For the first two years of life, our children didn’t watch any television (oh, they’re those kind of people…). When they were about two-and-a-half, we started letting them watch five minutes of a movie before bed. But here is where we really make their childhood pathetic and remove any chance for them to fit in with pop culture conversations in the future: I don’t want them watching anything made recently that has quick camera changes. Nothing slick. Preferably without cute characters that will beckon to them from toy shelves whenever we’re out shopping. Which means that we turn to home movies.

The first movie they watched on continual play was a video of pictures from their first year. My daughter would narrated it every night by repeating the same phrases for each picture: “there’s my ng tube! There’s my ng tube again! I liked to pull out my ng tube and Mommy said ‘no, no’. That picture is at Grandma’s house. That picture is on her refrigerator. What am I looking at? I love you!”

And as much as I loved watching those first year pictures again, after several months of watching the same images on continual loop, we decided to introduce a second video. Welcome the Lovenberg family from New Jersey.

Right after we started treatments, we went on a trip to Disney World (which, it turns out, is not a great place to go if you’re infertile). We brought a video camera around and made a movie for our niece. Part of the movie was the opening ceremony where they invite a random family to open the park. The day we were at the Magic Kingdom, the Lovenberg family was throwing the confetti. Dad, Mom, daughter and son all squinting into the bright morning light while we filmed them hanging out with Mickey and friends. We started watching the Lovenbergs on continual play, with my daughter shouting out the lines of Miss Hildegarde Olivia Harding, citizen of Main Street USA and the hostess for the opening ceremony (apparently, the name goes with the character–there are several Hildegarde Olivia Hardings floating about and a different woman plays her on different days).

And we started musing about the Lovenbergs. What did the parents do? Dad was maybe a fireman or a police officer. Mum stayed home and clipped recipes from magazines. Son was probably in college by now and daughter was eyeing the better room in the house. We googled them, thinking that we would send them a copy of the video, but there were too many Lovenbergs in New Jersey. One rents port-a-potties. Another works in a first aid squad. One wrote reviews on a cheap gas site. How would we know which was our beloved Lovenberg family?

Mommy soon tired of watching the Lovenberg’s throw pixie dust, though I had to replace the film with something more interesting, more colourful, and more exciting than a family of four squinting. In came Free to Be You and Me.

The quintessential favourite of our generation. I know you startled a bit when you read the title and maybe you immediately jumped to your favourite song and starting singing it in your head. For me, it would be “Agatha Frye” or “Glad To Have a Friend Like You.” Maybe for you it’s “It’s Alright to Cry” or the non-musical “Ladies First.” The kids were immediately hooked and they’ve moved their obsession from song to song at least providing some variety.

Their favourite at the moment is “Brothers and Sisters.” But it is not for its infectious beat or radical dance moves (please, if you haven’t seen it in a while, click the link at the bottom of the post to check out the intensely high kicks on top of the jungle gym at the end). It’s all for the blond boy who pulls up the rear in the scene when they are walking single file through the playground.

One night, Josh mentioned that the boy appears only in that one scene and he challenged me to find him elsewhere. We started it over and watched it two more times and found him several more times, striking a pose (he’s in the second row of people in the beginning sequence), going down a slide, bobbing his head at the end of a tunnel. We have collectively fallen in love with him and named him John-John. It is currently my daughter’s job to call out “there he is!” every time he comes on the screen. We only find him more endearing when he messes up one of those early moves by throwing his hands up in the air when everyone else is crouching down.

One day, they will tire of Free to Be. Either they will tire or more realistically, I will tire and then hide the DVD. I often wonder what will come next. Will it be Schoolhouse Rocks? Another try with Really Rosie? Old Electric Company clips? But even more interesting to daydream about is who we will collectively fall in love with next. The girl who pulls out her adjectives? Pierre who is eaten by a lion? The letter “E” who can turn a can into a cane? Only time will tell.

First and foremost, a very public thank you to everyone who has been reading and supporting the Lost and Found Newsletter so far. People have put the code on their sidebar (which I’ve provided below in case you want to as well), sent in news, and–best of all–used the newsletter. They’ve clicked through and given support. They’ve found new blogs. They’ve welcomed new bloggers. They’ve created community. So, thank you thank you thank you.

