There are a few different branches of our library system and I go to each one for a different reason. One has the best selection of cookbooks and new DVDs. Another is close in location. And my favourite contains the medical library which is where I get all of my light reading on PCOS or recurrent pregnancy loss. The medical library also happens to be situated in an orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, therefore many of the patrons are orthodox and enter the library with the obvious signs and symbols: long skirts, hats or wigs, tzitzit hanging out.

And this probably speaks more about my own insecurities, but when I see orthodox women walking through the library, I have an urge to tell them that I’m Jewish too. My method of choice is to position myself near them and then begin speaking loudly about the challah I have to complete at home or how I’m going to the kosher butcher after this stop at the library (saying these things to another person–not just shouting them out to the library in general. Er…). I feel this need to do this because my observance isn’t outwardly obvious. Yet even though I’m wearing brown cords and a sweater and my hair isn’t covered, I do many of the same Jewish traditions as these women. In function, our houses probably don’t operate that differently. But in form, they differ greatly. But at the end of the day, function and action win out over form in my world–I have mezuzot on every door of the house, I keep Shabbat, I keep a kosher home.

Sounds pretty observant, right?

But sometimes when I’m having a low-self-esteem day and I’m standing next to the orthodox women, I don’t feel Jewish enough. I know in my heart that I’m still Jewish even if I choose to wear pants. The fact that they choose not to wear pants doesn’t make them more Jewish. Their overt signs of Judaism don’t detract from my observance of Judaism. Right? Yet I still feel this need to let them know that I’m Jewish, perhaps because I am waiting to see if they accept me as Jewish.

And I’m not the only person who plays the am-I-Jewish-enough game. I was standing in the library Friday morning, speaking with a friend about how I had to get a move-on with making hamantaschen for Purim, a holiday coming up in another week or so. An older woman next to me leans into our conversation and says, “I used to make hamantaschen every year, but now I just buy them. Too much work.”

She doesn’t really give a crap about hamantaschen (at least, this is my assumption since how many of us actually give a crap about jam-filled cookies?), but what she wanted me to know from overhearing my conversation is that she’s Jewish too. And on the sliding scale of observance, I’m looking more observant than she is in this moment. Because I’m speaking about the upcoming holiday whereas she’s talking with her friends about the latest romance novel that she read. If this were the old version of the SATs and they still had analogies in the verbal section, I would be to this woman what the orthodox women are to me.

We rank.

That’s what humans do.

And we do it in infertility too. The driving force behind the pomegranate-coloured thread was to establish our commonality. We all go through our journey differently, but we all have this common thread of infertility or pregnancy loss. That’s the other thing that humans do: we make connections, we let people know that we belong. But once you establish community, it feels like our inner insecurities automatically kick in and people begin wondering: “do I really belong?” as well as “do other people think I belong?”

Some of it comes from the same place as comparative Jewishness: while there are some general guidelines for establishing whether someone is Jewish, there are other factors that are more fluid. In Conservative Judaism, it’s completely acceptable to wear pants. In Orthodox Judaism, not so much so. Therefore, someone Orthodox may look at me and say, “damn, she isn’t that observant.” Whereas someone in Conservative Judaism may look at me and say, “damn, the chickie makes her own challah every Friday? She’s pretty observant.”

You see what I mean?

I write this because this topic keeps coming round in many forms with the common refrain being, “I don’t know if I belong.” I’ve written about this before, but it really saddens me when I see people second-guessing. Infertility and loss is difficult enough without people wondering if it’s appropriate to ask for emotional support.

Like Judaism, there is a definition for infertility. According to RESOLVE, “Infertility is a disease or condition of the reproductive system often diagnosed after a couple has had one year of unprotected, well-timed intercourse, or if the woman has suffered from multiple miscarriages.” For women over 35, the accepted time frame is six months and “multiple” miscarriages generally refers to three, though there are doctors who begin testing after two (or even one depending on the circumstances).

Which would follow that if you have had a year of earnest bonking or home inseminations, you are infertile. It doesn’t matter if you’ve decided to continue trying on your own or if you’ve decided to go to the RE: you are still infertile. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been told to go directly to IVF and do not pass go, or if you’re first trying some lower impact solutions such as Clomid: you are still infertile. A person who has chosen a different route is not more infertile just as those women I see at the library are not more Jewish. In both cases, the two people belong to the same group and it’s simply the chosen path and the fine details that differ.

