Lest someone believe that all Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (SQs and SPJs to you) know the right thing to say, we experience the same lack of words when confronted by someone else’s fertility loss. Our book will have many ideas of what NOT to say/do, but since comfort is subjective, I’m not sure we can make the inverse list–the right thing to say, the right hug to give, the right phone call to make. I think if we keep the mantra: it’s all about (fill in name here) and not about me, we do okay. Not great. Not wonderful. Okay. But, then again, I’m come from the mindset that the only thing that will completely assuage the pain is to not be experiencing it at all. Therefore, nothing said or done will completely take it away.

Last night, a friend revealed that she had recently had a miscarriage. And I, a Stirrup Queen through and through, could not come up with anything comforting to say. Beyond listening. And a hug. The magical me wanted to conjure a parade of elephants into the living room, marching over the gorgeously shiny hardwood floors to deposit her baby back into her tummy to cook for many more months.

It’s hard when you realize that you are no more magical than anyone else you encountered during your IF experience.

I’m so sorry, sweetie. I wish there was something I could do for you. Something to help the healing move even faster. I can’t–and I’m so sorry about that too. I’m here with information if you need it. I’m here with an open ear if you want to talk. I’m here with a car that can drive downtown and pick you up for some extremely mindless female bonding that includes alcohol. Or…at the very least…chocolate and coffee (wait, chocolate and coffee? I mean, we will sit down and eat an entire chocolate cake IN ONE SITTING). I can’t put the baby back in your belly no matter how tightly I hug you. I’m sorry about that too. Hang in there. Know that the entire self-aware portion of womanhood has your back.

I’m currently pausing from reading through the stories submitted for question three to put down some thoughts. I was struck by the person who said that people don’t understand that the tears are not self-pity but rather an expression of pain. I’m reading Joan Didion’s book at the moment–The Year of Magical Thinking–which chronicles the loss of her husband and daughter. She has a wonderful passage in the book about self-pity and the American contempt for anything construed as “self-pity.” That people are complimented for holding it together (another person wrote us directly with a message straight out of the non-infertile world: you handle your infertility better than another couple because you can attend these events when they can’t) rather than publically grieving. For getting on with their lives. For putting others first. She talks about the words used in conjunction with self-pity. Wallowing. Boo hoo poor me. Indulging.

There are some who would say that you can’t compare the loss of the ability to reproduce to the loss of a spouse. Certainly the emptiness of someone who was there and is now not vs. something that was never there except in the form of hope is difficult to compare. But for me–and I think for many of us–that loss is so huge, so real, so tangible that we really do go through a mourning period. My cousin died close to when another cousin was getting married. The wedding couple offered to postpone the wedding for the sake of family. The parents of the child who died said the celebration must go on. When the time came for the wedding, the sister of the child who died asked her parents to dance. I remember her father rubbing her arm and saying in this soft, sad voice: “I can’t dance right now, sweetie. My heart hurts too much.”

You would never ask a mourner to dance or think they were engaging in self-pity if they declined to get down to “Brick House.” But women who are going through IF are expected to muster the enthusiasm and happiness required at a baby shower. Or a bris. They are expected to traipse down the aisles at Buy Buy Baby picking out the cutest frilly dress for a newborn girl. We are expected to put our own experience and sadness on the back burner in order to celebrate with another person who is getting exactly what we want.

We did a mix: skipped some events and attended others based on where I was in my cycle and the closeness of the friend. But I don’t think there was one event that we entered into light-hearted, with our own pain on the back burner. We cried getting ready for the party. I sometimes ducked into the bathroom while we were there to pull it together. And we cried on the way home.

At the same time, there were non-infertiles who thought they were saving my feelings by not inviting me to the first-birthday parties or other child-centered events. In the end, that just made me feel like a pariah–cast out of the community of womanhood because I couldn’t reproduce like all the other women.

So how can the non-infertile world win? They’re damned if they do invite this over-emotional self-pitying freak to their parties and they damned if they don’t. I guess it’s the fact that there is no way to win because there is nothing to win. You can’t assuage the pain of a person going through IF by inviting them to a party or having them hold a child or even patting their back and being a good listener. If you start from that understanding–that you will not possibly be able to say the “right thing” and fix the problem, then you already are helping. Because lower expectations of how I should be handling things or when it’s time to stop mourning or stop crying or extend happiness to another couple are needed because these things can’t be forced.

And don’t even get me started on the method I like used when told by pregnant people that they’re expecting. THAT is for a different entry.

A loooooong entry.

Because, yes, I do have a method.

Does it make me a small, self-pitying person? Feel free to respond. In fact, please do–I think I’ll hold off on posting another question until tomorrow since question three is still getting comments.

This question starts with an assumption (based on our experience and the experiences of others we know). This assumption is that (1) you possibly agonized over whether or not to go to a baby-centered event (first birthday, bris, baby naming, baptism) and (2) you were not invited to a few of these aforementioned events. If these two cases didn’t apply to you, we’d love to hear from you as well.

