Thank you for the kind comments on that last post; my manifesto. Feel free to link to it or send the url anonymously to anyone you need. When I wrote it, I was so frustrated. Frustrated by the commentary of others and frustrated with the situation itself that brings out the tendency to need to turn temporarily inward. Women are raised with the word yes tattooed on their tongue. Yes, I will take care of that. Yes, I will attend. Yes, I will bake it/sew it/buy it/bring it.

I want to teach my daughter to say no when she needs to say no. It’s a hard word to say. I really dislike turning someone down when they’ve invited me or asked me for something. Possibly turning down an invitation in order to do IVF? It makes me feel like shit.

Treatments sometimes feel like a giant mountain that is casting a shadow on everything else. You can’t move it, it’s exhausting to go around it, it is constantly in your field of vision.

We’re still two cycles away from starting treatments again and they’re already shaping our winter–making us work all plans around the possibility of a monitoring appointment or the timing of an injection.

Thinking about it sometimes makes me feel frozen. The closer we get to that appointment, the more emotional ground I’m uprooting. That imaginary soil has turned out anger, jealousy, and not a small amount of anxiety and indecision.

I think the best way to describe it is that I have arthritis of the soul and sometimes my thoughts just become frozen. What if? I am so paralyzed by the choices and not knowing what will happen next: do I take a chance with my first choice which isn’t necessarily the best choice? Do I hold off and wait? Do I go to my second choice, which makes me feel sad, but is probably the better choice? That sort of thing.

When I was applying to grad school, I would go home every day after my last class and go to the mailbox to see if there were any acceptance letters. When the mail contained nothing, I would be so overwhelmed by all of the anxiety I had been carrying around all day and the disappointment of the mailbox trip and the uncertainty of my future that my first thought always was just to stop. To go to sleep. There are few choices with sleep and what will happen next is pretty much a given: you will close your eyes and you will be unconscious. I started calling this time of day mailbox narcolepsy.

I am feeling the pull of mailbox narcolepsy as I consider choices. They don’t even have to be life-changing choices. Just getting all of the day-to-day stuff complete. Should I clean the house first or start the hummus? Should I say fuck-all to the cleaning and do some work? I guess the best way to describe it is that I feel like I’m on one of those people-movers at the aeroport. I hate to fly. Those people-movers, they bring you closer and closer to the place you need to be. But the place I need to be–whether it’s on the plane or in the stirrups–just sucks. It’s necessary and it has to happen. I have to fly if I want to get from point A to point B. And I have to go back to the clinic if I want to have a third child.

Unless I want to go with Plan B. With driving 8 hours instead of flying or adopting instead of treatments. The Plan Bs have their own issues.

They make me tired too.

I’ve always made quick, decisive choices. I don’t look back. I’ve always been the type who has had little patience for those who are wishy washy when it comes to decision making. And now I’m stressing about whether or not to make a salad for lunch and eat it because you can’t unring the lettuce bell once the salad is consumed. And what if something else would have been the better choice?

I have rarely experienced writer’s block–when it happens, it is usually because I am out of practice and need to get back into the thing I am writing. It takes a day or two, but I usually find my groove. But for days, I’ve wanted to describe this state of feeling frozen and I haven’t been able to do it. It has felt too overwhelming–not the act of writing, but the act of writing something specific. I’ve sat down at the computer and started this many times. I have Microsoft Paint drawing in wait and diagrams explaining this emotional state.

I’m happy; I’m fine. When I look at all on my plate right now, I feel like I have a decent meal. I like to be busy. Right now is much better than when I was starving and the plate was empty. Or when it was entirely filled with trash. But you know those dinners–when everything is fine and the day was okay and you were even happy through most of it? But, inexplicably, you’re crying into your spaghetti and vegan meatballs? That state of crying when you can’t even really put your finger on why you are crying or why you are frozen. That’s what was happening at the beginning of the week.

To the untrained eye, they would read that last paragraph and say, “I’m worried about you; you sound depressed.” But I know that you probably understand what I mean–how you can be laughing, having a perfectly normal dinner, and then the topic of a future event comes up and somehow, you end up in tears. It passes, you move back to laughing, but…well, you know how it feels when you glance out the window and see the mountain.

I feel like I am becoming more unstuck. Tonight, my best friend from college is coming. We have been friends for 15 years; this fall was our 15 year anniversary (yes, Jill, if you’re reading, I’m talking about your SIL!). I met her the first day of Hebrew class. And I knew the moment I saw her that we would be those friends that grew old together.