Maybe it’s the little middle schooler in me who always skipped lunch rather than face the what-table-can-I-sit-at shuffle in the lunch room, but people coming together–women supporting each other rather than competing (and fine, the man-pies are invited to join along too)–means the world to me. That is why I am doing this. In case you were wondering. Since you probably were. Wondering. Why.

There are now a multitude of ways to read the newsletter. It is published every day and the title states the day (eg. Tuesday’s Connections Abound) whereas the Lost and Found page is constant. Both (the current newsletter and the Lost and Found page) are the only two posts on the front of the blog. If you miss a day, you can easily read back issues through two ways on the side bar: there is an archive based on subject (so you can see all the past pregnancy announcements, for example) as well as date. For the most part, the newsletter changes every single day though I’ve sometimes held over information.

I’ve created a temporary post at the top of this blog that will have a link to the current newsletter whenever I hit publish. The date is set well in the future so it remains at the top of the blog. I’ll switch it back to One Smart Mama in the future, but until more people know about Lost and Found, I’ll leave a link at the top. You can click there to read the newsletter.

You can also reach the newsletter via the icon on my side bar. You can bookmark the Lost and Found blog and click there once a day (usually around/after lunch). You can email the link to yourself and access it via email. You can subscribe through google reader or bloglines. AND you can have the email sent directly to your email. Sign up for the newsletter by leaving your email address in the space on the sidebar.

What I need from you: Spread the word. The more people who read it and use it, the tighter the community becomes. You don’t need a blog to read it so put out a link on bulletin boards. Add the icon to your side bar by cutting-and-pasting this code into your template (changing all of the red brackets into a <> when you paste it) :

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Write a post about it. Tell your friends about it. Talk about it in the clinic waiting room. Any method for getting the word out there.

And because this is my massive distraction, because I truly believe that we can each make a difference in each other’s lives, because I think that making a difference can be done by giving other people ten minutes of your day, I am asking for reporters. I know at this point you’re thinking, “what the hell? Reporters? For a newsletter that covers the IF/pg loss blogosphere? I have a freakin’ life.” Well…um…I agree. But what I mean by reporters is that there are a lot of blogs out there and I can’t read all of them all the time. Whenever I see news, I add news, but I need other people sending me links as well. So if you want to cover one or two of the sections on my sidebar (for example, adoption or female factor or living child-free at IF/loss), please email me (thetowncriers@gmail.com) or leave a comment and let me know. What it would entail is clicking through blogs and reading for news–either a blogger who could use a little extra support or a blogger who has good news to share–and sending me links when you find them.

So that is it. Please help Lost and Found bring together community, spread ideas, and create opportunities.

And since I am mentally there today, let’s all reminisce about middle school. I had big bangs and one side of my hair was hairsprayed back. I wanted to be Cyndi Lauper. I was not even close to being Cyndi Lauper. I wore plastic framed glasses. Whenever the girls were picking on me, I would pretend that I had cramps from my period and curl up in the nurse’s room because if you faced the wall, she couldn’t tell you were crying. I didn’t want to get my period. I pretended that I wasn’t wearing a bra even when I was wearing a bra. My first boyfriend was Jon. He is now a neurosurgeon. I was in love with Johnny Depp in 21 Jump Street. I read Sassy magazine.

The late great monologist Spalding Gray wrote a single novel: Impossible Vacation. The main character, Brewster North, a thinly-veiled version of Spalding Gray himself is seeking that ultimate impossible vacation–the one where you leave all of your troubles in one space and continue unfettered into the next. He is constantly wandering, meandering, rather than facing the suicide of his mother head-on. And really, is there truly a way to meet something as horrific as a parent’s suicide head-on?

The idea of the impossible vacation is both figurative (making a complete break with problems) and literal (the island of Bali). But it’s the figurative that is always more interesting. Do we ever really take a vacation? Our jobs, our home–those are rarely the things we need a vacation from. Infertility, loss, arguments, disappointments–these are the things that demand a vacation in order to regroup, and yet, it is impossible to escape them. You bring them with you even if you end up on a beach in the South Pacific. You might escape them for a few minutes while you’re engrossed in some chick lit or eating a particularly wonderful meal. But those troubles–the things you really need a break from in order to breathe–have a way of finding you at any hotel or friend’s house. They creep in before you sleep or while you’re floating in the ocean or even in the middle of laughing over something that someone said. It pops up unexpectedly like the horror movie ghost that you thought you had outrun. Grief and Frustration both hold sixth senses to find your whereabouts.

