Never think that a small voice floating in the ether can’t be heard. It can when we join together. In honour of National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW), running with Flicka’s original idea, and in the spirit of community–a surge of blogtavism.

On Thursday, November 8th, Flicka and I are pulling together a project we are calling Twelve and a Half Fighting Back. The twelve-and-a-half are the 12.5% of the population experiencing infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. This project’s purpose is two-fold. It is a push for a letter-writing campaign during an election year and it is an amalgamation of stories, putting a very human touch to an experience that is often held at arm’s length by politicians and the general public.

For the letter writing campaign, click here to read more on Flicka’s blog and see how you can participate.

For the My Story project, create and post a four paragraph description of your own experience with infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption highlighting either what having insurance coverage or adoption benefits allowed you to do or how your story could have been different with mandated coverage. Make sure your own voice comes through–this isn’t a mere recitation of facts: it is your experience and your emotions. Talk as if you do have your congressperson’s ear for a moment: what would you want them to know about your experience? Shorter is better–try to keep your story down to 4 paragraphs. Post any time between now and November 8th (I will continue to add links to stories after November 8th, but this list is going up then and your story will have maximum exposure if you post by then).

I will be keeping a list of participants and adding permalinks to the main post (whenever you post, send me the link to the post as well as your blog name and the name you’d like to have appear next to the story). We are trying to bank on the attention right now coming from the Weblog Awards, but even if I don’t win, we’re working to get this list of stories and letter writing campaign into the newspaper and Internet coverage. We will get our words out there into the general population’s consciousness.

Anyone in the infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption community (in other words, all 1000 blogs on the blogroll as well as all the ones I haven’t found yet) can be a blogtavist on this project. Use your sliver of the Internet to bring attention to the issues affecting us right now–especially the ones senators and congressmen can address and affect while in office. If you plan on participating, please leave a note below or simply email me (thetowncriers@gmail.com) the link whenever you post.

The stress associated with saving for your child’s college fund or retirement is well-known. The government has created many resources for relieving these financial burdens. Yet those of us who need to spend the equivalent of a year of college just for a chance to make it to the starting line have few options for financing the treatments that recreate what comes for free for other citizens. The average American simply can’t afford fertility treatments even though they have the financial means to raise a child. It is extremely frustrating to watch other medical conditions have coverage to make treatments affordable or accessible while fertility treatments remain a consumer-driven industry with an astronomical price tag.

During our first tango with treatments (we are now embarking on adding to our family with fertility treatments again after over a year and a half of trying on our own), both my husband and I were working and we took the attitude of whatever-the-cost assuming that we would be able to pay it off at some point in the future. I had excellent insurance through my job that paid partially for all non-IVF treatments, procedures, and exams and 50% of IVF. Paying for fertility treatments seemed do-able, even for a middle school teacher and a non-profit arts administrator.

Fast forward to today and we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Now our insurance comes through the District of Columbia rather than Maryland and we have very little coverage for non-IVF treatments, procedures, and exams and no coverage at all for IVF. We do not qualify for in-house financing programs, such as shared-risk, and the biggest injustice is that the people who will probably need multiple treatments to get pregnant and require the most medications have the least amount of options in terms of coverage.

We are refinancing our house and taking out more loans in order to add to our family. But it’s decision time. We don’t have the luxury of trying one or more paths to parenthood. Financially, we only have the means for the option that gives us the best chance–even if its not necessarily the best choice for our family as a whole. At the same time, I know we’re lucky that we have a house we can refinance and that I have a husband who is willing to take on tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt to add to our family. And it makes me a little bitter that those are the silver linings I have in all of this.

Marlo Thomas has two books out right now called The Right Words at the Right Time, and the second in the series contains essays by regular people–like yourself, except they happened to write Marlo and submit their story–containing the words that came at a pivotal moment in life.

The stories are pretty addictive. They’re brief–maybe three pages–but you end up popping them into your eyes (perhaps not the best imagery) like Doritos. The writing itself is simple–but you realize how much words can make or break a moment in time. I was thinking all week about some words that were once said to me in passing that I’ve kept with me forever. They were more of the hurtful variety. I was going to write about them before I saw this book, but now I think I’m going to write about something Josh discovered for the first time last night.

I keep two notes in our pantry.

I keep them there instead of in a scrapbook because I want to stumble across them from time to time as I reach for a can of crushed tomatoes or grab the paprika. I want the notes to flutter to the floor and reread them again. I could only find one of the notes last night–the other is free floating somewhere underneath the multitude of baking ingredients. And that is the point–I like to stumble on these notes.

