Children Mentioned: Still not feeling very funny this morning. Perhaps it’s the fact that my trip to the mall to buy my daughter stockings was a total bust. Seriously, children’s store after children’s store were selling black baby stockings. Baby stockings! When I inquired where were the plain white stockings, the employees stared at me blankly and said that they didn’t sell light-coloured stockings. Because perhaps all babies are headed for a goth look this season. Perhaps they’ve put away all the light-coloured stockings because it’s Friday the 13th.

But more important…the blogs.

Carolyn at This Sorta Fairytale had a great post this week about anger. Sadness came prediagnosis, but anger followed once she knew what was wrong…and what caused her infertility. I have a bunch of thoughts on this that I’ll try to put into words over the weekend, but head over to her blog and read the entry because it’s very interesting: is a diagnosis in the hand worth the emotional pain in causes?

Cecily at and I wasted all that birth control has an equally interesting entry on forgiveness. I think my favourite part of the post is her husband’s ability to forgive and not carry anger into his relationship with his mother. Being able to forgive is a powerful thing–especially being able to forgive when an apology is not forthcoming. It made me think about the places in my life where I’m still storing anger. And how it affects me emotionally. And how all of that could be solved if I just forgave–even without the apology in my pocket.

Thalia over at Thalia’s Fertility Journey had her anonymous blog suddenly become known by her RE and clinic, and all hell ensued. Her safe space where she could vent about treatments (both ART and…well…how she was treated by other people) is suddenly gone and she’s contemplating what to do. It sounds like she may stop writing for a bit so she can think things through. I, for one, will miss her greatly. She is funny and smart and always provides thought-provoking writing. I’m sorry this happened, Thalia.

Lastly, over at Her Very Own, Akeeyu, has some very beautiful and heartbreaking posts about taking care of her father who is dying of cancer. I think the line that punched me hardest in the stomach came a few weeks ago when she first began writing about this process: “My father is dying without any grandchildren.” It broke my heart and reminded me of a woman I once knew from the RESOLVE boards who found out that she was finally pregnant and that her father was dying all at the same time. And I just wanted to send a lot of strength her way. Hang in there, sweetie. This is the worst of life–at some point, you will have to be out of this space. Being out of this hole will be bittersweet because you will have been in the hole to begin with. But. There is sunshine when you come out of the hole. I hope you climb out soon.

My brother called me this week to let me know that my blog isn’t funny.

“Infertility isn’t really an amusing topic,” I told him.

“But it used to be funny. Before you started reading eight pregnancy loss books a day.”

(Add obligatory, Paul Shaffer-like drum roll to cue laughter)

It has been making me pause. And consider things that I hadn’t really stopped to consider. Serenity had a great comment this week that when she had an early miscarriage, she didn’t know whether she was mourning the loss of the baby or the failure of the cycle. And take that a step further because sometimes I didn’t even know whether I was mourning the failure of the cycle or the failure of myself as a woman.

(Um…Mel…this really isn’t funny. Where are the stories about putting on knee-high boots and accompanying your husband into the sperm palace rooms?)

When we conceived the twins, there was a third sac–a blighted ovum. The RE directed our attention away from the sac, continuously talking about the twins every time I asked about it. And I barely acknowledged it except for when I lost the sac 8 weeks into the pregnancy and ended up crying in the therapist’s office. And again, was I crying about the fact that the baby didn’t form or was I crying from fear over seeing that much blood and cramping during the pregnancy.

Or was I just mourning the entirety of the experience of infertility itself?

(Damn, Mel, seriously, put down the pregnancy loss books. Pick up something light. Something fun. There’s a Plum Sykes piece of fluff in your book bag. Read that.)

Sometimes I wonder if it’s healthier to keep barreling through–keep trying after the loss, move on to adoption, have a few more tests–or whether it’s healthier to pause for a bit. Give yourself time and space to mourn that is imposed by your own needs rather than matching your mourning time to the IVF slots at the center. How many people have jumped into the next cycle before they were emotionally ready just because they couldn’t really handle the idea of sitting out a cycle and not trying? I know I can’t stand the idea of waiting. I’m impatient by nature. And any time I was told that we had to sit something out, I became a bleeding mess. When I talk about a self-imposed break, I mean at any point in the process–not just after a pregnancy loss. Because there’s a lot to mourn even if you haven’t suffered a miscarriage or a late term loss. There’s a lot to mourn in infertility itself.

