Let’s have a little talkie talk about Grey’s, shall we?

Didn’t she want to know how high her FSH was? I mean, she’s an OB. I ask (and then write down every number in my little blue notebook) and I’m not even a doctor. I would just think that she’d…want to know how high is high.

But I did like the shut-up, shut-up, shut-up scene afterwards in the elevator. That felt real. The fact that they could run day-3 blood work on apparently any day of her cycle? Not so real. Breakdown in elevator–pretty spot on. I cry more, but that’s just me and I’m not going to fault Addison that she stopped short with a simple head thumping. If it were me, I’d also cry longer than one day. But, again, that’s just me.

Josh wants to know if it’s true that you can wax your surfboard in a doctor’s office in California. Topless. And barefoot. Is this all of California or only LA?

What did you think of the Addison-wants-a-child storyline? Will you watch the new spin-off show?

Okay, so now for everyone who doesn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy–the roundup.

I loved Larisa’s post this week in The Waiting Womb about the infertility and pregnancy loss community–which has obviously been on my mind too. She writes: “What’s important now? The story. The stories of all the women whose blogs I read. The yearning, the heartbreak, and hopefully the success. Follicles, schmollicles. Hope, love, support – that’s the good stuff. That’s why I keep reading and writing. All of your human stories that, though the technical pieces are different, the wants are the same.” And I just wanted to second that. At the same time, please head over there and add your own “please stay” to her gorgeous note to her embryos that came later in the week. Be forewarned, I bawled when I read it because it was such a beautiful post.

There was a line in this post from Still Passing Open Windows that spoke to me–no, better, it screamed to me: “I just thought, ‘This is so …. medical.’ It just feels like something I have to do. The thought that a pregnancy and a baby could result from this is just surreal.” I don’t know why; I just loved that line and it was a sentiment that felt very familiar. I loved the whole post.

If you can’t remember life before you knew what RE meant, head over to Matt’s latest post on Maybe Baby. I think this is my favourite line: “Elements of surprise and anticipation are in short supply in an Internet world where nothing is new, secret or exciting, so as long as I don’t Google what an endocrinologist does, I have nothing to fear.” More power to ignorance! Seriously, Matt, in this case, it really is bliss. Good luck today.

Donna at Double Happiness has this fantastic photo challenge that has been happening all week. Parents are redressing their children in their Gotcha Day clothes and taking a new picture many months down the line. The photos are pretty amazing and you can see all the children via the links at the bottom of the post. Warning–much cuteness abounds.

Mary Ellen of Our IVF Journey had hope restored this week when she found out that the nurse gave her the wrong fertilization report. The new fert report contained a beautiful hatching, balanced blastocyst. Which is currently residing in her uterus. And this post was just so hopeful and happy that it made it feel sunny outside even though I read it at night.

Cece at Child Bearing Hips has a great post this week about stress. And the whole idea of “just relax” and what the hell is relaxation anyway? I definitely related to it (though the other side of me also likes a good book on the beach). I think many of us enjoy operating at a high level of energy–feel more relaxed researching and reading and preparing. Or throwing ourselves into work or hobbies. I just wanted to raise a glass to Cece and to every other stirrup queen who kicks “just relax” in the ass.

Lastly, JJ at Reproductive Jeans, introduced us to a familiar move that many of us have danced at some point in the last month. Think you’re not familiar with the TP Tango? Head over and find out…

Stay tuned for a round of Name That Blogger and Thank Her either later today or tomorrow. You’ll need pen and paper. And, of course, your thinking cap.

Happy almost Cinco de Mayo! Happy almost Lag B’Omer!

So while we’re on the topic of community, I thought it would be a good idea to set the books–not necessarily the dates–for the next few tours so people could order books all at once from Amazon to save on shipping (especially bloggers outside the US).

