When my niece was much younger, she used to preface sentences with “Hey Guys, I’ve got an idea.” She would then launch into the idea which was usually the plan already in place. For instance, “Hey guys, I’ve got an idea. Let’s put on our shoes,” she’d say as I tied her sneakers. I really like this phrase.

Hey Guys, I’ve got an idea.

(This is perhaps an argument for why I should take sleeping pills rather than lying awake at night thinking.)

An emoblopedia.

(“Excuse me?” you cough, wondering what the hell that word means.)

An emoblopedia. An emotional blog encyclopedia that archives thought-provoking entries. Sort of like the creme de la creme list, but instead of simply being a long list of great entries from a single year, it is organized both by larger umbrella topics such as “treatments” or “adoption” as well as by smaller subcategories such as “deciding to proceed with IVF” or “meeting child for the first time.” This is not the same as Operation Heads Up. Operation Heads Up conveys specific information about a procedure or diagnosis. Insider information from one stirrup queen to another. An emoblopedia is an archive of the emotional journey–a series of posts that a person can read when they feel alone and want their emotions confirmed.

The idea being that it’s late at night and you’re freaking out and you want to read about someone else’s experience with the same thing. And you go to the emoblopedia and read all the entries under that category (because there can be an infinite amount of entries). And feel better because your own emotions are echoed or you’ve read something that will help you get through your own situation. Of course, you could jump from blog to blog trying to seek out these types of entries, but it would simply be faster to have them all listed in the emoblopedia.

This will obviously be an on-going project. Without an end date in sight. We’ll simply keep adding to it as entries are written. But right now, I need two things if you want to participate in order to get this started. (1) go back through your archives and find entries that fit these categories and (2) suggest more topics and categories since I just started planning out the emoblopedia. This emoblopedia can keep growing and growing with new categories added daily for the rest of eternity. We can make it anything we want.

Five pieces of business from the Emoblopedarian (get it–the emotional blog encyclopedia librarian)–

(1) when sending a submission for a category, include a link to the original post as well as a link to your blog’s main page address (sort of like how I include both in each Friday Blog Roundup category–that way, if people feel like the entry speaks to them, they can bookmark your blog’s main page and read along daily).

(2) like the creme de la creme list, I will not put up any post that the person didn’t submit. So don’t be offended if you’re known for a certain entry on your blog and I haven’t included it on the list. If you didn’t submit it, it’s not going to be added. That said, if you know of fantastic entries on another person’s blog, you can suggest them and I’m happy to contact the person or you can contact them directly and ask them to submit it. And as I read from this point forward, I may ask you to submit a link to the emoblopedia by leaving a note in your comments. Feel free to submit or to tell me “no.” Like the creme de la creme list, this isn’t a time to be modest. Don’t worry about things like “not good enough.” It’s floating in the blogosphere already if you’ve posted it on your blog. This is just a way of organizing information. All entries are “good enough.” And everyone–lurkers to long-time comment writers–is welcome to send links.

(3) there is no time range for the emoblopedia–you can go back through your archive for entries from four years ago or send me a link to a post from yesterday. This is not like the creme de la creme that it all takes place in one year. It can take place at any point. Hopefully, if this continues indefinitely, we will have links to entries that span ten or twenty years.

(4) for the creme de la creme list, I took whichever entry was submitted. For this project, I’m going to lightly veto–meaning, if it doesn’t fit the entry topic at all, I’ll ask you for a different entry. Or we’ll start a new category for your entry. While obscenities galore are fine; homophobia, racism, sexism, ageism isn’t (or any other form of prejudice). Really, bring on the obscenities. But unless the point of the post is the prejudice (for instance, a lesbian being denied treatment at a clinic), it’s not fine to add posts that will make other people in the community feel like crap. I am still such a teacher. I feel like I’m wagging a finger and saying, “play nice!” It’s not that I see this happen often, but I wanted to set this out there as a disclaimer.

