In lieu of the Friday Blog Roundup, I thought I’d look backwards for one week instead of current…

It’s fun to look back through my favourites folders in Internet Explorer and see what I thought was worth bookmarking for constant reference. I have a folder called “babies” and it reads as a guide to the journey of the infertile. The first few links are cute baby sites like Babycenter and 101 Early Signs of Pregnancy. The list continues into the slightly confused Basal Body Temperature (what factors can affect your BBT) and Trying to Conceive Success Stories. And then spirals down into a now-defunct list of infertility-friendly employers (new job would equal new insurance which would hopefully equal IVF coverage) and RESOLVE‘s website.

Tucked into the list are a few parenting blogs–those early journals that they posted on Babycenter. My favourite was Bringing Up Ben which became Bringing Up Ben and Birdy when her second child was born (and has since moved to blogspot). I liked her because she was the first blog I ever read and she was from Amherst near where I used to live.

I read them because I was always looking for the secret. What did they know that I didn’t know? How did they get pregnant so relatively easily? In the beginning, I really thought that there must be one piece to the puzzle that I didn’t know, that someone forgot to tell me. And I’d discover it if I asked the right questions. Reading blogs seemed like the this covert way to get the information. Access to someone’s diary. And weren’t they certain to record how they went about creating life?

And there was one I found during one of my frantic google searches (which were usually about early pregnancy symptoms). It was called Kate’s Oven and it was a young woman–I believe in Australia–trying to conceive. When I started reading her, she was pregnant and she was so excited that I became excited for her. I checked back every few days, watching her pregnancy progress and reading her entries about food aversions.

And then she lost the baby.

And I sat crying in my empty classroom during my grading period.

I was so sad for Kate and the little bun.

She wrote for a while after the miscarriage, but she finally closed down her blog and stopped writing about trying to conceive. I always wondered what happened to her. You read the intimate thoughts and details about another person’s life and they become so entangled in your own that you start talking about them with your husband as if you really know this person. And then you see the broken link to their old blog in your favourites folder and the thoughts pop up again like suddenly realizing what song comes next on a mix tape you haven’t heard in twelve years.

I want to know what happened to Kate. Did she go on to conceive again? Did she end up going through more losses? Did she choose a different path to parenthood or is she living child-free? Does she think about her pregnancy loss as much as I think about her pregnancy loss since I don’t know her through any other means except her loss?

Did anyone ever read Kate’s Oven? And who do you miss from the Blogosphere (or the bulletin boards)?

And who did you show up too late to read and you’re now kicking yourself for not starting sooner? On my list is Chez Miscarriage and Baby Hungry Man.

This post is dedicated to Cancer Baby who I was thinking about yesterday because she had a wonderful post last Thanksgiving about her husband and how he went without his beloved green bean casserole last year. And when she died this summer, all I could think about was how that was the last Thanksgiving they had spent together.

What is Thanksgiving without a requisite post about being thankful?

We’re told in grade school that the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower had a crap winter. They arrived in December and by the end of the first year, almost half the original group had died. The ones who survived did so with the help of the Native Americans. The fall harvest was plentiful, and they sat down together–Pilgrims and Native Americans–for a giant feast to celebrate and offer thanks for getting through their first year on American soil.

At our Thanksgiving dinner, we go around the table and everyone says something for which they are thankful. And you have to be pretty much the coldest person in the world not to be able to state something for which you’re fortunate. I don’t need a holiday mandated by the American government in order to look at my life and know that even on my worst days, I’m still doing a hell of a lot better than a large swath of fellow Americans. I have many reasons to be thankful and it goes as basic as that I love everyone that I am eating dinner with this Thursday. And having that many people in your life that you love makes one drop down on their knees in gratitude.

But being thankful wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about.

Family holidays can suck when you’re infertile. You’re being told to focus on what you have, when what you don’t have keeps popping back into your head like a massive white elephant trundling through your mental rooms no matter how hard you try to leave it behind for the day. And you have to endure the questions. And you have to watch your relatives fawn over a sibling’s child. And at the same time, you’re beating yourself up because you are supposed to be feeling GRATEFUL damnit–and the best you can muster is that you feel grateful that your insurance covers three IUIs when there are poor Stirrup Queens out there who have to pay out-of-pocket for every damn insemination. And even when you’re happy and sitting around with people you love and savouring that slice of pie, there’s a piece of your heart that is missing. And it all just feels off. Because you are desperately missing someone who should be there.

I think I love the myth of Thanksgiving because it mirrors so much the infertile experience. The Pilgrims arrive in winter, dumbfounded to discover that life was not going to go as they thought. And they endured a lot. And they had to reach out to others for help when they thought they wouldn’t need to ask for help. And in the fall, they are just grateful because they made it to the other side. They’re not grateful because they conquered the world. Their accomplishment is simple–survival. But it’s so much more than that because of what they endured to reach that meal.

And I don’t see that meal as the time that you’re holding your child necessarily. I see that time as the moment when you make it through the cold winter and the hot summer and the loss and the heartache and the confusion and the doubt. And you’re on the other side. You’re at peace. And that peace can come at any point in the process. You may be living child-free or you’re starting the adoption process or you’re hand is on the swelling stomach of your surrogate or you’re bringing your child home from the hospital. And none of it was how you thought it would go. But you don’t hate the journey. You embrace it and thank the people who helped you get to the other side.

And in that perfect peace, you just feel grateful. You accomplished something that is, on one hand, so simple and on the other, this amazing feat. And in a journey marked by so much doubt and darkness, it is the moment when you can finally breathe. When you’re standing back in the light.

Enjoy the meal tomorrow even if you’re still toiling through the winter and summer. It’s okay to still be in those seasons because it’s all part of the journey that you need to go through in order to get to the fall. You don’t need to hurry through them to make a point or because anyone else is telling you that you should be grateful. You’ll get there when you’re ready.

