attrition rate for fertilization), you would probably have more frozen embryos in storage which creates a situation on that end. What happens to all of those frozen embryos that need to be frozen singly instead of in pairs to account of future single embryo frozen transfers? I think limits talk more about how we wish things could be than how they actually are.

Beth likens Dr. Frankfurth’s office to one that “should have belonged to a family doctor in Anchorage, circa 1950, and not to a late twentieth century endocrinologist.” How much do appearances matter? What were your first impressions of your RE’s office? Did/does that color your interactions with the RE himself or herself?

I laughed because I’m definitely the type who gets a gut-sense of how much I trust the place based on the first appearance. I would describe my clinic (and the other DC Order of the Uterus members will probably laugh at this) as warm. It’s warm in temperature and emotional climate. They have soft, blurred paintings on the walls–quiet Kandinskys as opposed to vibrant Jackson Pollocks, furniture with rounded corners, and single-room bathrooms for discreet crying. And they are all things I noticed, regardless of how much they were intended vs. randomly purchased. I think my RE is a warm, caring person regardless of his office furniture or artwork, but I’m sure these secondary features go into how I process his words and actions.

No, really, you thought the idea of getting to talk about a book with a lot of other people including the author is cool and want to be a part of this? Then join for the next book. And hop along to another stop in this online book club.

Tonight, we had Lindsay and Mr. Badger over for dessert. Before they came, I commented to Josh that it felt very adult to have another couple over for dessert. I remember my parents having people over when I was little and I was allowed to stay up as long as I stayed in a different room. They would brew coffee and my mother would sneak us out petit fours.

And then, when Lindsay was leaving she commented, “this felt very adult, going out to someone’s house for dessert.”

And that’s how you know you’re an adult. You are having another couple over for decaf.

It was actually a very good thing that I had Lindsay and Mr. Badger over because they were earlier testers for my Christmas candy spread–a series of toffees and chocolate barks and a gingerbread caramel. Right now, we’ve been concocting new recipes for my Purim baskets so they got to try my chocolate caramels with sea salt. Their poor mouths will be put through the sugar gauntlet these next few weeks, but how else can I ensure that my Purim baskets rock the palate?

I am uncertain of how one can take a picture of a piece of chocolate caramel and not have it resemble a square of feces.

Have I mentioned that I’m in the Purim zone? March 8th kicks off Adar II (in the Jewish calendar, we don’t just have a leap day; we have a whole leap month. The month of Adar repeats twice certain years and this happens to be one of them). Which is the month that contains my favourite holiday, Purim. Think of all the best features of Halloween, Christmas and Mardi Gras and you have Purim.

To misquote the Orthodox Union: Be Happy, It’s Almost Adar!

I am so excited that the letters have begun to trickle in for the Letter to My Body campaign. I’m obviously a part of the larger umbrella category that is woman, but one of my subsets is infertile, and frankly, I want us to have the loudest voice at this virtual conference. Imagine a room filled with cheering avatars. In one corner you have the politically-minded and in another you have body acceptance and in another you have business-savvy. And in the center of the room, rallying the group, making them truly look long and hard at their body with their passionate letters about how infertility has affected their feelings about their body are the stirrup queens. Twelve and a half making their voices heard.

Because it’s not just about how we look at our bodies. Our letters are also about making other women consider their own bodies in a different light.

If you’ve already written one and posted it, thank you. If you need any help with the technical aspect of contributing, let me know. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, may I suggest thinking about your body? If you feel like posting but have nothing to write about, may I suggest composing a letter to yourself? And if you’re really empowered after writing this note, rally the troops and encourage other infertile women to have their voice heard. Post about it on your blog, post about it on bulletin boards, encourage others in your Resolve chapter to write their own post. The best part–you can participate even if you don’t have a blog. BlogHer will host posts from any woman. All you need to do is go through the free sign-up and they will let you create content on their site. So you can write this one post and then go back to non-blogging. Or maybe this is the push you needed to start your own blog.

This project is on-going and it’s not your only chance to have your voice heard, but it is your chance to have your letter included in this critical mass of infertility-themed notes. And I would like to make our response to this project as diverse as our community itself. I want every path out of infertility represented–good old-fashioned shagging, treatments, donor gametes, adoption, and living child-free. I want every age represented, every sexuality represented, every diagnosis represented. I want people to read our response and say, “shit. I never knew there were so many facets of infertility. 3000 women came out to write something? Mel only has about 1200 on her blogroll. Where did all of these women come from?”

Twelve and a half of the population. You have to assume at least half of that number are women. We’re talking in the millions. We can certainly pull together more than the 89 entries compiled by feminism and gender.

I have things to say about my body
Yes I do
I have things to say about my body
How about you?

Cheer over.

Somewhat cross-posted with BlogHer, but not really…

A few weeks ago, the excellent Suzanne Reisman kicked off the Letter to My Body project at BlogHer and now I get to carry the torch forward and invite you to write a letter to your body.