Technically, our next book is Maybe Baby–it’s a collection of essays about choosing whether or not to try to conceive*. It runs the gamut from people who decide prior to ever trying that parenthood isn’t for them to people who try and conceive easily but have regrets to people who can’t conceive at all. I haven’t read it yet, but Lindsay has and she said that from what she remembers, it really is a mix. So question number one (1) is do you want to still read this knowing that you may be reading essays from people who could easily have a child and chose not to as well as people who wanted to conceive and couldn’t? How much would it bother you to read an essay or two about easy conception amongst people also discussing how they couldn’t conceive? The reality is that if people don’t ask questions that are directed at those essays, people could easily skip them. But I’m really unsure how much of the book is…skip-worthy…in your eyes. I thought a collection of essays could be a fun read.

Regardless of how people vote for question one, we still need to choose the next few books (and either one of these books will become book tour #5 or we’ll keep Maybe Baby as book tour #5 and make these books #6 or #7).

The other books that scored high when we voted a few months ago were Inconceivable by Julia Indichova and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. So I’m throwing them onto the list again. What other books have caught your interest–both non-fiction or fiction–that have infertility or pregnancy loss as part of the book? I’d love to read Tertia’s book So Close, but I’m not sure how feasible that is because it’s only being sold via a South African distributor. Has anyone in the US purchased it and how much/how easy was it to obtain a copy? What about other countries? Other books I’ll put out there for the list are The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer (has pregnancy loss as a theme), The Kid by Dan Savage (about his open adoption experience), and Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott (conceiving and raising her son on her own).

So throw out ideas now and we’ll put it to a vote this weekend. Any other ideas that people would recommend? Any books listed above that you would definitely remove from the list of choices? Also–make sure the books are easy enough to obtain through online sources or libraries. Or brick-and-mortar bookstores…

*Taken from the Politics and Prose write-up of Maybe Baby: to breed or not to breed? That is the question twenty-eight accomplished writers — including Anne Lamott, Rick Moody, Kathryn Harrison, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez — ponder in this collection of provocative, honest, and deeply personal essays. Based on a popular series at Salon.com, “Maybe Baby” features parents and nonparents alike exploring how and why they decided whether to have children. This powerful collection offers both frank and nuanced looks at those choices, both alternative and traditional, from a wide range of viewpoints. From abortion to adoption, from ambivalence to baby lust, from single parenting to searching for the right partner to have a baby with, “Maybe Baby” brings together the full force of opinions about this national — but also intensely personal — debate.

I have to be honest with you, I was pretty nervous posting that last entry. The response put my mind at ease so I thank you for taking the time to email or comment.

A point I think I never made well in that last post was that I also believe that our ability to give support to another person waxes and wanes depending on where we are in our cycle or where we are in our journey. And we have to be understanding of that. The same thing occurs in our real life–we sometimes can’t support our friends because we have limited emotional reserves and we need to use them on ourselves. I think the difference is whether the separation is temporary or permanent–tied to our own situation (which should be a temporary cessation of reading or commenting) or based on the fact that they are now pregnant or simply not infertile enough (which would bring a more permanent departure).

And, as DD pointed out, the other factor is how vested you are in the online friendship. Again, similar to real life, we sometimes pull away from acquaintances as they become pregnant–especially if they don’t exercise some sensitivity in sharing their pregnancy–but our real friends usually bump through their nine months with us, understanding that there are times when we simply have to use limited emotional reserves on mourning a BFN or a loss. We always come back when we can. But with acquaintances or even blog acquaintances, there does need to be a balance. At what point are you spending more energy on the emotions of other people than on yourself?

It wasn’t really the loss of readership I was worried about. It was the loss of community that made me anxious–the what-happens-next aspect to trying. You succeed and if you have a blog that is entirely your own story, you move along to pregnancy and then parenting. I’ve never seen my blog as entirely my own story. I think of it as this community space that I use to explore my emotional responses to infertility and loss. I continued to have those feelings after I had the twins and I continued to have those feelings as we started trying again. I knew that the blog wouldn’t change if I became pregnant again. But I wasn’t sure if other people would understand that it wasn’t going to change. And if I would be still infertile in my own head, but standing in an empty room wondering where everyone went.

A few years ago, I had a student whose father bought a storefront and tried to create a living room. “Is it a store?” I asked him, a bit confused. “What is it going to sell?”