(5) like the creme de la creme list, spread the word. I think this project benefits from having as many points-of-view as possible. Also, unlike the creme de la creme list, you can have as many entries as you wish. Even within the same category. So you may have three fantastic entries that all go with each other and I can list all three under the category. Or, you can have one entry in every single category. Or you can have 88 entries spread out over two or three categories. You can send me one every single day. Immediately after you post a new entry, you can send me the link and tell me to place it in a certain category. What I’m trying to say is don’t get hung up wondering if this a fantastic example or not. Just submit it. It may speak to someone else tremendously. And this project only works if you do toot your own horn a bit. Hopefully, this will also be a good way to increase your own blog hits and to get word out about smaller, lesser-known blogs.

So…what to do right now?

Look at the post below at the sample categories and the sample entries. And start (1) adding new category ideas to the list either by leaving a note in the comments section or emailing me at thetowncriers@gmail.com. (2) start sending links (to both the post and the main blog address), designating them to a specific category (feel free to submit both an idea for a new category and an entry for the category at the same time).

Ideas? Opinions? Suggestions?

This post is just to give you an idea of the format of the emoblopedia. I obviously only filled out a one sample entry for a single category: coming to a place of peace with loss inside the larger Pregnancy Loss topic. Right now, I need (1) new category and topic ideas and (2) links to entries that can go under each category. Also, feel free to add suggestions or ideas on how to make the emoblopedia more user friendly. Currently, it will appear as it does below the example: a heading with a hyperlinked title and a listing of categories under each topic. By clicking on the hyperlinked title, a reader is taken to a page that contains the actual links to each blog post (go on, try it out). As the emoblopedia grows, I will add an index at the top of each page so people can jump to the one that they need rather than having to scroll down through the whole list.

Just to distinguish between the two: topics are the large umbrella titles such as general infertility, pregnancy loss, or adoption. Categories are the small, semi-specific sections that speak on a certain topic. This list is just getting started. We will be adding categories until the end of time as people write a new post, realize it could help someone, see that there isn’t a place for it in the emoblopedia, and add a new category to house it. So, if you’re suggesting a topic, you may also want to suggest a few sample categories that would fall underneath it.

Sample:

• Upcoming Terraversary Next Week (from My Many Blessings)
• When You Have a Membership to the Club You Never Wanted to Join (from A Journey of Hope)
• Release (from Babylust)

Sample of the emoblopedia main page (the hyperlinked titles currently work):

Scan the index below and click on the hyperlinked topic headings in order to jump to the topic page containing the entries you wish to read.

Pregnancy Loss, Stillbirth, and Neonatal Death

General Infertility
Receiving a diagnosis
Family relations
Coming out about infertility
Being outed as infertile by another person
Taking a break
Marriage difficulties while trying to conceive
Marriage strengthening while conquering infertility
Depression and infertility

Treatments
The first time you took Clomid
The dreaded HSG
Deciding to proceed with IUI
Deciding to proceed with IVF
Choosing a new RE
Injection classes
The first injection
GBLT experiences with clinics
Fears about starting fertility treatments
Excitement about starting fertility treatments
Emotions after a first failed cycle after starting treatments
Emotions after a first failed IVF cycle
Good interactions with the RE or clinic

Adoption
Deciding to proceed with adoption
Getting through the homestudy
Matching with a birthmother
Birthmothers and children
When adoption plans change (adoption disruption)

The emotions of terminating a match
The first day feeling at peace again after an adoption disruption
Long periods of waiting
The first time meeting your child

Third Party Reproduction
Deciding to proceed with a donor or surrogate
Emotions surrounding the donor or surrogate experience

Choosing to Live Child-Free
Deciding to proceed with living child-free
Navigating life cycle events after deciding to live child-free
Emotions over stopping treatments
Snappy answers to intrusive questions
The moment you stopped feeling childless and started feeling child-free

Pregnancy After Infertility or Loss
Seeing a heartbeat
Being released from the RE
Fears during pregnancy
Doubts about being pregnant
Discovering that you’re carrying multiples
Communicating with the OB after being accustomed to the RE
Moving to a high-risk specialist
Ambivalence about impeding parenthood

Parenting After Infertility or Loss
Ambivalence about milestones
Postpartum depression
NICU experiences