Can I just talk about her for a second because she makes me so happy? One day, we were having breakfast and she told me that she was going to leave her job and bike through Southeast Asia. And she did it. She just picked up and left with her bicycle and went on this incredible adventure. This trip was preceded by similar trips through Central America and a half-a-year in Mexico. Travels through Europe and the Middle East. She has been everywhere.

When I’m with her, she reminds me to grab onto everything in the moment; to take chances, to put myself out there, to risk stability for great rewards. Everyone should have a friend like Amy to kick them in the ass from time to time with her sassy, adventurous foot.

You know how you feel when you enter the house and you close the door and you can completely be yourself? That is what it is like being with her.

Back to cleaning. And cooking. And preparing. And becoming unstuck.

You don’t understand, so let me explain.

We thought we’d be able to have children and then we couldn’t.

It wasn’t a choice to enter into treatments/adoption/donor gametes; it wasn’t an option.

Having a child may feel like a choice to you, but it isn’t to us.

You and I will need to disagree on that, because you’ll never change our feelings about having a family be a need over a want.

When we’re cycling–whether we’re trying naturally, doing minimally invasive treatments, or doing invasive procedures–I am riding on a roller coaster of emotions.

I am angry. I cry a lot. I am frustrated. I am told one thing and another happens. No one can give me straight answers. No one can make real promises. We pay A LOT of money for the chance to have a child. This money does not guarantee that we will have a child at the end of the day.

We get pregnant and we are elated. And then we lose the pregnancy.

Or we get news that the pregnancy isn’t taking and we never get a chance to feel that elation–we only get the depression on the other end.

Even though I’m a pro-Choice feminist, I also love my children when they’re only embryos.

And that is a difficult thing to wrap your mind around.

You think that you know what we’re going through based on the small amount of information you know.

You think you know how I feel or how I’m reacting based on what I present to you.

You never see the full picture, but you make a lot of assumptions.

You are impatient that we plan our lives like this.

You think you need to make parenthood seem less enticing–this doesn’t make me feel better. This just makes me feel like you are belittling the thing I am putting myself through hell to obtain.

You say that you feel like you can’t support us. And you can’t. Not really. Or not in the way that you want to offer support.

Infertility isn’t linear. It’s a wavy line and you can’t know if you’re entering on a crest or a dip. I don’t expect you to get it right.

I don’t expect you to run in like a cheerleader and accompany me to appointments or help me raise money for treatments/adoption.

What I want from you is actually quite simple.

Ask me how I am and want to hear the answer.

Ask me about treatments and where I am in the process.

Ask me to explain to you more of what I’m going through.

Let me vent.

Don’t try to change my mind or see the world from your eyes.

I used to have your eyes too before this happened. And I know you mean well, but even if you say that you went through infertility or loss yourself, my own experience is unique.

I try very hard to be proactive. I do this not only by seeking treatment, but gravitating towards other infertile men or women or other people using assisted conception/adoption.
We are a supportive community.

They take care of my emotions–I rarely have to explain myself to them. They understand with few words. I enjoy being with them because it’s easy.

I also enjoy being with you. Sometimes I like being with you because I don’t have to speak about infertility at all. Other times, I like being with you because I can talk it out and explain and hear my own words and make sense of this myself.

Infertility is so different for every generation. When our mothers and fathers were experiencing infertility, they had few choices. They had fewer answers.

Now, we have many choices–maybe too many choices. It makes it difficult to step away.
I believe that I probably won’t understand much of what my children are going through if they experience infertility. I’ll try to be there for them and I’ll do my best. But I also know that they will have opportunities or choices to make that I never had. And it will affect them in a way that I will never understand because I didn’t go through it myself.

And that will make me sad because I really want to be there for them. That’s the closest I can come sometimes to understanding how you feel when you are dealing with me. So, I’m sorry. I know it really sucks to watch me be sad and feel like there’s a wall between us.

Infertility makes some women want to sweep it under the rug. It has made me want to be an activist–not only for infertility, but for all the taboo topics still out there. I talk about infertility a lot–not because I’m obsessed with the topic, but because it has shaped who I am and it is a large part of my life. It has to be–so much of infertility is a day-to-day monitoring that it becomes impossible to set it aside fully.