“Nothing,” he told me. “It’s just a living room. You can come in, hang out, watch television with other people, read the newspaper, drink a cup of coffee. Anything you want. It’s a living room, except it’s public. Because too many people hang out in their living room at home all alone and need a space to be with other people.”

It was a great idea. Unfortunately, it was closed as a health violation. Apparently, when you have a store that brings in no money, you don’t have the ability to get the space up to code. There was no money for running water hence no bathroom. But it’s suffice to say that people hanging out in a living room still need to use facilities when they are consuming the cups of coffee they brought with them. It turns out that the city doesn’t love the idea of a crap bucket. But I digress.

This place–this blog–is my public living room. Where I come and hang out and talk about what is happening with me emotionally and hear what is happening with you emotionally. And having this space gives me a place to go mentally when I’m stuck in the real world between two women on a sofa springing their pregnancy announcements on me. I hope you feel like you can mentally jump here too in addition to your own blog when you are in a shitty situation. It has made the journey manageable this time. It utilizes the best parts of what I heard in my student’s father’s idea–without the crap bucket.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m glad you’re all sitting in this living room.

The second part of this post mixes with the third part of this post (by the way–the stuff above, that was the first part of this post). Larisa raised an interesting point: “I wish I had an answer. Yes, your friend needs support. But I don’t know that I am strong enough to give it. I volunteer with RESOLVE as well, and I try to give support – but it’s hard when I need so much support at the same time.” And it’s true–when you’re struggling, you can sometimes help someone else who is struggling beside you simultaneously. Think Titanic going down and you help someone to put on a life vest as you put on your own. But when you’re treading water and someone floats by you, shivering on their plank of wood, you might feel badly for them as well, but at the same time, the jealousy of seeing them out of the water, getting by even if they are cold and in the middle of the sea, is sometimes too much to bear.

The question I have is if pregnant-after-infertility bloggers extended the same circumspection on their blogs that they extend to fellow stirrup queens in real life (breaking the news of a pregnancy carefully, giving people an out to their baby shower, not being offended if friends would prefer to not talk about the pregnancy while they’re still in the middle of a cycle), would it make a difference?

I obviously have children and I mention them from time to time–it’s impossible not to because they exist and are a huge part of my world. But I try not to go on and on about them. The reason is two-fold: (1) I feel a bit squeamish about putting too many personal things about them out there on the Web. It’s my choice to blog; it’s not their choice. When they’re older, they can put their own stories out on the Internet about how much I messed up their life. (2) I know when I was in the throes of primary infertility, I wanted to read success stories but I didn’t want them rubbed in my face–much in the same way I wanted to hang out with friends who had been through the same clinic and had been successful, but I didn’t want to spend all day listening to stories about their children.

I try to exercise the same restraint on my blog that I practice in real life with other people (since you don’t always know who is trying to conceive and having trouble). If they ask, I tell. If they don’t ask, the twins still come up somewhat because they are a huge part of my life and I can’t talk about myself without mentioning them. But I keep stories to a minimum. There are always the friends and family members that I know want to hear about the twins nonstop so I tell them the stories. For everyone else, they get a pu-pu platter of our life: a little infertility, a little book update, a little bit about the twins. And that’s sort of what happens naturally on the blog.

I think there are two types of blogs with a third category that blends the two. The first is written entirely for the writer. It’s their space to process their thoughts and they don’t care if anyone reads it. They would love to get feedback and answers to their questions, but if no one ever read it, they would still write it. To be honest, I have another blog like this where I record all the stories about the twins. It is really a record for them, and no one reads it but myself. It is really on the far end of this first category–I not only don’t have any readers but I currently don’t want any readers.

On the other end are blogs that tell stories and present slices of a person’s life. And they are written with an audience in mind. And if they had no audience at all, they probably wouldn’t continue. They speak directly to people–either passing along information or collecting
information. Or they’re humourous accounts that are meant to be read. They are a space for storytelling more than processing. They may not have started as this type of blog, but they’ve certainly grown into this type of blog. And these bloggers sometimes have smaller blogs that are more intimate, more for themselves.