The first is a note Josh wrote me one morning during our only successful pregnancy. The other is a note from my mother.

Growing up, my mother always tucked notes into our bags if we were going on a trip. She slipped them into our socks and folded them into our sweaters. I would go to get dressed and notes would flutter to the floor. I was not a great traveler–and by traveler, I mean spending one night away from home. These notes made the trip a little easier.

I had a hard time leaving for college. I wasn’t the type who had looked forward to moving away from home, but there I was, a 15-hour drive away from D.C. On the night before they left to drive back home, my parents took me to the food store to stock up on non-perishables for the dorm room. A while later, I was reaching for food in my dorm pantry when a note from my mum slipped out. It was a simple message written on a yellow post-it note with a quick heart scribbled at the top. That is the note I still have in my pantry 16 years later. It has moved with me to 9 apartments or homes.

They were the right words at the right time. My parents have always made sure that I knew how much I was loved.

Josh never knew about the notes in the pantry until I was looking for them last night. It’s nice when there are still new things to find out after seven-and-a-half years together.

I am hormonal right now–I think that’s pretty apparent even without the period announcement this weekend–but I bawled through most of the stories in the book as I thought about how my mother always gives me the right words at the right time. Some of the stories were pretty amazing: a girl who lives through a suicide attempt and begins a lifetime of correspondence with Steve Allen because of it; the man who discovers that an old friend has written a song about him; the stranger who extends his umbrella for a person wet and in need. An excellent read if, like me, you like a good cry.

Thank you so much for voting for me–please continue to do so until November 8th. You can vote once every 24 hours by clicking here (or on any of the numerous links around my blog right now). I’m sorry to keep up the begging, but there is actually a purpose for this that affects more than me. It is currently National Infertility Awareness Week and Flicka (with the help of several others) is drafting a letter to be sent to campaigning senators and congresspeople to push for mandated treatment coverage and better benefits within adoption. I plan on posting this note whether I win or lose, but the attention from the general population that comes with the contest would be helpful. With you, I am preaching to the choir. Out there, it’s a new world of information about 12.5% of the population which includes men and women, rich and poor, young and old, married and single, gay and straight.

The idea that comes at the end of the letter is that if they need a story to see the struggles of infertility and pregnancy loss, there are almost 1000 on our blogroll. 1000 real people with real stories and real problems needing real solutions. Those people, of course, are you.

How can you help? You can ask others to vote for me without revealing that you have your own blog. Ask your friends, family, and coworkers–simply say “my friend was nominated for a weblog award and I’d love to help her out. Please click on this link (http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-medicalhealth-issues-
blog-1.php) and vote for her. The name of her blog is Stirrup Queens. You can vote once every 24 hours until November 8th.” If you’re out about infertility, all the better. If not, I’m simply a friend that you’re helping out. Post it on your blog, post it on bulletin boards, send it out as an email.

Bring attention to the issues surrounding infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption. And if you have time this week, help Flicka prepare the letter. We need to move because voting ends on Thursday and I’d like to post this while I have some non-IF attention coming in.

You know those dreams where you’re running furiously, but you’re not moving? The ones where you’re trying to get away and scream, but the sound comes out as a low moan or whisper. You can’t get air in your chest and it feels so real even after you wake up. It just sticks with you all day as if your subconscious has coated you in a grey, sticky film.

That’s how I felt when the cramps began signaling this cycle’s end and I realized I was down to my final cycle before returning to treatments.

It’s really silly. I mean, I can verbalize it to Josh. I sit cross-legged on top of the covers and say matter-of-factly, “we’re not going to have a child without assistance. It’s just not what happens for us.” It’s not that I feel fine about it in the grand sense of feeling fine about infertility, but there is a quiet acceptance this time around. I know what to expect. I know what I have to do and which questions I should ask. Coming in prepared makes it a very different experience from the first time.

The first time, I raced to the RE the moment we found out something was wrong because I wanted him to fix it. I couldn’t get an appointment soon enough. This time, I want to return to him because I want him to fix it. But there is a sadness as I stare at my appointment date. I want to go because I want the baby, but I don’t want to go because once we start this, we open up a new can of worms. And those worms bring sharps containers and hormone surges. Talented worms.