It makes me want to reach out to other people–and that is something I am extremely proud of that I do. I think I used to lead a life that was very focused on self and I think I lead a life that is now focused on others–the children I have, the children I want, the people I reach out to comfort or help. You may think I focus too much on self because you may not understand the intricacies of what I do. What I put myself through because I have a burning need to parent. You may think the choices I make are selfish. Or self-indulgent. You may think that I like being sad or that I should just move on. You may think that I’m making unhealthy choices. I can’t really do anything to change the way you think and frankly, I don’t have the emotional reserves to focus on you.

We can’t take you to the edge where we stand–we can only tell you about it. And hearing it is nothing like living it.

But if you want to stand over here and watch me at the edge, you may find that everything you are scared that I am or becoming isn’t true at all. And if you opened your eyes, you would see that I’m not at the edge to jump, but I’m at the edge because I trust myself and my choices so completely and I know this is where I need to be if I want to fly.

61.

I have 61 drafts in my folder right now.

515 posts that are published and 61 posts where I don’t necessarily want to hit publish, but it feels wrong to erase the words.

You must have those too. The ones that were written in a moment of anger, but you’re now embarrassed how you’ll come across if you let others read it. Or the ones that seemed funny in the moment and now…not so much. Or the ones that were rewritten and published in another form but you don’t want to erase the original draft because it’s sort of the story behind the post.

I am about to hit publish on one of those angry ones.

And I’ll be frank; I’m embarrassed to hit publish.

But it has been sitting in my draft folder for so long and every time I look at it, I get this overwhelming feeling to either hit publish or hit delete. But I don’t really want it hanging in limbo.

I was really angry when I wrote this. It was months and months ago at this point, probably some time in the spring. But I was thinking about it last night because we may have to beg out of a family event because it requires travel in January (and we will hopefully be in the middle of cycling with the clinic). The rational me hears the excuse and knows how it sounds. I mean, really. Can’t I put off starting IVF until February? We’ve been trying for over a year and a half on our own–what’s another month or two? It’s somewhat distant family, but still.

But the emotional me–the one that feels small and sorry inside my body–says, “I just can’t.” I don’t want to wait any longer. Other people, they can take it on the road. They can have sex in a hotel room and have a baby nine months later. But I can’t do that and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to judge my choices against a fertile world. Judge my choices on my terms–on how it feels to have to pay thousands of dollars just to get to the starting line when others walk up there for free. How it feels to take everything lovely out of the act of conception and bring it down to hormones and blood work and scans.

I know that I can’t make someone understand. And it is hard to wrap your mind around–what you’re willing to give up just to have a chance. And how singularly focused some of us need to be. Some people who train for marathons–they eat, drink, and sleep running for the entire training period. They think about every calorie they put in their mouth and they visit websites about running and they talk about the merits of one exercise shoe over another. And that’s the way they get through the marathon.

Other people, they go for a long run in the morning, shower for work, and barely think about it until nighttime when they go to bed early so they can get up and do another run the next day. And that’s the way they get through the marathon.

So. I’m putting this post up there. This angry manifesto that was written months ago when a friend questioned the way I train for marathons. Which is all just a euphemism for treatments. I feel out-of-breath from it.

Please don’t judge my anger. I’ve already beaten myself up enough.

If you keep blogging long enough, you pass the same dates, the same remembrance days, the same terraversaries and celebrations and birthdays and holidays. Last year for Pregnancy Loss Awareness Day, we lit the candle with the Wolvog and ChickieNob. And last year, I thought we would do this every year together.

And then October rolled around again and there came a moment in the food store when my daughter was telling a woman trying to buy yogurt about the pantiliner she saw in my panties that morning. And where she was chirping along freely to strangers about the ng tube that once fed her and the cricket that jumped in my hair and all the other bits of family lore that spill out to people who are trying to walk their dog or check out books at the library. She loves to engage people and tell them about us.

And this is the scene I imagined:

We would be purchasing a bag of romaine lettuce hearts and my daughter would turn to the elderly man next to us and say, “there are a lot of babies who aren’t here. My mommy waited a long time for me. Before I came into her belly, there was Zoe and November and February and March and my triplet. Where are they? I don’t know. Where are they, Mommy? We lit a candle. But it wasn’t Shabbat…”

And the elderly man would be massively confused and probably distinctly uncomfortable. And I would not know how to bridge that conversation; how to explain the ChickieNob without inviting this man further and further into my life.