Question Three: were people understanding if you didn’t attend a baby-centered event? Did they even know what you went through emotionally to attend events or did you keep that to yourself? At the same time, if you weren’t invited to baby-centered events (to spare your feelings), how did you feel?

We sat down to get to work and truly, the white elephant in the room that needed to be spoken before we could even talk about the topic of the evening (which became Question #3 for tomorrow morning). We had one response for question two. A question in which we solicited positive experiences.

Was it the caveat that we desired stories where the words and wisdom came from an outsider? I think anyone who has turned to RESOLVE or infertility chat rooms has gotten a virtual shoulder to lean on during the process. We’re well aware that our insanely nice RE story is not the norm. But to be honest, we were really grasping at straws to come up with a story that came from an outsider. I know that there were friends who were great listeners. But I can’t remember anything specific that was said or done that helped us through IF.

There is definitely a chasm–and the other side is not this evil land teaming with pamphlet-waving psychos screaming that you’re going to hell for doing IVF (let’s just imagine that those people live on an island in the middle of the river that divides the SQ and SPJ from the non-infertiles. Luckily, for the most part, you can drift right by that island and ignore it unless you know people living there). That land is actually teeming with people who are “well-intentioned” who “want to help.” But they manage to stick their foot in it because…at the end of the day…they just don’t understand.

The problem actually lies in the fact that they won’t admit that they don’t understand. There are many places in life where people admit that they can’t place themselves in another person’s shoes. But when it comes to trying-to-conceive, most people of child-bearing age believe they have a leg to stand on when doling out advice or words of sympathy. I had a coworker
(well-intentioned) who told me that she could imagine what I was going through because it took them three months to conceive and those two months that they didn’t were torture. She was trying to be sympathetic. She was trying to relate. But in the end, if you haven’t been a SQ or a SPJ, perhaps you can never truly get it.

Though we’re trying to change that fact with this book. Providing ourselves (and you) with something we can hand off to the people in our lives who need to understand what we’re experiencing. I’m not talking about every friend. Those people I’ll just direct to library copies. But the people who matter. Who need to know how they can help. Those people will get a nice copy of our book, expertly wrapped in shiny paper. With a ribbon. Because we’re nice like that over here on our side of the river. At least when it comes to the topic of fertility.

Not just in my house as my kids sleep. But on the board as well. What could this mean? That the rain has put people in a read-only mood? That no one (gasp) has stories about positive advice/words/actions that helped them through the process? I know we’ve gotten many hits today, but no comments. Therefore, a renewed plea for stories.

All of my best comments come from insiders. My mother went through infertility (11 years to have three children). She was a great resource not only for information but for support as well. I had friends who were going through treatments at the same time. My best friend, who is the godmother of my children, is not infertile, but she was an amazing support (ha! So here is an example of someone outside the experience). Unfortunately, while I can come up with many good stories about how she was supportive during the actual pregnancy, I can’t come up with a specific from the infertility years. Perhaps I’m having a touch of memory suppression…

But my other good story of support comes from someone who has their feet in both worlds–my RE. For all I know, he became an RE because he went through infertility. I don’t really know anything about his personal life except that he has a daughter who went to my high school. But for the sake of this story, we’ll go with the assumption that he never went through IF. But he works in that world so he isn’t completely an outsider. Then again, I know plenty of people who did not have the warm and fuzzy experience we had at our RE’s office. Wish everyone could live in our area.

Anyway, while we had a nurse assigned to our case who delivered test results and answered questions, often he would call us as well to further explain something. There were many days when he told me, “it’s okay to be disappointed. But it’s not okay to be discouraged.” He called us the day before the IUI when we conceived and left us a message saying that he just felt in his bones that it would be our turn this month (he later said that if he truly thought his words had worked some type of magic, he would spend his entire day phoning infertile women).

But our best story about our RE came when I was driving home one day from work. He had called my cell phone and was going over some test results (this was back in the days when we drove and spoke on cell phones at the same time). He told me that everything looked so good that he wanted to do an IUI instead of timed-intercourse. I was so embarrassed, but I had to admit to him that we needed another month to pull the money together since we didn’t think we’d be doing IUI that month. There was a pause and then he told me that the clinic would take on the cost of the IUI because he felt so strongly that we had a good chance to conceive and he didn’t want to let it pass. Which was just about the most thoughtful thing anyone did for us during our treatments. We didn’t conceive that month (and the RE joked that at least it was free), but it gave us the hope to keep trying since we knew someone else out there cared if we got pregnant and had our back. Sort of the same idea as a coach. It’s not that you can’t be a baseball player without one, but they help you to keep focused and give you strength when you begin to doubt yourself. Thank you, Dr. RE.

I still get choked up when I drive by that RE’s building.

Okay, so now that we’ve spilled, it’s your turn. Send in your stories. The kind words that were said to you. The coworker who bought you a latte because she could see that you had been crying after a BFN. The friend who said just the right thing. Or the therapist or RE who proverbally held your hand and gave you the strength you needed to remain focused on the goal.

Come on, I know these stories are out there.