The third category is a blending of these two extremes. I think most blogs bridge these two categories. They are written for the blogger–a space to process emotions, get feedback on situations, gather information, and connect with others for emotional support during difficult times. But at the same time, they are written with the hope that someone else will respond. Blogs are interactive. You receive that feedback in the comments section. You need other people to be reading and responding in order to gather that information. Few people like the idea of shouting out their emotions to the blogosphere and hearing a tinny echo in return. When people need the response and aren’t receiving the response, they tend to stop writing.

This blog is firmly in that third category. I write it because I need to write it. But if everyone stopped reading…well…I don’t know if I would dedicate this level of time. Because the purpose of my blog has always been to build the community and garner the support I didn’t have the first time around. I was really lost the first time around. I didn’t have the energy to drag myself to a support meeting, but I definitely needed one. I used the bulletin boards religiously, but I never felt connected to those people because you only knew their stats. They posted their negatives and they posted their positives. But no one spoke about the waits or their fears that their sister-in-law would announce a pregnancy at Thanksgiving or how much they distrust their RE. I didn’t get that sense of the world until I started reading blogs and then I started my own. The reality, for me, is that I don’t usually need the stat-like information anymore. I may once we return to treatments, but right now, it feels like I know more about my body and what should happen than my body apparently does. But I need the emotional side. I need to talk about anger and I need to talk about depression and I need to talk about moments of peace.

Which brings us back to Larisa’s question and my own: if pregnant-after-infertility bloggers used the same tactics on their blog as they use when interacting in real life with other stirrup queens, would you be more likely to keep reading. Or is it the fact that regardless of frequency, the pregnancy stories are going to pop up from time to time?

If you blog fits firmly in category one, it shouldn’t matter if people keep reading. Therefore, this question doesn’t really apply. But for categories two or three, I think of it in the same way I think of all writing that is geared towards an audience–I keep the audience in mind and it imposes certain limits. My private journal is my space for limitless writing. Everything else has limits whether I’d like to admit it or not.

And if the audience that you wished to maintain was an infertile audience, would you be able to interact in your blog in the same way you interact with stirrup queens in real life? Or are those limits too restrictive and step over the line of who controls the blog?

It’s an interesting question about ownership since blogs are both written by a single person and added to by many. I’ve read complaints about bloggers who delete comments from old posts due to storage space and how those comments are part of the piece of writing and how we’re all part of the process. What do we owe our readers? What do we owe each other? Where is the line between where my blog ends and our blog begins (and this question is aimed at everyone’s blog since most of us have our comments section open)? If I’m trying to practice this sensitivity in maintaining a pu-pu platter approach, can I control (and is it my place to control) what is written in the comments section insofar as other people discussing their pregnancies?

I am well aware that these questions are too huge to answer in one fell swoop and they comprise many of the ethical dilemmas that are affecting all blogs–not just infertility blogs.

And here is the third part to this post: All communities have a tendency to set their boundaries of who may be included and at the same time, look for ways to differentiate all the members and create “us” and “thems” within the same group. Josh recently told me about this fractioning of those who lived through the Holocaust. All survivors bond together with shared emotions–the fear, the sadness, the anxiety, the loss. But then there are the people who went through the camps who tell the people who were hidden in a cellar for two years, “you didn’t really experience the Holocaust. You didn’t really know what it was like.”

While there are some people who can firmly be placed outside the category of survivor–for instance, someone Jewish who was living in America at the time or even people who were living in Europe and perhaps thought they would be taken into a camp at some point but were never really a targeted group–what survivors who fraction the group are forgetting is that within all groups, the experiences are each unique. Two people can both be in a camp, but one has their mother in the same camp and the other had both parents killed in front of them. At what point does the fractioning stop when it’s based in experience? It can’t. And when you’re fractioning based on experience, you tend to create an imagined, subjective hierarchy that affects whether people feel they belong to the group.

Every Jew during that time suffered through loss. They may have been sent to the camps and lived in fear and horrible conditions. Or they may have been hidden by a sympathetic Christian family and lived in fear and horrible conditions. They all suffered losses, they all suffered delayed dreams, they all had their world turned upside down.

