Welcome to the fourth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Waiting for Daisy
Author: Peggy Orenstein
Start Date: April 17
Post Dates: June 4th–June 6th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Waiting for Daisy. We’ve broken down the current tour into three groups. A new list will be posted each day of the tour).

Group A:

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Melissa)–see my post below this one
The Annex (Josh)
Serenity Now! (Serenity)
Kir’s Corner (Kir)
Karaoke Diva (KD)
Twisted Ovaries (Vanessa)
Oscar Wants a Playmate (Jackie)
What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting (Kirby)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Scrambled Eggs (Binky)

Even if you haven’t read the book, you can jump into the conversation in the comments section of any of the blogs above. Also watch this clip of an interview with Peggy Orenstein to get a taste of Waiting for Daisy.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #5 is The Kid by Dan Savage. Dan Savage is the author of the popular sex advice column, Savage Love. The subtitle for this book–What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant: An Adoption Story–says it all. It is hysterical funny, incredibly moving, and wonderfully thought-provoking.

The Details: Tour #5 will start June 7th. Participants will read The Kid by Dan Savage. On Wednesday, July 11th, everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on July 12th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog some time between July 17–19th (we will break up into three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #5, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon. Happy reading.

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Waiting For Daisy? 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 #5 (The Kid by Dan Savage) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

Peggy talks about ‘scheduling to have a baby,’ making sure her life goals had been met and it was the right time to start her family. Now in hindsight do you yourself regret putting a timetable on when you would start your family? Would you have ‘scheduled’ your life differently?

I think I was exactly the opposite–I chose parenthood over career. It started in college. I chose writing over medical school even though I had always dreamed of becoming a doctor. I thought writing and teaching were more conducive to having the family life I wanted. Then in graduate school, I walked away from pursuing college-level teaching. On one hand, I really didn’t like teaching at the college level during the two years I tried it during graduate school. On the other, I was very fearful of following a job to a location that–again–wasn’t conducive to starting a family. Instead, I moved to D.C. and took a job teaching middle school. I met my husband and we got married and we started trying soon after. And when it wasn’t happening, there was a part of me that became very fearful of this idea that I had set aside a career for family and now I wasn’t achieving that family. There wasn’t a space to draw my ego–teaching was just a means to make money and have insurance (even if I did love my classroom and teaching and the students).

One spring, we went back to a conference at my graduate school. Many of my former classmates had published books by this point and they had their books arranged on a table. Others were speaking at the conference. That was really the only moment where I felt completely lost. Where I wondered if I had done the right thing. We were doing fertility treatments and that consumed my thoughts left and right. All I could think about was having a child–there was no space to work on a book. At that conference, I spent a weekend worrying that I had made the wrong choice. I had always believed that career could come later, but fertility was time-sensitive. And when I was there, I was worried that I was losing those young, vibrant writing years AND I wasn’t achieving the family I wanted. In retrospect, and only in retrospect, I can say that it was worth it to me because I ended up becoming a mother. And through that experience as well as teaching middle school, I found projects where I felt passionately–that felt career-worthy. It’s a gamble either way–putting family first or putting career first because in both cases, you risk ending up with none or only half of what you want.

One page 152, the author writes of considering her 3 miscarriages differently – as two miscarriages and one molar pregnancy. She explains that she does that because she doesn’t blame herself for the molar pregnancy (caused by sperm abnormality) like she blames herself and feels guilty for the other miscarriages. In your fertility life, do you categorize different incidences like she does? In your heart, do you feel more or less guilty depending upon whose “fault” it was? Is that a way of coping?

It’s funny because I did this too a few weeks before I read the book. I was going through my medical history with the new OB and I left out the blighted ovum when I was going through my cycles. When we spoke about the pregnancy, I mentioned the triplet that didn’t form and he looked at his notes. “But you didn’t list that blighted ovum,” he told me. And I explained that I didn’t “count” it as a loss because nothing grew inside the sac. I don’t know why I do that–maybe to not think about the loss? But sure, I feel extremely guilty that Josh is affected by my infertility. That if he had married someone else, he wouldn’t have to deal with infertility or loss or difficult choices. He will probably kick my ass upon reading this and remind me that if he was married to someone else, he wouldn’t have our incredible marriage or the twins. But I think many of you know what I mean when I talk about that guilt because our infertility is entirely female factor. At the same time, if we had male factor, I know I wouldn’t blame Josh or feel frustrated. I would just accept it as fate and part of the package of loving him. I don’t know why I can’t apply that way of thinking to myself.