Five months ago, my OB ordered a progesterone test. He had filled my heart with hope about trying on our own, promising that the body sometimes came into hormonal realignment after a pregnancy. And it’s true–it has certainly happened for many a stirrup queen–secondary fertility. It hasn’t happened for us and I’m well past the point timewise where last time I had my feet in the stirrups. Some people take their time with the process. They avoid the RE because they don’t want that diagnosis. I didn’t care about the diagnosis as long as someone was doing something to get a baby to stay in my belly. I was in the RE’s office the day after we passed through a year.

Primary Me wouldn’t have waited more than a month for a progesterone test. Primary Me would have called after the first anovulatory month and said, “this isn’t working. Shouldn’t we treat the lack of ovulation and give progesterone as a protective measure?” Primary Me would have never understood Secondary Me. She probably wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with her at all.

This test became Impossible Progesterone. Month after month, I wouldn’t ovulate. Or I would ovulate but I’d be out of town. And then I wouldn’t ovulate again. Five times I tried to take this test. And at the same time, focusing on this test was an escape. It was a meandering. I’ve been meandering, moseying towards the RE instead of sprinting in my best running shoes. And it’s not like me. But this is how things have changed.

The last time there were two salaries. There was the fear that we would never be parents. There was the unknown. And there was just us–our debt was our own. But now, there is one salary. The fear and the unknown are gone and now there are two more people carrying the debt. Primary Me only listened to the whispers that still can be heard in the background: it will never work. You won’t get to go through a babyhood. You will always feel like there are people missing in your home. Secondary Me has a second layer, a guttural voice that snarls at me over the whispered one: you’re fucking greedy. And you’re willing to mess with your health with fertility treatments. And that makes you an idiot because your existing children should come first. You’re taking away from them to gamble on someone that you don’t necessarily deserve to have. There are women who have no children. There are women who have one child. And you have fucking twins. You hit the jackpot the first time and now you’re greedy enough to come back again. You don’t deserve anything for that attitude.

The day before the test, I was having lunch with a friend who also has boy/girl twins and we were trying to figure out my meanderings. Why I can’t run on a straight path directly towards the examination table. Why I’m willing to try to take a meaningless test for five cycles. There isn’t an answer. Except that the road is both easier and harder this time around. And it looks like I should be able to run on it, and yet I’m finding that it’s more like jogging in loose sand.

There are days that I believe beyond a doubt that I will have three children. There are days when I look into my deep future and see three children returning home for a holiday. Or my closer future where I see the twins getting to experience interacting with a younger sibling. If I didn’t believe this, I would have turned the second bedroom into a playroom. I wouldn’t look at the twins’ toys with the thought in mind that a new baby may be crawling through the house soon, putting small pieces in his/her mouth.

And then there are other days when I listen to the guttural voice and think it’s correct. I am greedy and I will realize that soon enough. And we will just stop. And if we don’t come to a true stop, we’ll come to a stall–that place where you stand in the crossroads for so long that you know that you can’t make the decision anymore. It’s too late. The path may still be out in front of you, but too much has happened, too much has passed, to take that first step on it. And then you either find a way to turn around and come home or you stand at the crossroads for the rest of your life.

I called for my appointment with the RE today. We’ll go in November when things are changing for us financially–even if just minutely. It feels like the responsible choice, which is a bit of a joke when you’re talking about treatments. Because, after all, what are treatments except a form of gambling with a really great payoff? You can end up spending thousands upon thousands with nothing to show for the hard work and money. Or you can end up spending thousands and thousands and walk away with the child you always dreamed you would have. But it’s not exactly the safe option towards parenthood.

And I finally took my progesterone test. The one that is somewhat meaningless considering the other facts in place. But here is the joke. I called for my results today and my doctor is on vacation for the next week. He’s taking the vacation that I can’t take. Even if I’ve finally gotten the progesterone test out of the way. The other doctor said things look fine, and I listened to that as my uterus cramped and ached–the end of another ten day luteal phase. Everything is fine. Just relax. Go on a vacation. And wait a week for the doctor to call.

As you’ve probably guessed from my side-bar, I read a lot. I am partial to non-fiction at the moment and I finished Harry Potter last night (and I’m now prepared to discuss!). But there is a deep well in my heart that can only be filled by chick lit and People magazine.