Secondary Infertility
How to come to terms with your new-found fertility-status
What to tell existing children
How to balance secondary infertility with parenting

I’m well-aware that these street names will only be meaningful to people who know their way around Washington, D.C., but I needed to write them in order to try to figure out my own craziness…

Sometimes–but not every time–when I turn off Reno Road onto Garfield, I have a panic attack. A full, all-out, chest tight, can’t breathe panic attack. As I drive up Garfield it gets worse and worse (G-d forbid I get stuck at the light at Garfield and Massachusetts Avenue) until it hits a crescendo as I turn onto Wisconsin Avenue. After you pass the Russian Compound, you come to a fork in the road. One street takes you into the heart of Georgetown’s shopping district. The other street takes you down towards Georgetown Hospital and their NICU.

Like I said, it’s sometimes–not every time. It doesn’t happen, for instance, when I’m actually driving to the hospital. Strange. I sometimes have that panic attack when I go into the hospital and I enter through the doors I used for the NICU rather than the entrance that I use to get to the neonatologist. But driving to the hospital itself does not bring on this attack.

I don’t have this attack when I’m driving out of the city, even though when the kids were in the NICU, I never cried going into the city to see them, but I screamed like a tortured animal the few times we had to leave them in the city and drive out to the suburbs for the night. Strange. You would think that leaving the city would bring me back to those fears and not driving into the city. But, like I said, I don’t have this attack driving out of the city.

It happened on Thursday night last week. I was driving into the city to hear Peggy Orenstein read from Waiting for Daisy (book pick for tour #4!) and have my unsuccessful jaunt at the Starbucks when my throat closed up as I crossed from Reno Road onto Garfield. By the time I hit the light at Massachusetts (damn that light!), my heart was pounding. I felt clammy and cold. I couldn’t breathe. I kept telling myself that it would all pass because I wasn’t driving down 37th Street, I was taking the other fork in the road that goes through the shopping district.

But I passed the turn off for 37th and saw one of the hotels we stayed at while the kids were in the NICU. And the CVS where we tried unsuccessfully to print some photos one morning since my daughter had pulled out her ng tube and I had managed to snap a few photos that looked like average baby photos and I wanted to send them to relatives like any proud parent. The Fresh Fields where we’d wander around, never feeling hungry enough to decide on something to eat. And then the Einstein Bagels where we had gotten breakfast one morning on our way into town and the Social Safeway where we picked up yogurt for dinner one night on our way back to the hotel.

The panic attack didn’t stop until I drove all the way down Wisconsin Avenue and passed P Street. And then, as if someone had flipped a switch, my breathing returned to normal. My heart slowed down. And I felt like I was back in high school. I was in safe Georgetown. I was in Cafe Northwest and Burrito Brothers Georgetown. I was in Steve Madden Georgetown. Urban Outfitters Georgetown. I was in sneaking-into-Garrett’s-underage Georgetown. More importantly, I wasn’t in NICU Georgetown. Even if I was only a few streets away from the hospital.

I pulled into the parking space that opened up in front of the bookstore and sat in the car for a moment, trying to untangle myself. Was it because I was going to a reading for a book about infertility? Was it because my day had already sucked and I hadn’t gotten to tuck the kids into bed?

Two-and-a-half years out from our NICU experience and it truly is a case of all is well that ends well. The kids are fine. The kids are healthy. Except for a few lingering developmental lags we’re still dealing with, our NICU experience–unlike some families–is decidedly behind us. Except that even if I don’t think about it during my day-to-day life, I can’t seem to let it go when I’m driving on Garfield.

There is an idea I heard first through RESOLVE: having a child resolves childlessness, but it doesn’t resolve infertility. That is emotional baggage that still needs to be unpacked by every parent who has difficulty conceiving or carrying to term. Maybe wellness resolves prematurity, but it doesn’t resolve the fears that accompany a NICU experience.

Because when I’m driving up Garfield, I feel the same fears that I felt when they were in the NICU. What if the bradies don’t resolve themselves? What if we can’t bring them out of an episode? What if they never gain more weight? What if they back-pedal and have to go back into the NICU? Even though I know the answers. We always brought them out of their bradies and the bradycardia episodes stopped happening when they were a few months old. They have gained weight–even if they are smaller than average kids their age. They never had to go back into the NICU because we took every precaution in the world.