Beyond that, I think that the emotions of infertility are broader than the medical diagnosis. Under the standard definition of infertility, a lesbian couple who is undergoing IVF in order to transfer the eggs of one woman into the womb of another may be going through the emotions of infertility after the first or second failed cycle even if they haven’t been trying for over a year. Fertility treatments are a roller coaster and other factors come into play in that situation. Therefore, in my opinion, they belong. Secondary infertility where the woman conceived her first child on the first try, but has now been trying for over a year to have another? She belongs. A woman who has tried for four months and is currently stressing out because her friends all became pregnant on the first try? Not so much so. It’s a flexible definition, but even flexible definitions break if you bend them too far.

I guess what I’m trying to say in apparently the longest way possible is that if one considers the emotional journey to be just as valid and important as the medical journey, many more people can fit comfortably into the world of infertility and draw necessary support. And subsequently, if there is a diagnosis written on a medical chart somewhere, you are infertile enough–even if you look at other infertile women walking around the lobby of the clinic and wonder if their journey is ten times more terrible than your own. Regardless of the decisions you make and the choices that are influenced by outside factors, you are infertile. Therefore, in my definition, you belong. And you can ask for emotional support. And you can receive it.

I am having a difficult time ending this post. I know this is my personal opinion and I can’t speak for the entire community. But I’d like to believe that as a whole, we are empathetic and inclusive. Right?

Feh.

I know I should be grateful that Meredith is alive. And amazed with modern medicine. And if Josh hadn’t been sitting next to me on the bed, waiting for me to cry during the scene with her mother, I would have cried except that I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right about me (and instead cried during a commercial break and made it about something other than saying goodbye to her mother).

But I didn’t think it was a fantastic episode. I know I’m not a doctor or anything (though I like to pretend that I know more than my RE), but really? You’re dead for 4 hours and then you have the energy to make spoons with your boyfriend in a hospital bed that night? And what was up with the woman who kept spontaneously bleeding. Did I miss the part where they explained why that continued to happen? The character I ended up loving a little more last night was Christina. Sandra Oh on a normal episode kicks some serious ass. But with the exception of shouting out her wedding news as the first thing she tells Meredith, I thought she went above and beyond her usual greatness.

LJ at Looking for Two Lines hit it right on the head by predicting that Meredith would live and Ellis would kick it. Bleu at Soulbliss came in at a close second, but apparently Bleu was too realistic in her guess when she bet that there would actually be reprecussions for being underwater all that time. DD wins for most creative as does Millie. I created this button for your blogs (simply cut-and-paste ladies) until I can come up with a fantabulous prize. All creativity was sucked out of my ears by watching soap opera-y television.

Oh…what? This isn’t a Grey’s Anatomy discussion blog? It’s about–wait, can you say that a bit louder? It’s an infertility and pregnancy loss blog? Are you kidding me? That sounds like a…well…like a downer.

But look at these little sparkling gems of writing I found this week! (how was that for a transition)

Gil at The Hardest Quest has a post about a family tradition for Shrove Tuesday. Trinkets are cooked into pancakes and each symbolizes an event in the future: you’ll marry a fisherman, you’ll be wealthy, you’ll die (okay, so some people leave out that one…). Gil writes beautifully about how her parents taught her these traditions and how she wants a child of her own so she can pass them along as well. I bawled reading it and we had pancakes for dinner Wednesday night.

Starfish at Hell or High Water has an interesting post this week about being the breadwinner. I love the title: “White or Whole Wheat?” It’s also about the way work is divided between a couple and households in general. It’s an interesting discussion: click over and jump into the discussion.

~r at Uterine Grail has a post that sent chills down my arms when I read it. 4 cousins and 4 pregnancy losses. She writes: “There are four girls in this generation of my family. All four of us have lost a baby now. Out of nine pregnancies, there are four children. Five if things go well with RiceCake.” Click here to head over and give support to her family.

Littleangelkisses at In Search of Biscuit 2.0 has a post this week that will make you crack up. And tear off your clothes. Intrigued? Click here.

Jamie at Sticky Feet has a very moving post called “Everything is Not Fine!” You will nod your head in agreement and you will cry alongside her–for all the times you had to pretend that everything was fine when it really wasn’t. When you wanted to scream at everyone in the room: “everything is not fine!” and have them understand a little slice of what you’re going through behind the scenes. A must-read for everyone who has ever cried on the way to an appointment.

Lindsey at This Side of Pregnant and Julie at A Little Pregnant each have a post about the infamous Starbucks cups–but not the same one! Lindsey tackles a quote from Corrine Bailey Rae, presenting the infertile point-of-view, while Julie takes the reader through a hypothetical meeting of the minds over in the dark recesses of Corporation Starbucks. Both will leave you laughing, vowing to never purchase from Starbucks, and then craving a white mocha–all at the same time. Click on each name (Lindsey and Julie) to read their original posts.