Sometimes the limitations are imposed from those who were in the camps: you didn’t know how shitty it truly was or how fearful a person can get. Sometimes the limitations are imposed from those who were hidden: I feel guilty that I was only hidden and didn’t experience seeing the atrocities first-hand. Yes, I lost everyone I loved, but I was never raped and tortured while I was hidden therefore I didn’t suffer enough.

You see the point I’m trying to make.

I know there are going to be people who disagree with me, but I think groups that are based in a crisis should create insiders and outsiders with set criteria (such as trying for over a year or an infertility diagnosis or the necessity to use ART) and understand that all insiders share the same emotions though not the same experiences.

We are a group that fractions ourselves as well while drawing in members. If you’ve received a diagnosis of infertile, you’re part of the group. You’re a stirrup queen. But then there are the ones who have been successful with treatments and the ones who haven’t. The ones who became pregnant naturally after four years of trying to conceive and the ones who became pregnant on their first round of IVF. The ones who have the money for IVF, and the ones who don’t. And at times, we lash out at each other and point out who doesn’t belong anymore, forgetting that every experience is unique and the only thing we have in common is our emotions. That at the end of the day, someone who has been trying for four years unsuccessfully and then miraculously conceives naturally has gone through many of the same emotions–the frustration, the sadness, the anger–as someone who conceives via IVF on the first try. We can never understand how easy or how hard someone else’s journey is unless we walk in their shoes–ha
ve their same limits or their same experiences.

I didn’t mean for this to be such a long post. But when you wish to start a public living room, you do it because you want to use it yourself. Because you don’t want to be sitting in your own house alone. Now that you’re all sitting here watching Grey’s Anatomy with me, eating chocolate or having a French martini, and urinating in my fancy imaginary bathrooms (no crap buckets here!), I would be devastated to lose this if/when I gain parenthood again. I just needed to say again how much you all mean to me.

I have a friend who did six rounds of IVF, received the donor egg talk, moved up to that famous clinic in NY that rhymes with Or-nell for a cycle, and conceived her boy/girl twins which she protected with PIO and Lovenox injections. It’s a pretty amazing success story. The twins just turned a year old and she discovered a few weeks ago that she is pregnant. Naturally. A case of secondary fertility.

I mentioned a blog post in a roundup a few weeks ago that Ellen from Miss E’s Musings wrote about her friend whose sibling experienced a similar situation of secondary fertility. She wrote:

If infertility is a game, then these couples are doubly lucky — they beat the odds, and then they won the next round without even having to play. I don’t know how they honestly consider their good fortune, or whether it makes them think differently of the first round. They all appear to enjoy the second pregnancy a lot more, which makes a lot of sense. I would probably feel relieved. Maybe even a little triumphant.

My infertility counselor always said, “Parenting resolves childlessness; it doesn’t resolve infertility.” I agree with this in theory, but it’s awkward in application. The clinical definition of infertility is the failure to conceive or carry to term after 1 year of unprotected sex. But then what? Is there an expiration date on the label “infertile”? Do you get upgraded to “subfertile” when you have a child? And do you ever get upgraded to “fertile”?

And it’s interesting because until I spoke with my friend, my eyes had passed over that sentence about how they all appear to enjoy the second pregnancy a lot more. I had assumed that would be how I would feel if it happened to me. I would have a happy accident and would get to experience that other side of stress-free, private conception that fertile women experience from point one–sort of like getting a VBAC delivery after the c-section.

Yet this really isn’t the case at all after I spoke with my friend. The pregnancy brings with it a mix of feelings–from relief and joy to anxiety and frustration. Why did I have to go through all of that shit the first time? Am I still infertile? That’s the community I know–am I about to be kicked out? Will I carry to term? Why aren’t they giving me the same number of sonograms I got to have coming off a twin pregnancy after IVF? Don’t they understand that I am more anxious and distrustful of my body than the average woman? And with these internal questions come the guilt–I just succeeded again when I have friends who are still trying for their first. I wasn’t trying to have a child and now I have to scramble to figure out how we will incorporate this new person into our family and it makes me feel ungrateful.