Which is all just a way of saying that on some days–and not all days–I feel like I am folded up inside of myself, peering out of my eyes with the knowledge that everyone else believes that I am occupying 100% of my body, while internally I know that I closely resemble a rotting chestnut that has pulled away from the hardened walls to shrivel invisibly inside. Please, could I get any more dramatic? But that’s the only way I can really explain the feeling. Back when I used to love chestnuts (why did I stop eating them?), I was so disappointed to cut one open and discover that the inner nut was a tiny mass, leaving a large pocket of air between itself and the outer shell. And now I’m that disappointment from time to time; that rotted chestnut.

I’m sorry that I’m a downer today. I warned you yesterday that I was having a low self-esteem day.

Sometimes I explain myself to Josh in percentages. I’m 50% in my body today. I’m 70% in my body today. I’m 30% in my body today. And I imagine my body like a house and I have climbed up into the attic, squeezing my entire neshema* into a space meant only to house a small portion of my being. I’m like Alice when she goes into the White Rabbit’s house and grows too big after drinking from the unmarked bottle.

And I would say that there’s something I could do about it, but mostly it’s just a feeling that comes and goes on its own without any work on my end. Therefore, I always see these moments as something I just need to ride out. It comes. It goes. It’s dependent on circumstances partly and yet it can’t be erased with counterbalanced circumstances. Sometimes, the act of trying to relieve these moments of anxiety and low self-esteem only increase the anxiety and low self-esteem. What did those nuns say? Getting out of a mood can be like chasing down Maria–it’s like trying to keep a wave upon the sand.

I’m in this mood right now. I won’t be in this mood later or tomorrow or another day. But I really hate seeing that date on the calendar. And knowing what’s coming. And not really wanting to run away regardless because I want the prize at the end.

And now, a word from our sponsors…

You don’t have to really really love Stirrup Queens or read me every day. You could just mildly like my blog. Or feel like this space is worth a click over (truly–three clicks of the mouse and you’re done) and vote every day for the next 6 days or so. Or not even really like my blog, per se, but want an infertility blog to win. If you’ve ever gotten something out of something I wrote–either support on your own blog or read something that spoke to you–please support me. So… If any of these descriptions ring true, click here and give me a vote. Once a day. Until November 8. And once this post gets buried, you can use the link I left in the top post. Truly shameless, but low self-esteem will do that to you.

*In Judaism, the soul has 5 levels and neshama (breath) is one of those levels. When I just turned to Josh and asked him to translate it since it is the perfect word to describe how I feel and soul is not, he said “it’s your essence.”

Um…grrr…gah…(blushes and stares down at the ground)…I was nominated for a Weblog Award for Best Medical/Health Issues Blog. And…um…if you like me (if you really really like me), you can vote for me by clicking here. You can vote once a day until November 8th so I put a link in the top post until then. And…if you could vote daily, I would really appreciate it and it would make me feel really good and…um…that’s it.

Actually, you don’t even have to really really like me. You could just mildly like me. Or feel like this space is worth a click over and vote every day for the next 6 days or so. Or not even really like my blog, per se, but want an infertility blog to win. Or simply take pity on a woman having a low self-esteem day who would like you to leave her a vote so she can feel loved. So… If any of these descriptions ring true, click here and give me a vote. Once a day. Until November 8. And once this post gets buried, you can use the link I left in the top post. Truly shameless, but low self-esteem will do that to you.

There seemed to be an inordinately high number of people not celebrating Halloween in our neighbourhood this year. Some posted “no candy” signs on their door (Josh commented, “in my day, a ‘no candy’ sign meant ‘please throw rotten eggs at my house.'”). We actually saw kids playing outside who informed us that they don’t celebrate Halloween.

Best House: Mr. Britain-Down-the-Street who claimed that children don’t celebrate Halloween in England (this smelled awfully suspicious to me, but he said it in such a jolly accent) so he had no clue what to give us and had prepared enormous goody bags FULL of candy.

Worst House: It’s a tie between the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC‘s family and the elderly neighbour we call Mr. McStickystein who is not only creepy beyond all get out, but gave the children wet, sticky hard candies. Just touching the outside wrappers made me gag and I made the kids throw out every piece of candy that had even touched Mr. McStickystein’s vomit-inducing offering.

In a strange turn of events considering the fact that I was plotting the worst Halloween candy offering in the world to the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC just last year, when we got to his house, his father informed us that they never got candy. But they had a cookie for us instead. We brought the cookie home and it was smothered in some sort of black seed. Or were those maggots? Regardless, it joined Mr. McStickystein’s offerings in the trash can.