Lastly, a huge congratulations to Marcia Cross who delivered her donor egg/IVF twins on Tuesday (and thanks for the heads up, Lyrecha). They are fraternal twin girls named Eden and Savannah. On my sliding scale, whenever a stirrup queen leaves the trenches and steps onto mainland, my heart soars to a 10.

Twice a week, I leave the house around the same time to go to a tutoring job. And every time when I turn the corner on a certain street, there is a tall man waiting for the bus. As someone who is perpetually lost and perpetually late, I use markers to retrace steps and budget time. For instance, when I enter a department store, I memorize the clothing on the mannequin closest to my entrance door and then find that mannequin when I want to leave.

Seeing the tall man still waiting for his bus let me know that I had just enough time to make it to my tutoring job. This was especially helpful if I was running errands beforehand and wasn’t leaving directly from my house. He was like a store mannequin in terms of helping me judge time. My human-nequin.

And then one day he wasn’t there and I muttered “shit,” assuming that I was late. Maybe it was a few minutes later than usual, but I couldn’t really judge because I had been out running errands. Luckily, I made it to tutoring on-time. Two days later, when I was driving again, I noticed he wasn’t standing on the corner. This time, I was certain that I was on-schedule. My human-nequin was gone.

For the last few weeks, I’ve looked for him every time I’ve turned that corner on my way to tutoring. And he’s never there. Back when he was simply a man standing waiting for a bus, I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought. But now he had started the process of weaving himself into my life, standing amongst the other people who had started out as human-nequins and become actual, real people as their lives criss-crossed through our lives.

There’s Steve. He returns carts at the local food store. He used to be a human-nequin in the sense that he was someone who simply went with that store. I didn’t use him to tell myself that I was in the correct parking lot–I mean, I knew I was in the correct parking lot for the food store. But seeing Steve made me feel like I was part of a neighbourhood–one where you could recognize the man who brought the carts in from the parking lot to the front of the store.

He went from being labeled tall-skinny-man-who-brings-in-carts to Steve the day my kids were having a meltdown in the front of the store because they were out of car carts and he not only found one for them in the bowels of the food store, but he then signed “please don’t be sad” to my son (who used to sign more than he spoke) who prompty stopped crying since this kind man was telling him not to in his own language. And that is how he became Steve and why my kids wave at him and sign with him when we go to the food store.

And then there is Ms. Michelle who is our favourite librarian. Prior to the day that she became Ms. Michelle she was simply known as older-librarian-who-leads-storytime-on-occassion at the library. But then one morning we walked into the library and she called out a greeting to my kids, calling them by their first names and mentioning their favourite musical instrument which she had remembered from the last time she had led a storytime. And once I realized that we had crossed into her life, she crossed into our life and now when we get in the car to go to the library, we say that we are going to visit Ms. Michelle.

There is Eric, who used to be man-from-Sierre-Leone-at-Starbucks, and Taj, who was once known by favourite-waiter-at-the-Vietnamese-restaurant. There was woman-who-checked-me-in-at-the-RE who is now Celia and the woman-who-checked-me-out who is now Renee. And there is Maria who is the best at drawing blood in the lab. And Margaret who is my favourite person to get for a sonogram. When I entered the office, the only name I knew was the doctor, who turned out to be the person I saw the least. Everyone else was a label–a human-nequin who marked the space–until they became this important character in the journey. Sometimes life seems a little like Alice in Wonderland where all you see at first is the white rabbit with a pocket watch and then one day, the white rabbit becomes the White Rabbit who has a story and kid gloves and lives in a house with a thatched roof. And once they become etched into your story, you miss them when they suddenly disappear.

After weeks of missing my human-nequin, he returned yesterday. It will start with a wave. But perhaps one day I’ll need to take the bus as well and I’ll admit to him that I always looked for him on the corner when I was driving to my job. And then I’ll learn his name. And he will cease to be simply a marker and become a very real person.

An ode to the cast of thousands who create the backdrop of life in honour of the man at the bus stop.

This is the part where you tell me about your human-nequins that one day sprung to life.

For the past several nights, I have been curled up on the sofa, listening to Erin McKeown’s Sing You Sinners on continual play (pausing sometimes to look up lyrics to songs like “If You a Viper” to figure out if she’s actually saying, “if you a viper.”) while hand-sewing Purim costumes. My mother asked me why I wasn’t using a sewing machine. Because. Because I don’t own one. Because I have more control over the stitches by hand-sewing the dress. Because this is the way I have to do it because of my messed up hoohaahooterus.