As she has aged, as she has started repeating everything she hears to every person she meets, I have pulled back. Because frankly, she (and obviously the Wolvog) is my time away from thinking about what came before her and what has come after her. If she introduces pregnancy loss into heavy rotation along with stories about my pantiliners, crickets, and her ng tube, I will lose that space.

We will light our candle by ourselves on Monday night.

After all, it is more our story that theirs. They will build their own story and they will know our story, but some things just can’t be shared entirely with the people who come afterwards. And I’m thankful that it’s not a memory that anyone else needs to carry, especially not the ChickieNob and Wolvog.

Instead, I will give you the song that the ChickieNob inspired when she explained how babies are made a few months ago and I wrote a song to remember all of those babies who didn’t grow even though we worked really hard on that garden and wanted them very badly.

Um…so I know last week there was this.

But now this week, there’s this.

But wait! They’re connected. And I will tell you how.

It’s all about community. It’s about making connections where there wasn’t a connection. It’s about pulling together and supporting one another and…

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

Let me back up for a moment. First and foremost, if you’re not listed yet at Shop Mom and Pop AND you have a creative bone in your body, list yourself. It’s easy. Send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) and I’ll send you back some questions so I have enough information to list the business and poof–you’re up. I’m going to add this url to my email signature so it keeps going out there as I write emails, but I wanted more people on the list before I sent it out there. It’s a train that will keep looping through, but you want a bunch of passengers before you leave the station the first time…know what I mean?

A “business” is however you are funding treatments or adoption: a book (if you’re a writer), music (if you’re a singer), pottery (if you’re an artist), jewelry (if you’re a jeweler). It could be a service that is related to IF/pg loss (for instance, you make memory boxes to help someone remember a loss). It could really be…anything. The sky is the limit.

And now the Wish Project. Think of it as Postsecret without the secrets. And without the postcards. It is the same impulse that brought about the wish box still tucked into its little nook on the sidebar. Except that now it is expanded to include not just our little community, but the entire world. Any wish on anything from anywhere. I think it is not only interesting to make connections between mutual wishes (that moment of “I thought I was the only one…”), but there is the chance that someone reading has the power to make your wish come true (not in the god-like sense, but in a human-being-reaching-out-to-another-human-being sense) and beyond the wishes that are within our power to help one another achieve, there is the belief that additional energy added to your own wishes can help them come true. Perhaps not quite supported by scientific evidence, but then how do we explain the change of events once everyone started sending good thoughts to Mary? Hmmm…

So, the Wish Project is open to everyone–far and wide. Not just IF/pg loss related, though, obviously, it is a space to place those wishes too.

Just to explain in brief how it works: each month has an open thread. Leave your wish (or as many wishes as you need) in the comments section (or read more on the sidebar about how to add a wish). I will move it as soon as possible into the body of the post. You can peruse other people’s wishes and add your good thoughts by placing them in the comments section of the “good messages” post (below the current post–scroll down). And if you leave a wish, you should probably check the “good messages” post at some point during the month. And…um…if you see a wish that you can make true, then do it. And if you can take a moment during the week to read down the wishes and add your energy to those words…well…all the better.

Next:

The distraction of the week… Best mindless book to read when you want to escape any mentioning of IF/loss/pregnancy/babies/parenting. The Barren Bitches Book Tour is ten kinds of fantastic and it has been the most eye-opening experience to read these books with other SQs and SPJs. But sometimes you just want to shut out everything happening in the real world for 10 minutes. So this list covers any genre and the only condition is that there are no plotlines that involve babies, pregnant women, children, loss, or infertility (sometimes, the best chicklit books have a side mentioning of a baby that vomits on someone–I think if it’s something in passing, it’s okay). If it’s part of the plotline–like Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner–don’t add it. But if it’s a mindless vampire romance or mystery-thriller-medical drama–bring it on.

To make the adding as easy as possible, here’s the format:

Title and Author (genre): description in two sentences

Here’s my addition:

Debutante Divorcees by Plum Sykes (chicklit): rich chickies in New York play gay divorcee. Prada and parties feature heavily.

It was sooooooooo good. So mindless. I just sent my Lady-When-Waiting Sykes’s first book to take with her on a trip.