I like my chick lit to be simple and straightforward with easily identifiable characters and situations. I like the narrative that surrounds the love story–the thirty-something who goes through a major disappointment or a horrific incident and emerges stronger and more sure of herself.

Alisa Kwitney leaves the well-beaten path in many ways in Flirting in Cars. Her main character, Zoe, is a forty-something–a nice change over the usual twenty-and-thirty-somethings that clog the chick lit genre. She is an Iraqi Jew–again, a nice change from the usual Ashkenazi heroines found in a Jennifer Weiner book. She is a single mother by choice, an ex-Manhattanite who leaves the city to enroll her daughter in a country school with a specialized LD program. And she can’t drive. Hence why she spends the majority of the book flirting in a car as she learns how to be self-sufficient and exist in a small town.

There are some things that profoundly didn’t work in this book, which was namely the premise. I couldn’t believe that Zoe would move out of Manhattan (which she is profoundly unhappy doing) when she is surrounded by LD schools inside New York. Why not try the Gateway School on Second Avenue? Or the Churchill School on 29th? Or if you’re willing to leave the city, you’re probably willing to leave your borough to take your child to Mary McDowell over in Brooklyn. I spent a great deal of time wondering why she was complaining when she had passed over excellent options to put herself in this situation. It wasn’t enough to put down the book any more than you drop a friend when they’re going on and on about a situation that they’re placing themselves in that they don’t need to do. But you still spend a lot of time wondering.

How was Moira close to finalizing a divorce in New York in under five months, a state famous for the fact that it has a fault-based system that precludes a couple divorcing for reasons such as irreconcilable differences unless they’ve been separated for one year? How was she also about to adopt a baby from China in under five months (as a single woman in 2007–from a country that does not allow single parents to adopt)? How was Zoe affording the rent and $75 in daily driving lessons on a freelance journalist salary without a paid job in months?

Flirting in Cars is an enjoyable read if you don’t look too closely at the details. Sort of like that friend who doesn’t make a lot of sense when you pull apart the conversation, but can be a welcome distraction when you just want to go out for an evening and have a fun dinner. I look forward to seeing her next work because she is definitely an author worthy of a first try as well as a second try.

Update at bottom:

This was my day: up at 5:30 a.m. for blood work, library visit with a friend I haven’t seen in four years, screaming match with an elderly man in a bookstore (story coming soon), made a pot of chili, drew 15 mermaids in various styles of dress…oh…and made a new blog.

The Lost and Found list has officially moved over to a new space. One that has an rss feed. One that has room to breathe. One where the main post–the Lost and Found post–will always be top of the page for easy access. Forgive me if you’ve written in the last few hours. Since dinner, I’ve been moving stuff over to the new site and writing some guidelines so the list runs smoothly. I will dive back into email and such tomorrow.

When you go over to the new blog (and by the way, this is still my main blog where I will post all thoughts/stories/questions. Lost and Found is solely for Lost and Found stuff), please take a moment to read through the three links or so on the side bar and understand what I’m looking for with Lost and Found, how to submit, and how you can help. Since no one voiced dissension over the idea of adding announcements if they are posted already on a non-password-protected blog, I am going to begin adding things I know this weekend. Please do not be offended if I miss posting your news–I am human and lots of things fall through the cracks. Also, the best way you can help right now is to let me know whenever you read something (consider yourself all freelance reporters from now on) so I can get it on the list quickly. Especially pregnancy/birth/adoption/loss announcements.

The other way you can help is to spread the word. Write a blog post about it, take the icon and post a link on your side bar, post it on bulletin boards, tell fellow bloggers, write about it in song, help people learn how to subscribe to the rss feed…anything you can do to get word out. This new blog is only helpful and community-building if people read it and post on it.

Consider it the newspaper of the IF/pg loss blogosphere. It is yours (though I maintain veto power so advertisers do not take advantage of the space), so fill it. Anything that is of interest or benefit to the IF/pg loss world belongs on the list. There is a lot of new information outlined in the FAQ and submission page that goes over new things I’m looking to post including artistic endeavours that need coverage (self-published books or documentaries) or support to stirrup queen (or sperm palace jester) owned businesses.

Oh…you want to know the website address so you can just go over there already? Once you’ve seen it, come back and tell me what you think. I am especially interested in hearing if it is user-friendly and easy-to-read. Okay, okay, here it is…