In the epilogue, Orenstein struggles with what might be called the mythology of infertility: the messages and assumptions that it’s all worth it in the end; that it’s a matter of luck (the chapter’s title is “Meditations on Luck”); that everything has worked out for the best; that adoption might be an emotional/spiritual cure for infertility; that some couples may be too quick to seek medical assistance; that she may have waited too long to begin trying to conceive; and, as another woman told her earlier in her journey, that “the pain goes away.” Her husband warns her to not become a revisionist, but she acknowledges that becoming a mother has been a “surprisingly redemptive” experience and seems to not entirely reject the above messages. Describe how you feel about the presence of this mythology, both in Orenstein’s epilogue and in your own life. How has it affected the way you tell your story, on your blog or elsewhere, and how you interpret others’ stories? To what extent have you revised or even rewritten your own story of infertility? Is it inevitable, perhaps even necessary, to do so?

I think it’s easy to say once you cross to the other side that it was all worth it, but you say that from a place of retrospect where you know your marriage is intact and you have your child and your health and your sanity (or even if you have lost one of those things along the way, sometimes it feels as if people become accustomed to their own losses and can deal with them without thinking of them in the same enormity that others view them. Does that make any sense?). I think we say this because it’s too difficult to think about the other possible outcomes–too painful to consider–so we skirt away from those alternative realities. Spend enough time in the blogosphere and you can meet people who have lived the other paths. Who have lost the marriage or lost their health or lost their sanity. And it makes you shudder as you wonder about the worth of the fight.

I think it’s inevitable in the same way that once you get married, you rewrite all of those terrible dates or nights spent worrying and say that it was all worth it because it brought you to the person you were supposed to marry. It feels the same way with a child. I can’t imagine my life without the twins, but I also know that if any of the other pregnancies had continued, they wouldn’t be here. And thinking of them not existing literally brings me to tears. Thinking about those other babies also brings me to tears. I guess there’s no way to win…

All things of wonder can happen on your birthday. You can randomly choose a bug spray off the shelf at the local CVS on your way to the hike and discover once you smell it that it is the same brand of bug spray you borrowed 24 years ago on a beach camping trip that you’ve been looking for ever since because you loved the memories tied to the smell. I have been sniffing my arm all afternoon and thinking about these huge, empty horseshoe crab shells we found near the campsite.

We spent the morning on the Potomac River. It is my favourite body of water in this world. I know many people cannot imagine being so incredibly attached to a body of water, but when I read Impossible Vacation by Spaulding Gray and he described how his mother went insane after his father scoffed at her attachment to Narragansett Bay and moved her away from the water, I marked the page with a little scrap of paper because that is exactly the same attachment I feel to the Potomac River.

In the same week when I have been panicking over the idea of sending off my son to speech therapy once a week, I found myself wistfully wishing that they were old enough to take white water rafting. I’m not sure what age specialists would recommend taking a child white water rafting, but I’m going to wager a guess that it isn’t two-years-old. But as we were standing at the overlook watching this screaming rapid, I told my daughter when she was older, we would ride over the rapids in the Potomac River–albeit further down river in West Virginia where the water is calmer. And then I thought to myself, “will I have the energy and wherewithal to go white water rafting by the time she is ready to go white water rafting?” It’s this bizarre race where I am ready now, but she is too little. And when she is ready, there will be this small window before I am too old. It feels like I’m standing at the edge of a game of double dutch, trying to perfectly time the moment I jump between the ropes.

Before we started the hike, we gave the twins the option of using the stroller even though I wasn’t certain our stroller would do well on the tow path or walkway to Olmstead Island. Of course they they turned it down. They did fine on the walk out to the island, but asked to be carried on the walk back. I pointed out that they had been given the option to use the stroller. My daughter said simply about her current state of exhaustion and the length of the walk, “but I didn’t know.” That was enough to get her a free ride back to the car in my arms. Because it’s so true. You just don’t know. And you can’t be blamed when you need to change your mind.

I took over twenty pictures of the two of them walking hand-in-hand. I wish I had a best friend who had been with me since in-utero.

So…um…it’s my birthday tomorrow. What are your cut-offs for early, mid, and late? Mine are 30–33= early. 34–36=mid. And 37–39=late. Nice even jumps of three. I’m nearing the end of my earlies.

Back when I was in middle school and I watched thirtysomething, I thought those people were so old. Children? Careers? Cancer? Mortgages? Divorce? Who the hell deals with that shit? Old people. And now I’m walking through the theoretical set of thirtysomething and thinking about how young they actually were but I didn’t know it then. I was so worried about turning thirty and being old that I never thought about how much I really really wanted those things they had on the show. At least, the good things (not the cancer or the affair). I wanted the husband and the mortgage and the children and the career. I mean, even in middle school I knew I wanted these things in the future. But I didn’t want to get old to get them. And it never occurred to me when I was 13 that some of these things might be hard to achieve.