At least it’s what I feel I need to do to appease the infertility gods.

I think many people parenting after infertility know what I’m talking about–maybe you breastfed even though you wouldn’t have made that choice if you hadn’t gone through infertility. Maybe you made all your baby food from scratch, but you would have bought jarred food if you hadn’t gone through infertility. Maybe you stopped working out of the house once your child arrived, but you would have stayed in your career if you hadn’t gone through infertility. Maybe you’ve enrolled your child in dozens of classes or slept a night on your child’s floor or had an anxiety-attack during a childhood illness. All things you may not have done if you had conceived your child during that first month or two of trying.

It’s the changes we make when we have a lot of time to think. It’s the changes we make due to promises we’ve made to whoever is in charge of making babies stick in-utero. Or it’s the changes we make when we realize how high the stakes are in our own personal journey.

I hand-make costumes.

It’s a promise I made to the Almighty Keeper of the Uterus one day when we were standing in a fabric store. Just let me get pregnant and keep the pregnancy and I will be the best mother. I will hand-make all costumes for Halloween and Purim. Even if I have to build my own rubber factory, I will also hand-create the masks. Just give me a baby and I’ll show you how worthy I am of becoming a mother.

It’s not the only promise I made and it’s not the only thing I do differently because I waited to hold my children. But it’s the thing I’m currently doing now so it’s on my mind. And it feels like those promises are even more important now that we’re trying again. I need to show I’m good on my word.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to make these changes. I think it shows a level of reflection. A maturity of age. I think many people go through changes after they hold their child for the first time. They thought they’d go back to work, but now that they’re holding the child, they can’t imagine spending the day in the office. Or they thought they wanted to stay home, but then discovered that they needed a different balance. I think what is unique about infertility is that we form some of those changes before we’ve met the child. Just from waiting and thinking about the future.

We write and then rewrite our definition of the “good” mother.

Are weddings different for brides who have had a long wait? A long time to consider that walk down the aisle and what the commitment means and what goes into a marriage? Is life lived differently by those who have experienced a life-threatening illness? Are the choices different?

Infertility changes you. Those who claim that they’ve stepped away from the experience; that infertility is behind them and never affects them–I’m not impressed. I’m more awed by the woman who has walked through a situation and exited out the other side changed by what she experienced. Used that struggle to become more self-aware. Or used that struggle to change her view of the world. If you’ve gone through a struggle (and not all women undergoing fertility treatments are struggling–I read a blog yesterday of a woman who was completely matter-of-fact about the whole experience and didn’t seem upset in the least to be using IVF to become pregnant with female factor infertility. If you can do that, more power to you), why not reap the reward of a change in point-of-view? Of course there’s the goal–a child–but there’s also the tangental side effects: the patience that emerges simply because you’ve learned about waiting; the sensitivity to others; the thoughtfulness.

I don’t think it’s weak to look back at an experience and say it remains with you. On the contrary, I think it takes a strong woman to keep on the heavy weight of infertility after the fact and allow the positive lessons to influence her definition of motherhood.

Before I started trying to conceive, I thought I would keep working and my husband would stay at home with the kids. I was going to serve them Earth’s Best organic baby food. They were going to be vegetarians like me. Then the waiting began and I started to rethink my vision of motherhood. If you just give me children, I’ll feed them chicken. I’ll even touch the raw chicken! If we finally get children, I’m going to want to be the one who stays home with them. This is what the waiting taught me (and this is personal to me–not a lesson for everyone): it didn’t matter if my children were like me at all. It didn’t matter if they wanted to be carnivorous or omnivorous or vegetarians. It didn’t matter if they wanted to be a writer or a teacher or a lion tamer. All the things I thought would matter suddenly didn’t; and all the things I hadn’t really spent time considering–what would be their personal path to happiness and how will I support them on it even if it conflicts with my own personal beliefs–suddenly did.

I think some of us go through an extremely personal parenting journey prior to becoming parents when we start making the hard choices of fertility treatments or other paths to parenthood. When parenthood doesn’t come easily. I think these promises we make–of the things we’ll do if we just get to reach parenthood–are extremely personal to our own unique vision of the “good” mother. Of what we believe makes a good mother who is worthy of parenthood.

What I mean is that I think I have two levels of goodness. The first is a common plateau that everyone needs to reach in order for me to view them as a good parent. It’s a pretty low bar to clear: don’t abuse your child either emotionally or physically. Don’t neglect your child. Comfort your child.