(Plum Sykes? The Debutante Divorcee is just breathing in anticipation for you)

And I think sometimes I only considered those losses in terms of what they meant: what did we learn? How can I stop this from happening in the future? What is the greater meaning of this loss? Rather than taking pause and considering the emotional side of the loss. At some point, I started thinking like an RE instead of thinking like a woman trying to conceive. I was emotional, but I took the emotions out of the process and instead the emotions were directed at myself–at my own failures, at my own short-comings–rather than at the not-yet baby.

(For the love of Jesus Christ Almighty, put. down. the. pregnancy. loss. books.)

A man and a woman walk into a fertility clinic. The woman tells the RE, “we want a baby. With my eyes and his nose.” The RE rolls his eyes and says, “his nose? I wouldn’t do that to a kid even for the $12,000 IVF price tag!”

Ba-dum-dum.

See, it really isn’t funny.

A set of questions pertaining to everyone who has suffered one or more losses–from chemical pregnancies and early miscarriage to ectopic and beyond to late-term loss and…here is where our language is lacking…death of a child soon after birth.

Actually, our language is lacking left and right. We use the term “failed cycle” to describe both the failure of IUI or IVF. But there is a key difference. With IUI, fertilization may or may not have taken place (obviously, implantation has not happened either, but that’s a different story). But with IVF, an embryo has already been formed. You are, in a way, pregnant during every IVF cycle. It’s just a matter of implantation. So what is the word to describe this type of loss?

What do we call that child who is born alive but dies soon after birth? We have another term–stillbirth–to describe a child who wasn’t born alive, but why don’t we have a name to honour those who are born alive and die soon after?

Are there words connected to loss that bother you–especially medical terminology (habitual aborter comes to mind just because those who haven’t suffered a loss may hear habitual aborter and think it is something entirely different).

These next two questions ask how important is it to you (on a scale from 1–10) that people use the correct terminology to describe your loss?

1. How important is it to you that they differentiate and use the term miscarriage if the loss was prior to 20 weeks or late-term loss after 20 weeks (on a scale from 1–10; and explain your answer if possible)?

2. How important is it to you that they use the name of the correct type of loss (ectopic, blighted ovum, molar, chemical, stillbirth, etc)? Again, the scale is 1–10 and it would help if you could explain your answer.

Kotapress has a fantastic online dictionary concerning loss, but depending on your religious beliefs or how you view pregnancy loss, not all people would be comfortable with terms such as angelversary. I started using terraversy (a combination of terrible and anniversary–with obvious connections to the idea of in-ground imbedded in the word) to describe those terrible days–date of death or lost due date–just because it doesn’t have religious connotations. And people process loss differently–I think it’s important to be inclusive so that however you view your personal loss, you can still have language to describe what happened and how you feel.

A huge thank you in advance to everyone who has already helped me with this chapter by providing interviews or sharing your stories of loss. Writing this chapter…just sucks. Whereas in every other chapter there is an element of hope–yes, things can go wrong, but ultimately, there is hopefully a child at the end of the path–this chapter…well…I don’t think I need to finish that sentence for you to know what this chapter is about. Thank you for being open to answering my dozens of questions–I want to get this right so that it serves the greater community and doesn’t just speak to my personal experience. And some of these losses are outside my experience–such as late-term loss. And without your stories, I wouldn’t be able to do this chapter justice.

More questions to come. This is just a week of questions, questions, questions. And feel free to email your answers directly to thetowncriers@gmail.com if you don’t wish to post them in the comments section.
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Updated at 2:20 p.m.:
Joan added this question in the comments and I thought I would move it up here:

Do you differentiate between a chemical pregnancy and a miscarriage?

She explains: There seems to be disagreement even in the medical community. A midwife in my OB practice told me a chemical pregnancy “doesn’t count” as a miscarriage. My RE said it absolutely does. Does calling it a “chemical pregnancy” make you grieve any less? In my case, I think it did, but losing the chemical pregnancy was much more painful physically than the miscarriage I had a year and a half later at 6.5 weeks. Go figure.

October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. The good people at Remembering Our Babies is spearheading a movement to have everyone light a candle that will burn for at least an hour at 7 p.m. (whatever your time zone) on the 15th in order to create a wave of light.
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Updated at 1 p.m.: Thank you, Kay, for sending this link. Wanted to post it again in case people missed it in the comments section:

The link to the House Concurrent Resolution supporting Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day and calling for a presidential proclamation regarding the same is here.

Next time you see me out of sweatpants and a t-shirt, look out!

Fertile women dress to impress, U.S. study finds