That it wasn’t just a matter of turning thirty and having all of these things handed to you. And it sucks when you find that out. That it’s so hard to find someone who can be a good partner. It’s so hard to make that leap and buy a house and have that responsibility. That getting a job may also mean a large dose of rejection as you apply and are turned down for positions. That having a child was going to be so fucking hard. And in order to have that child, you were not going to romp around in bed like Hope and Michael. You were going to conceive in an office. And you were going to say goodbye to a bunch of not-yet babies along the way.

Oh my G-d, can I have a more downer birthday post?

I am actually quite fond of birthdays and cake and celebrations in general.

But just to get back to the angst for a moment, being thirty in my world is all about fertility, and that was something that never seemed to come up on the show. Or if it did, I was so far into my middle school world that I didn’t notice it. Fertility–do I still have it or is it gone? If I have it, will I be able to conceive on my own this time? Or will I more likely return to the RE in the fall? If my fertility is gone, what is the next step? Is it donor egg? Or is it adoption? And how does all of this fit into how I envisioned my life and how does all of this fit in with what is actually in front of me as a thirtysomething.

Pretty heavy thoughts for a birthday post.

Let’s talk about this instead. A big public thank you to this woman. And she knows why even if you don’t. Not to be mysterious or anything…

The odes for Secret Ode Day have started trickling in. They rock so hardcore. And I really don’t want to spoil any surprises, but I wanted to print one just to give you an idea (and by the way, this blogger sent in two–TWO–and offered to write more–MORE–which simply means more love). Just in case you’re sitting around all bored this weekend and don’t know what to do, you could look at your blogroll. And write a paragraph. Or two. Or eight. Or even thirty-three. If the entry gets too unwieldy, I’ll put the entries into more than one post. Easy peasy (I’ve always wanted to use this Jamie Oliverism and now I’ve gotten it into my 32nd year just under the wire!).

I was first drawn to [this] blog because of her hilarious stories. She has a family full of amazing characters. They do some crazy things but you grow so fond of them because of the way she writes. We all have crazy family members and I love that she just puts it all out there. [This chickie] is a pleasure to read because of her wit. She is super smart and her writing pulls you in. I’ve been able to fall in love with a city I have never seen. I can’t wait to visit!

So, you’ll need to check back on the 21st to actually find out whose blog the person is describing, but I thought that was a really sweet write-up of why she likes this person’s blog. And if you were the author, wouldn’t you walk away from your computer smiling (at least for the rest of the day if not longer)? Everyone needs some love. Everyone needs to know that they are important. And if you are a piece of the puzzle making up the blogosphere, you are important because without your words, the puzzle would always have this little gap. And you’d never be able to see the completed picture. Let a person know how much they’ve changed your day or your outlook or your life with their writing.

Wow…this roundup is really all over the place today. And we haven’t even gotten to the blogs.

I am beyond in love with this post from Infertility Sucks! and the introduction to the term Leak Week. In googling Leak Week, I was also treated to many other new favourites including Red Beard’s toothpaste, ordering l’omelette rouge, and falling to the communists. And I finally discovered what “tin roof’s rusted” means when the B-52’s say it during “Love Shack”. Wait, but back to S and Infertility Sucks (I told you this post was all over the place). Not only do you get the term leak week, but you also get a lovely song composed by the divine Ms. S. So click over and read the whole post and be prepared to laugh. A lot. Even though S was dishonourably discharged from the Uterine Navy.

Laura, the Reluctant Baroness, has an open note to a pregnant friend. This thought really moved me and sent me running to the dictionary to find the right word…though none exists: “I wish there was a different word to use rather than jealous or envious. Those words have such negative connotations. I wish I had a word to tell you, ‘Damn it I wish it was happening to me, but I couldn’t be happier for you.’ Because without that word, I feel like such a hypocrite when I say ‘Congratulations,’ but then I burst into tears. I’m just glad you didn’t see the tears. I don’t mean to detract from your good news.” It’s just a fantastic letter that really explains how much you can hurt while still feeling happy for another person.

Pamela’s post on Coming2Terms that wove together her own story with Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” chilled me and expanded my understanding of that poem to a completely different level. Until the day I read her post, I always assumed that Frost’s poem was about taking risks and reaping big rewards. It simply never occurred to me that the difference could be regretful. That the road not taken was the one he actually wanted to take. And yet this gorgeous, aching post shows the two roads diverging–both with its benefits and drawbacks. And how she can almost glimpse how her husband would have looked on that other road when he picks up the child. And how she is still searching for the difference. This post simply kicks ass.