The second level is my own personal level, and they are the things I feel like I need to do in order to call myself a good mother. They are challenges for me: sewing is a challenge for me–I have no sewing skills. But I need to be the kind of mother who makes all costumes from scratch in order to view myself as a good mother. I need to bake my own bread. I need to plant a garden with my kids.

It does bother me that I stop to consider my own personal worthiness of parenthood. I don’t know if people who concieve easily ever question if they’re worthy to become a parent. But it’s something I can’t deny–I’ve made promises. Promises about what I’d do if I became a parent. And even if I have to start planning Purim costumes months in advance in order to get them completed on-time, it’s something I need to do in order to feel as if I am doing a good job. As a mother. I want to be a “good” mother and I want to keep the promises I made to the Almighty Keeper of the Uterus. Even if I know that those promises are not what makes one able to conceive or keeps one from conceiving. It’s all just magical thinking.

What is your own list of your personal “good mother”? How has inferti
lity changed how you believe you’ll be as a parent? Or if you are now parenting, what are you doing now that you decided to do during the journey–before you met your child?

I am halfway through sewing this costume and it seems to be becoming more and more complicated. Last night, I decided to add a layer of beads to the hemline. What the hell am I doing?
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Added at 10:44 a.m.: I just thought of another one after I posted this; one where the reason behind the action changed. Before trying to conceive, I wanted to breastfeed for financial reasons. I couldn’t imagine spend hundreds on formula. But once we started treatments, I realized I wanted to breastfeed because it would be a way of reclaiming my status as a woman. It would erase some of the things I lost via infertility. Well…we all know how breastfeeding turned out for me. But it was still a change that came from the long wait.

One of the libraries nearby has a bookstore on the ground level. They cull out old books and sell them for about $.50 in order to make room for new books in the library. Pretty much every book I have wanted recently has ended up there. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking? Check. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax? Check. Of course, this is where I picked up Children of Men for the current book tour.

They have an enormous children’s section. I buy the kids books there because used books don’t elicit the same guilty feelings that occur when they accidentally tear a page in a new book. These books have already been well-loved. They can withstand the effects of the twins’ intense loving without looking much different.

So let’s unpack yesterday’s purchase.

As I scanned the shelves, I grabbed a picture book called Triplets. My gut reaction when I examined my final pile of books to separate into the “buy-these” and the “reshelve-those” is that the triplet book–while extremely cute–was a bit over their heads languagewise. Yet I threw it into the buy-these pile. I felt uneasy about it, but I justified this $.50 decision by telling myself that someone in my multiples group would love it. I’d bring it to the next meeting and give it to a triplet mother.

I have to get this off my chest–I WAS FREAKIN’ LYING! It won’t be going to a triplet mom. It will be sitting on our bookshelf for the next few months. And every time Josh passes it, he will say, “didn’t you mean to give that to a triplet mother at the next meeting?”

Because this is my dirty little secret. I know a lot of people are freaked out by the idea of carrying and caring for multiples. We talk about it all the time. It’s the fear of many a woman undergoing hyperstimulation of their ovaries. How many embryos to transfer? What if we end up with twins? What if we end up with triplets?

I’m not one of those women. I felt like multiples were the only silver-lining to infertility. When I was little, I always wanted twin babies. I imagined myself with identical twin girls. So when we saw the ultrasound screen and saw the multiple sacs (three–though only two had fetal poles. The third was a blighted ovum), I didn’t freak out. It felt like an ultimate moment of peace–my reward for all the shit. I felt like I deserved twins–like it was a prize rather than a detriment.

In my twin group, so many women talk about the fact that while they would like to return to the clinic and try for a third, they won’t because they’re freaked out about the possibility of having another set of multiples and they wouldn’t want to transfer only one embryo. And that’s my other dirty secret–the one that probably gives my mother a minor heart attack. Not only am I not scared of having another set of multiples, but I would welcome them happily. I would feel like I had somehow gone from being the unluckiest (and most unfeminine) woman in the world to the jackpot winner.

I think the triplet book is like hanging a swimsuit over the scale to remind you to keep focused on the task-at-hand: losing the weight so you can fit into the suit. Maybe the triplet book is a tangible daily reminder that all the shit is worth it for the end result. Do you have something like that? Something you look at that motivates you–existing children perhaps if you’re going through secondary infertility or an empty room in the house or a onesie you bought when you first started trying?

Financially, triplets would be the end of us. But what a great story of how the ship went down.