The way this project works is that you will be invited today to write a letter to your body and add a link to it in the Mr. Linky (at first I wanted to ask why it was Mr. Linky and not Ms. Linky? But then I logged onto the site and realized the name of the program is really Mr. Linky) feature over on this BlogHer post (you do not need to have a BlogHer account to add your link). I will then choose several letters and pass them on to the next torch carrying BlogHer CE who will present them in a post, invite more people to write a letter to their body, and provide their own letter. Two weeks from now, the next set of letters and invitation will appear.

There is more over on this BlogHer post reflecting on the last batch of letters, but I’d really like to take a moment to focus on us. Because, damn it, it should be about us. Who the hell is more in-tune with their body than people who have a medical crisis? People barely pay attention to their body until it isn’t working properly and I went from vaguely remembering from my old Women’s Studies classes that cervical mucous existed to knowing my daily E2 levels. I went from wondering whether the boys at the 7-11 were checking out my ass to wondering what others were thinking about my body when I couldn’t conceive.

Infertility affects how you feel as a woman.

The first call for letters received 89 submissions at last check. I’d like to double that or triple that–make the world see how women experiencing infertility (functional or biological) feel about their bodies. The love or hate they have for their uteruses, ovaries, and cervixes. BlogHer is a national forum and this campaign is gaining media attention and I would really like the greater world to hear our voices.

It is very easy to participate. Go back to your blog and write your own letter. Make it as long or as short as you need. Copy the permalink and go to this post at BlogHer. Enter your blogging name and the permanent url of your post in the special linking feature at the bottom of the post. Some of these letters will be chosen to be discussed in the next editor’s post on this campaign as I did for the letters that were chosen from Suzanne’s post (you’ll have to go over to BlogHer to see what I mean in the middle of the post I wrote over there). You don’t have to write it today, but please try to make it a post within the next week. There is no right or wrong way to do this. People have used pictures, poems, music, and words to describe how they feel about their body.

I’ll start. This is my letter to my body.

Dear Body:

I think we know each other pretty well by this point; best friends more than general acquaintances. So I think I can be frank with you and not have it ruin our relationship. Since best friends let each other know when they have food stuck between their teeth or when they’re acting like a raving bitch. Body, I think you know in your heart what I’m going to say. You’ve really let me down.

First there was the whole getting pregnant thing and then hanging on to a pregnancy beyond a few weeks thing. Then there was the premature ovarian failure and the extra short luteal phase. The clotting factors–not just the more common MTHFR which I can actually find information about but the more bizarre PA1 4G/4G allele that doesn’t seem to included in any books I’ve found containing information on reproductive hematology. And you know I like to Google, so why would you do that to me? Then there was the whole premature delivery of the twins and the IUGR and their NICU experience. And then after all of that, you have the nerve to not produce any prolactin so I can’t breastfeed. Seriously.

I think I’ve been a pretty good friend to you. I don’t complain aloud too much about my ass or stomach–both of which bother me, but I’m picking my battles with you. I give you good food and until a few years ago, I ran every single morning. If you have a problem with me, I’d want you to tell me.

You know how some people will listen to your litany of reasons why your friend is an ass (an annoying yet lovable ass; not one of those detrimental-to-your-mental-health type women) and they give you the advice to dump them? Well, I never tell people that because I know that it takes a long time to make a good friend and that those who tell you to get rid of someone have never had a friend dig her way into their heart and settle down somewhere between ventricles and atriums. Perhaps their friendships simply aren’t that deep, therefore they can see more merit in letting someone go than weathering a storm.

I don’t give that advice because of my relationship with you. If I focus only on the ways you’ve let me down, I’m not being true to the big picture. You give my husband two boobs to fondle, you give me legs strong enough to run 5Ks, you give me thick hair and long lashes. You provided a space for my assisted-conception children to grow and let me experience–at least once–that feeling of a baby kicking inside. And you also gently reminded me later on after the kids were out that the kicks feel exactly the same if they’re squirming inside of you or outside of you against your belly. And that lesson maybe wasn’t one I wanted to hear yet but thank you for telling me the truth so I know when to stop pushing you to let me experience pregnancy again. And most of all, I really do love you. Even when I’m being a bitch myself and complaining non-stop about you. I don’t really mean it so please never dump me. No matter what type of ass I become.

Love,
Mel

So not to turn this into a cheering war with the infertile chickies yelling out our feelings about our body louder than all the other women out there. But…I do want us to be the loudest chickies out there. I do. I want the larger world to hear the diversity in what we think and feel. So go back to your blog (oh…wait…first you could leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about my letter) and write your letter to yourself. Have a good cry. Maybe even thank yourself. It’s pretty damn cathartic to think through these things.

I know this commercial is sports-related (I know that due to the ESPN insignia and not because I actually know this player. Is she a player? Someone who loves sports?), but we can watch it on a very different level. Your task: a simple reassignment the letters of ESPN to stand for…