So go forth and create the greatest list of mindless books of all time. Easy reading for the waiting room, beach reading, relaxation reading. Nothing that will make someone think. I can’t promise that there won’t be a plotline that will remind you of another stressor in your life, but at least we can aim for mindlessness.

Next:

Deb at All Things Deb had a cool idea: “I have been thinking about something for awhile. Especially with the Lost and Found, more and more people are going to know about things. Sometimes, the words have already been said and sometimes there are no words. In another blog circle I have seen something that they call a blogstone. Basically a symbol that says, Hey, I was here and am sending you strength…etc. Their symbol is (o). But I am sure that as a community a symbol could be developed that would signify what the collective “we” would need.”

Your thoughts? I think it’s a really good idea–a way of all those lurkers to at least leave a link to show their face (or…um…words) and say, “I listened.”

Lori at Weebles Wobblog has a really cool series of posts happening right now called Chakra Sundays. Every Sunday, she writes a new post about Chakras and how using this knowledge applies to treatments and adoption. Blockages are due to fear and knowledge is the best combatant for anxiety (unless, I guess, if that knowledge is what is causing the fear). So read along with the series (she covered Root Chakra last week).

Bea at Infertile Fantasies has a fantastic idea for her 50th Good Deed. On November 1, all bloggers are invited to a Girls’ Night-In. Instead of going out with your friends, stay in and donate the money you would have spent on dinner, coffee, or a movie (or whatever else you do when you go out–Putt Putt? Do you like how I’m keeping life good and chaste?) to the Cancer Council (which I assume is like the American Cancer Society for Aussies). Bea asks that everyone blog about their evening and send her a link to the post so she can compile a list. I can’t think of a better way to get rid of all of that Halloween candy than to sit on the sofa and stuff myself. While donating money. To a very, very good cause. Especially since we just lost a fellow blogger to Hodgkins. I know I will be donating that night in honour of Lisa P.

And now, a little pu-pu platter of some of the cool things I read this week:

Katie at (N0t) Coming to a Uterus Near You has a post that made me smile about walking away from treatments. About walking away from infertility and leaving all of the feelings back in the pit. She writes: “I’m sitting here shaking my head, almost in disbelief. How did I get here? Am I out of the pit of infertility permanently? I was in it for so long; it seemed my destiny, my home. Now I feel as if I am standing on the EDGE of the pit. When did that happen? I don’t remember clawing at the walls to get out. I seemed happily unhappy at home. Now, I’ve caught myself venturing out in the space beyond the pit. Evidently I still come back to the pit, glance in, and realize, hey, I haven’t been there in a while. Cool. Then I go back to the world around me.” It takes a strong woman to get to 50%, that’s all I’m saying.

A at Infertility Just Sucks has a post about coming out to her mother about infertility and her upcoming IUI. It all started with this week’s Oprah episode. And the conversation ended with this: “But she told me that it would all work out. She said it with such firmness and finality – just like a mother – that I had no choice but to believe her. One day, in the end, it will work out. We will be happy. No matter the outcome.” And you have to trust Mom.

I laughed so hard reading Frank’s description of his wife on Gonal-F at Adventures of (In)Fertile Frank that I would have peed in my pants if I didn’t have this damn UTI (what? We’re going to talk about our vaginas and uteruses and cervical mucous and a girl can’t mention her narrow urethra?). Please make sure that all beverages are swallowed before you click over and start reading.

Heather at Production, Not Reproduction also had a very funny post about her son’s penchant for the word “no.” I loved the whole list, but I especially loved this closing thought: “The fact that saying “no” almost never actually works hasn’t slowed him down in the least. Most of the time there wasn’t even a question being asked, he just felt like expressing his opinion about the matter at hand.” I don’t know; it seems worth testing out toddlerisms for an entire day and seeing if anything is different or if life keeps going on as usual.

Lastly, closing with an idea similar to the one expressed by Katie above (do you like the bookending?), Serenity at Serenity Now has a post titled “Finding My Way Out of the Darkness” that I loved. It begins with her friend, the end of her marriage and the fear and grief she is feeling. Her words remind Serenity of how she felt in the middle of treatments. The fear she is still feeling now. It’s that movement out of the pit. When you’re still close enough to look inside and still scared that you might fall back in. And I’m just sending so much hope to you that the appointment went well.

The one second summary before you click away: Shop Mom or Pop, The Wish Project, add your book distraction, weigh in on Deb’s idea, and go read a lot of cool posts.