Now that I’ve been listening to that Dixie Chicks album non-stop (sorry, Erin McKeown, but you’ve been temporarily bumped from the CD player. You know you’ll be back; I mean, it’s the same deal for Elvis Costello. And Bob Dylan. And Mr. Ben Folds. You all make it back in at some point, but for right now, you’re going to have to lie on the floor on the passenger side of the car.), there is a line that keeps jumping out at me when I listen to “Not Ready to Make Nice.” I know that they’re speaking about the incident, but I hear it and I think about where I am still when I’m driving down that three block stretch of Garfield:

Maybe we’re not meant to get over these life-changing incidents. Maybe they’re supposed to stick with us and maybe we’re supposed to have panic attacks every once in a while to remember things since we can get lulled into forgetting in our daily life. Maybe when I’m sinking in all of those fears, I should reach up and get out of it by thinking about those amazing moments in the NICU–sitting up and talking with the nurses at midnight, the way their skin felt when it was so new, the fabric sunglasses they wore for a few days under the billi-lights. Kangaroo care. Sleepiness. The first Shabbat.

That or avoid driving into Georgetown. Or at least find a different route.

(Melissa finishes polishing off the bar with a shammy, snaps it, and tucks it into her apron waist. She takes several glasses down from the hanging rack and inspects them before filling them with the French martini she just mixed in her shaker. Melissa startles, suddenly remembering that she (1) has no knowledge of how to actually mix drinks and (2) rarely drinks alcohol herself. She straightens up, looks around in confusion for a moment and then remembers that this is a virtual bar, therefore, there are virtual drinks and virtual drunks vomiting at regular intervals in her virtual restroom. Order in the universe is restored.)

It has once again been a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. As always, pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. Maybe you have good news to share and we’ll all toast you with an imaginary glass of wine. Or maybe you just need to vent about your RE. Or a terraversary has just passed. Or maybe you just need to have a good, long cry. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation.

Drink specials this month for all stirrup queens or sperm palace jesters who just personally took a first step on a new path (whether it is a new protocol with treatments or treatments themselves, adoption, third party reproduction, pregnancy-or-parenting-after-infertility-or-loss, or living child-free).

Wanted to take a moment to post the master list for the third tour of the Barren Bitches Book Club. Not on the list? Anyone in the infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption/parenting-after-infertility/assisted conception community (as well as all other related groups that I inadvertently forgot) can join–all you need is a blog (and you can set one up for free via Blogger).

Now that we’re up to two male participants, they either need to become exceedingly bitchy or we need to add to the book tour name…

Book: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Start Date: March 6th
Question Due: April 11th
All Questions Listed: April 12th
Post Date: April 16th
(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 on April 16th to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Time Traveler’s Wife. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on April 11th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Melissa)
The Annex (Josh)
Sticky Feet (Jamie)
In Search of Biscuit 2.0 (Little Angel Kisses)
Carrying On (Katherine)
My Journey Towards My Little Miracle (Sunny)
Wishing and Waiting (Nicole)
A Somewhat Ordinary Life (Amy)
Our Own Creation (AMS)
Vanilla Dreams (Vanilla)
The Tragic Optimist (Ann)
Chris posting on The Tragic Optimist (Ann’s Husband, Chris)
Serenity Now! (Serenity)
Fertility Musings (Rachel)
My Perky Ovaries (Karen)
Coming 2 Terms (Pamela)
Beaten But Not Bowed (The Drowned Girl)
Kir’s Corner (Kir)
PCOS Baby (Erin)
King Baby (Jessica)
Hell or High Water (Starfish)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Infertile Fantasies (Bea)
The Oneliner (Christina)

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on April 11th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating.

(2) read The Time Traveler’s Wife by April 11th.

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on April 11th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #2.

(4) on April 12th, I will post the list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 5 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on April 16th, everyone will post their entry. I will post my answers too and an entry about post day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).