The reality is that we all–at any given moment–have a near future that we envision for ourselves and are awfully attached to when push comes to shove. When you get engaged, you envision your future to include a wedding and a honeymoon. For some women, that future is ripped away unexpectedly either by the relationship ending or the fiance dying. And it’s brutal to have a future that you carefully constructed in your mind snatched away. We have preconceived near future ideas concerning career, education, or home-buying. We predict how life will look a few months into the future. And when you start trying to conceive, the future is that you’ll be pregnant soon and that future is shredded apart by infertility.

But in all of this also needs to be the understanding that when you are parenting, you also have a near future envisioned–one that might include trips or jobs or opportunities for your family–and that vision is ripped away by an unexpected pregnancy. Even if this pregnancy follows spontaneously on the heels of infertility. This may be difficult to read and you may be saying, “who cares–I have a problem because I am still in the throes of IVF. She doesn’t have a problem. She is simply someone who hit the jackpot twice.”

And is she lucky? Yes–I think my friend, even with all of this stress, would describe this as fortuitous. Perhaps ill-timed fortune, but fortune nonetheless. But even good luck brings its own struggles.

It was an interesting conversation–eye-opening to me–because so much of her identity is connected to infertility. Most of her friends have experienced infertility or are currently doing treatments. She volunteers with RESOLVE and participates in focus groups for infertility. And it’s the only community she knows–the one that she has been drawing and providing support to and from for the past several years. Like many people, when she started to go through this crisis, she gravitated towards friends who were in similar situations. And soon, stirrup queens replaced the fertile myrtles. It isn’t that she (or I, for that matter) doesn’t have any fertile friends–she did keep friends from her past–but the majority of her current support system comes from the Land of If.

And while she knows where she stands insofar as infertility–she believes that she is still firmly an infertile woman regardless of this spontaneous single pregnancy–she doesn’t know how others perceive her. If she will still be accepted.

And it’s a shitty, strange feeling to wish that you had to struggle a bit so you can still sit at the same lunch table.

It’s a question that I’ve been entertaining because, obviously, a great deal of my own identity is tied up in infertility. I read infertility and I write infertility daily. But along the way of researching this book, I have realized that even though infertility is one of the shittier aspects of my life, it is also the life event that has shaped how I view the world or interact with people. I think I would be happiest in life if a clinic hired me to be their professional hand-holder. I could accompany people to blood draws and appointments and sit with them afterwards in a nearby Starbucks and commiserate. If there was a way for Josh to become a self-made millionaire, I would dedicate my life to being a comforter. I think I am happiest when I am interacting with another infertile person and either passing along information or bouncing their words back to them or simply listening and crying with them. I spend so much time writing my blog and reading yours because it makes me happy. And even when it is breaking my heart to read a story and it is not necessarily a “happy” moment, it is certainly the most comfortable moment. The one where I am wearing the correct skin.

I don’t always feel comfortable. I don’t connect with the other mothers on the playground. And I can be pretty quiet and shy when you throw me into a room with people I don’t know. But when I’m with someone infertile, I simply connect from point one. And I can find the right words to say or the way to start and sustain a conversation.

And when she was speaking about her fears of losing that–of losing her community–it made me think about that fine line you walk when you are trying to have a child after primary infertility. How internally, you want so badly for it to be easy this time. But how externally, you feel that you need for it to be hard again in order to hold onto your support system. I think about this a lot because we are currently trying naturally and won’t be returning to the clinic until some pieces fall into place financially. So there are still several cycles ahead of me where it could happen. And if it does, will I still be accepted in my own community? The one where I feel like I’m in the right skin?

I think we make a
lot of assumptions as a community. When we’re cycling, we think that we’ll be so happy once we achieve pregnancy. But that isn’t always the case. And I’m not talking about the anxiety that accompanies a pregnancy after infertility or loss. I’m talking about the dirty truth that stirrup queens feel queasy mentioning–that they sometimes wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into. They sometimes wonder why they aren’t feeling more joy. Pregnancy after infertility requires a great deal of emotional support–just as much support as is needed during cycling.