Since winter is the season for magical thinking and we all need a little hope. And since I have complete faith in my palm pilot’s Magic 8 Ball and its ability to decide whether a stone is capable of granting a wish (every cycle, when I asked if I was pregnant, it replied: “my reply is no.” And sure enough, I was never pregnant. So I have full faith in the Magic 8 Ball and I asked it if this was a real magic wish stone capable of granting one wish a day and it replied, “it is decidedly so.” That’s sound enough for me), I wanted to invite everyone to prove the power of magical thinking with the wishing stone challenge.

Every day, touch the picture of the stone on the screen and make a wish that can be verified that day. It has to be a realistic wish and it has to be one that is able to be verified (therefore, you can’t, unfortunately, wish for world peace. You also can’t wish that your office mate will read your mind and bring you a vanilla latte from her Starbucks run unless this is something that has a small likelihood of happening. You can wish for things like success for your embryos pre-transfer or low FSH at your day 3 blood draw).

Write down your wish every day after you make it and keep track of which ones come true. Do this for 10 days and get a percentage of how many times the wish came true. I think if it even has a 25% collective success rate, it is worth keeping on the side bar for everyone’s future cycles (and sometimes you just need to wish that you’ll be waived from jury duty or that you’ll get a job. And these are all reasonable requests for a wishing stone).

So weigh in and let me know if you’re up for the challenge with a reply in the comments section. It begins tomorrow on November 21st and it runs until the night of November 30th. On December 1st, send in your percentage (for instance, if three of your ten wishes were granted, you had a 30% success rate). And by December 2nd, we should know whether or not the wishing stone has any worth at all (though, come on, it already made KE’s E2 levels go down and it kept her cycle from being cancelled!). If you are reading this and it is after November 21st and you want to join the challenge, do it anyway and send in your percentage late. I’ll keep recalculating.

And add your cool wish success stories to the original post with the wishing stone so people can read them since that’s the entry linked to my side bar.

Josh bought me a wishing stone this weekend at a store called Mud and Metal. I verified its powers as a wishing stone by checking with my palm pilot’s Magic 8 ball prior to the purchase. I am happy to report that according to the Magic 8 ball, this is a true and working wish stone.

So I’m granting everyone a wish. Just touch the screen and make the wish. And let me know if it comes true.

According to the questions I asked the Magic 8 ball, the stone should be able to grant one wish a day. Therefore, I’m also putting a link in the side bar for easy access if people should need wishes in the future.

Because while Plan A’s always sound nice in theory and you get very attached to them, it’s usually what happens in the Plan B that you appreciate and enjoy more.

Once upon a time, Plan A for our five year anniversary was returning to St. Lucia where we went on our honeymoon. Plan A included a beach front room, fruity drinks, and some snorkeling. Plan A was very expensive and not very feasible. Plan A was never brought up again once the reality of life kicked in.

The problem was that we didn’t come up with a Plan B. We kicked around a few ideas–hiking in West Virginia. Going to a semi-local beach off-season. But in a completely non-Melissa-like fashion, there was no plan in place beyond the fact that we had babysitting from Saturday morning until late Sunday afternoon. Seriously–I think not making a decision on the Lovenox is rubbing off on the rest of my life. It’s almost as if I can’t make plans anymore. I used to plan the next cycle before the current cycle had even happened. And now I’m sitting on information and looking around in confusion. Plan? How do you make a plan again?

The epiphany happened at 10 p.m. on Friday night. We got married in Baltimore, about one hour away. Neither of us knew Baltimore well so we decided to pick a random neighbourhood and walk around for the afternoon. Go back to the scene of the wedding. We went online and googled bookstores in Baltimore. We got married in a library, and it seemed fitting to center our trip on a bookstore. Hence how we ended up with Atomic Books and the Hampden neighbourhood.

It was a really cute street. Lots of small boutiques and fun restaurants. But the best, by far and away, was a place that I knew was created solely for Manuela. It was called Ma Petite Shoe and it was…wait for it…a SHOE and CHOCOLATE store. The front of the store was designer shoes (get it–shoe/chou) and the back was unusual chocolates. I fell in love with about twenty different pairs of shoes and bought none since I was wearing my new furry boots and felt like two pairs of shoes in one week was a bit much. We did buy some tea-flavoured chocolates (I got chai and Josh got ginger) and ate them while we walked, pretending to be Rachael Ray from $40 a day.

Josh as Rachael Ray: “Here’s a tip. You can get a small piece of chocolate for only $2 at Ma Petite Shoe. It was just what I needed in the middle of my shopping trip. Delish! And my little pick me up only set me back two bucks. How great is that?”

On the second day of our at-home vacation, we went to do all the things we used to love to do that we don’t do anymore. We ate lunch at Nam Viet (I know, Spark! It is seriously the best Vietnamese in the area) and read at Politics and Prose. We went shopping for kitchen stuff.

It wasn’t a flashy vacation and it wasn’t a spectacularly over-the-top send-off to five years of marriage. But it was cozy and warm. And it was familiar and happy. And it was sweet and sentimental. And it was all the things I love about my husband. And I love that we can just be ourselves and we don’t need to do something big since we’re happy just doing it heartfelt. And that we hold the same things as important. And that he can hold my hand across the table while we read and I know that even though we’re deep into different books, we’re still on the same page.

It was a perfect five year anniversary celebration. And it just reminded me that it doesn’t need to be a huge change to jolt you out of your rut. It can be as small as getting in the car and exploring a neighbourhood in a town an hour away. And it can be equally as special as a beach vacation.

And on a beach vacation, you can’t wear you new furry boots.