And I swear I love this post for something more than the fact that Chicklet mentions Infertility’s Common Thread. On Blurb This, Chicklet has a post about tying on the pomegranate string: “On day 1, the husband helped me tie my present around my wrist. On day 2, I left presents on two fr
iend’s desks at work with instructions for their right wrist. Day 3, I helped tie the present around one of said friend’s wrists. And day 4, the presents already started working! Day 4, that SAME friend told me that she didn’t know the other friend at work was going through it too – that she’d seen her wearing her present and couldn’t believe it! And for me, that was totally what these presents are about. Two people who don’t think they have a lot in common, who don’t normally talk a lot, just see each other’s wrists and know they actually have this crazy HORRIBLE thing in common – without saying a word.” And that is exactly it–finding out that the person you never knew could support you is right beside you, understanding your world. And I just loved this post.

So…that’s it. I’m off to go gear up for my birthday. Eat some cake. Go for a hike. Relax and read. The good things of being a thirtysomething.

My kids don’t…(try not to gasp when you read this)…go to preschool. This somehow marks me as a freak and people gently broach the topic with me as if I’ve announced that I’ve decided to stop all medications needed to control a disease. The question comes up every time I encounter a group of parents–at a social gathering, at a board meeting, at synagogue. Here is how the conversation sounds:

Woman 1: So, how old are your kids?

Me: They’re 2 1/2.

Woman 1: Oh, where do they go to preschool?

Me: Actually, they’re at home.

Woman 1: Are you waiting until they’re three?

Me: No…we’re not sending them to preschool.

Woman 1: (a look of confusion crossing her face as if I’ve told her that we constantly brain our children while they’re eating their morning yogurt) Ever?

Me: We may do a part-time program when they’re four or we may skip it altogether.

Woman 2: Are you homeschooling them? Is it for religious reasons? My sister-in-law’s best friend’s sister did something like that in their cult in Tennessee.

Me: No, it’s not for religious reasons. We just want them at home.

Woman 3: What do you do all day?

Me: Well, tomorrow we’re going to the library to pick out new books and play with some of their toys. I don’t really know what we do all day. We hang out. We colour. We bake cookies.

Woman 1: That sounds…interesting. Aren’t you worried that your kids won’t be able to get into a good school?

Me: A good college?

Woman 1: No, a good kindergarten.

I hate the fact that people look at me strangely when I talk about wanting my children at home. I hate when they shake their heads knowingly and say, “oh, when they hit two or three or four, you’ll want them out of the house.” I hate that they make me feel like I’m clingy and possessive if I want to be the person who teaches my children shapes and numbers.

It is possible to be standing in a large group of mothers and feel very much alone.

Today we took my son to be evaluated for the three-year-old speech program through the county. He has been receiving speech therapy via home services for the past year though that program only runs until age three. After that, all children go to sites inside the local elementary schools.

It looks like an ordinary classroom complete with a play kitchen and blocks and puzzles. He immediately jumped into playing with one of the speech therapists while I spoke to the other one about the program. Everything was sounding great until I asked whether or not his twin sister could come with us to the program.

“It’s not a problem if you need her to stay home,” I explained. “I would just need to arrange babysitting with my mother.”

“Actually,” the speech therapist said, “you can’t come to the class. You’ll just drop him off and you can take that time to run errands.”

“I’d really like to stay,” I heard myself say. “I wouldn’t know the exercises to practice at home if I didn’t observe.”

“Parents really don’t stay in the room,” she repeated firmly. “We’ll go over the exercises with you when you come to pick him up. Will this be a problem?”

And what could I say as I started to have a panic attack? Yes. This will be a problem. All this time, I’ve snickered with Josh over the women who ask me if I have my children in preschool because if I didn’t, I’d have to admit that I’m not ready to let them go off on their own. I’m not ready for my house to be empty during the day or to have someone else enjoying those hours with them. Those are my hours and I did the hard work to earn them. And when she told me that I was going to have to drop him off, it was almost as if she had said that she was going to rifle through my jewelry drawer and steal a few choice pieces…if I didn’t mind.

I wanted to tell her that I know I need therapy and that this is my own problem, but I really didn’t know if I could drop him off and walk out of the room if I wasn’t pregnant by the time services started in the fall because he could be the only babyhood I get. If I was pregnant, I could release him for those hours and let him grow up knowing that my arms would still be full. But if I wasn’t pregnant, I was not going to be able to watch him walk into that classroom and have her close the door on me and have me on the other side. Because that’s exactly how it feels to not be able to conceive. To have a door close on you while you still need to watch the scene unfold through a little window.

So this was not going to work to have her take my child and teach him how to speak when I want to teach him how to speak, regardless of the fact that I have no speech pathology training.

But I told her, “no, it’s not a problem.”

And then Josh took the kids to the car while I had a short cry in the teacher’s lounge bathroom.