And as a community, we have a tendency to desert people once they achieve pregnancy. It is the lucky blogger who finds that she has just as many readers while she is cycling than when she is pregnant. I think many bloggers believe that they have nothing to contribute to a conversation about clogged milk ducts while they’re still cycling. And it’s true–you may not have anything to say about clogged milk ducts. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a sympathetic “I’m sorry; it sounds like it sucks.” Or simply read without comment as a sign of silent support. What I am trying to say–and while I know that I’ve said this more than once on this blog, I think it bears repeating–that women pregnant after infertility need support and the only community they may know is this one. When we desert them, we take away one of their coping mechanisms after extending them that support during previous months. It’s a hard thing to have happen to you.

Are pregnancy blogs difficult to read when you’re still cycling? Fuck, yes. Maybe you can’t continue as a daily reader but simply be there for the person during spaces in your own cycle where you can breathe.

I write this without a chance of being pregnant right now–I’m in the middle of my period. But it still is something that I’ve considered myself–the fine line costs of secondary fertility–that perhaps are outweighed tremendously by the gains–a baby conceived without the emotional, physical or financial costs of treatments–but still contain a certain sting. Maybe I write this post selfishly because I worry that it will happen to me. I didn’t have a support system in place the first time I was trying and I really struggled emotionally. And now I have a support system in place and I worry about losing it when I know I still need it even if readers believe that I’m fine on my own or should move into the land of Momsville (it’s one of those mainland towns where the mommy bloggers live). I know I will still belong here even when I am finished building my family.

And I hope you agree that I still understand the struggle even if I do stand with my feet in both worlds (I’m sort of assuming that if you don’t think that I get it, you don’t read my blog. Because that would be sort of strange. To keep reading if you thought that I had nothing to add). Because the emotions tied to infertility didn’t go away for me after I held my children and I don’t believe that they will go away for me even after my family is built. Perhaps that is more a fact of my own journey. Yet that is certainly how my friend is feeling in the moment as well even with her spontaneous pregnancy.

As I said, we are a community that tends to turn away from women once they achieve pregnancy–and it’s something that pregnant women understand on some level because they have done it themselves to other infertile women who became pregnant before them. We are a community that feels that secondary infertility is not “as bad” because you already have a child–though the reality is that secondary infertility comes with its own set of problems, its own set of heartache, its own set of frustrations that are unique and unimaginable when you are going through primary infertility. It’s not a large stretch for my friend–or myself–to worry about this.

I hope you would still have me as the barkeeper for the Virtual Lushary if I was ever lucky enough to have this happen to me.

Note to self: always appeal to people for blilt submissions with doctored Dr. Suess pictures. When this method starts to fail, I’ll simply run the gamut through childhood favourites. The Cat in the Hat begging you for a blilt submission, Charlie Brown asking for interviewees, the owl and the pussycat serenading you in an effort to get creme de la creme submissions to ring in the new year (his nose, his nose, with a ring at the end of his nose)…

Thank you so much to all of the chickies–and the man-pie (thank you, Becky’s husband, Justin) who submitted one that almost made iced coffee come out my nose–who sent words for a square. I’m going to have a big Microsoft Paint fest this weekend. If you haven’t sent one yet, there’s still plenty of time.

So…I’ve been doing a lot of walking. Stretching my legs. Making sure I can drag my flabby body over the finish line for WalkAmerica. So far, we’ve raised $917–which is pretty freakin’ amazing. If you were thinking about making a donation to the March of Dimes (click on the hypertext), this is the final week. The walk is on May 6th. I promise I will make you proud. And on May 7th, cease all exercise until next spring when the walk comes around again. I mean, I mean, I will keep exercising. Walking. Running. Cardio. Um…

A combination of Adrienne, Erin, and Elizabeth all had this fantastic idea to compile a list of words that we’ve all created. An emobloictionary housed inside the emoblopedia. So if you have a word that you created in a post, send it along with the link to the original post and a definition.

And now that we’ve concluded the business portion of this roundup, let’s bring on the blogs.

Becky at Are We There Yet? has this great post this week about the support we receive and give. She writes: “I know how important having support is. Infertility is crappy enough, but not having people around you who understand you would be much worse.” She later muses: “I’m not sure if the people who form my support system are just naturally supportive or if it was because I taught them what it was like to be here in this place. Are they supportive because I’ve told them that is what we need? Or is just that they simply love us? I don’t think loving somebody is truly enough to be a good supporter.” I think they’re all good questions and it does feel a bit like a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Were they supportive first, so you felt safe to open up and lean on them? Or because you opened up and told them what you need, they became supportive?

Kir of Kir’s Corner made an analogy for the suppression phase of IVF to the suppression she has been doing emotionally for a while now. The post includes a memory from high school when she held her tongue even though it didn’t feel right and how ill she had felt for the rest of the day. She writes: “Suppression, it turns out, is not only a birth control pill’s job. It has become mine…Until then, I am suppressing and wondering what I am going to do with all the emotions that are bound to find me soon.” It was simply an entry that gave me a lot to think about after I read it.

Caro at Third Time Lucky had the “talk” this week–the how-far-are-we-willing-to-take-this- and-what-are-our-limits talk. These walls sometimes change as you change emotionally, but I think those talks are always important to make sure both people are on the same page. She admits towards the end of this brief post that “I’m not sure I’m strong enough to put myself through all the treatments and stress that could come with it. Although I’m also not sure I’m strong enough not to.” And I’m not sure why those words made my heart ache so acutely as I read them, but I wished hard that it wouldn’t come to that for Caro.

Jennifer’s post about time on her blog, Arcane Matters, ticked very loudly for me (get it–it’s a biological clock reference…get it?). The time aspect to infertility–the sense that time is running out or the long periods of waiting–is what makes me feel like I am frantically trying to kick my way to the surface while I’m being anchored down by heavy, water-logged sweaters and furry boots. And the sense that time isn’t within your control doesn’t stop once you’re pregnant. This post speaks to the anxiety that comes towards the end of a pregnancy when you don’t know how much time to have left before the baby (or, in Jennifer’s case, the babies) arrives. While it may seem heavenly to be in that position when you’re still in the throes of treatments, it can be quite nerve-wracking towards the end because every day counts. Literally, every day. And this issue is obviously in the forefront of my mind right now since we’re about to do the March of Dimes walk, but just as no one can tell you when you’ll get pregnant, you come to realize that the due date number is semi-meaningless. You never know when you’ll go into labour and I’m just sending so many good thoughts to Jennifer and Nicole that the babies keep cooking for the next 51 or so days.

Liana at Welcome to the Dollhouse has a post this week that will send chills down your arms. Liana created an adoption plan with Josie and they are now waiting for Josie to go into labour. During this time period, Josie requested that they have an entrustment ceremony after the birth. Liana quotes a passage about entrustment ceremonies in her post: “The Entrustment Ceremony, perhaps the only ritual that is exclusive to adoption, is usually defined as the ritual where the parental role is transferred from the birthparents to the adoptive parents. Birthparents entrust the life of their child into the hands of the adoptive parents, often by physically placing the child in the adoptive parents arms.” Josie has planned the ceremony already and Liana and her husband were able to read a draft beforehand. Liana promises that “All I can tell you is that it will be awesome, not in that surfer-dude use of the word, but in the inspiring great awe word usage. As my late grandmother used to say, my heart is full.”

Lastly, this post by Kirby at What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting just made me laugh. I snorted (yes, I’ll admit it, I was alone in the living room reading this and I snorted aloud when I started laughing) when she writes about Domar’s book: “And I don’t really feel as though there were any earth-shattering revelations. And the whole overtone had a bit of an infomercial feel. As in, if you come take one of my overpriced classes, you’ll be able to sleep at night. Right — cause if there’s two things a woman in the midst of an IVF cycle has a surplus of, it’s money and the ability/time to travel. To hell with coping strategies. I’m sticking with my chocolate and gradually escalating attacks on my husband.” Her whole blog is hysterical and this is but one example. Head on over if you need a good laugh during IVF.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. I leave you with this video of Green Eggs and Ham that I found surfing YouTube…