Waxing Sentimental

I've largely been in a parenting funk lately.  Both kids are challenges, quick to frustration and bad moods.  And even when we do fun things--like go out for ice cream--they squabble.

Today I took them to the zoo.  We go to our local (lame) zoo maybe once per year (though I feel like it's been longer than that).  This larger zoo is about an hour away, and I haven't been there since LG was six.  That is to say, pre-Tiny Boy.  That is to say, in the midst of IVF Take 3 or so.  The last time we were there I went with my friend A and her two kids; the little one was a baby at the time and I remember being so full of envy.

Today I watched my kids feed giraffes together.  It was just one of those lovely perfect moments when everything else fades away.  But I was also back then, in the moment of wanting that experience.  Today I'm doubly grateful.

Just In Case You Thought I Was Done Talking about My Uterus

Where to begin?

I have two friends with kindergarteners.  There is nothing essentially profoundly special about kindergarten, though I do have a softspot for the age of five.  Five, as I remember it with LG, is when parenting gets easier (at least until ten, and then it's a different sort of complicated).  It's a milestone, this beginning of elementary school, and it occurs to me every now and then that I could have a kindergartener, too, if only I hadn't had that miscarriage back in June 2009.

I am mostly solidly on the other side of infertility and loss.  One might say healed.  I attribute this partly to my relationship with The Artist and being involved in the infertility community as writer, as advocate, and not as patient.  It's also the publishing of books and having to talk about all this stuff as ancient history, the stuff of books, rather than my present.  And, well, frankly, time.  Tiny Boy is almost four.  This life on the other side stuff?  A nice place to be.

But there's something about this time of year for me that I associate profoundly with infertility. Maybe because I was first pregnant in October and did IVF in October and fretted about IUGR in October.  Or something about the changing of the seasons.*  I'm really not sure.

I'm not sad.  But perhaps wistful.  Thinking about the life I could have had and the one that I do.  And pregnancy loss be damned, if I hadn't lost that baby I surely wouldn't have had a Tiny Boy.  But I would have a kindergartener...

* Tiny Boy told me this morning it wasn't winter yet and it would be winter when his teacher flipped the page on the calendar.  She is THAT powerful.  

In the Baby Aisle

On my list of things to do before Monday:  buy Tiny Boy a toddler bed.  This should be an easy thing.  There are toddler beds I like for under $100 at Target.  And yet once I started thinking about the process not of setting up the toddler bed but taking down the crib--and where exactly would I store it--well you probably know where this is headed.

The last time I took down a crib it went in the basement to be brought back up, I thought, in another year or so for another baby to use.  There isn't going to be another baby.  There isn't going to be what my interviewer the other day called the "miracle sex pregnancy" for me if I'm not having sex.

I am not all baby lusty like I was last spring (I think some of that really must have been hormonal) and my family is complete.  But still, the baby aisle is a hard place to be.

Buying a toddler bed should be a pragmatic thing:  he needs a new place to sleep, and his room really isn't big enough for a full-sized bed (and at 27 lbs, really, either is he!).  So why does it need to be imbued with all sorts of significance?  Why can't I just buy the damn thing, and let him pick out some sheets (which I'm sure would either be Frozen or something with trucks) and move on?

Yes, that's mostly rhetorical.  But feel free to discuss.

The Year of the Book, The Year of Peace?

I'm drinking coffee.  There are cinnamon rolls in the oven.  LG and her friend (who slept over) and Tiny Boy are on the sofa bed watching kid TV.  I spent New Years Eve watching Homeland and filching potato chips from the girls.  It was really nice.

I find myself more and more lately thinking about THEN and now.  Because I think the distinction between them is just becoming more clear.  Reading at Dr. Gorgeous's office solidified that.  While I will always be infertile, and while that time shaped my identity in ways I don't think I have yet fully processed, I really do now have the life I wanted, even if it came about in a way that was less than desirable.  Still, sometimes I am astonished when I think about just how hard those years--years in which I was coming up for tenure and driving for treatment and raising a small child and having a lot of family drama--actually were.

A lot of goodness happened in 2014:  I had two books published and another accepted, on top of many smaller pieces added to my CV.*  I settled in to an administrative position I will keep probably for another year or two (maybe until I go up for promotion to full?  I'm not entirely sure).  I'm sleeping better, if not great, but at least enough that I don't have many of those "lost days" any more.  LG is, if a bit pre-adolescent-surly, a real companion at this age (she'll be 11 in Feb), and Tiny Boy is, well, a tiny boy who talks in complete (and complicated) sentences and plays with trucks and doles out many hugs.  I am tempted to say I have found something resembling peace.

I'm not sure what 2015 will bring.  I should have a book out in the fall, and assuming all goes well, a new nephew or niece this summer.  LG will start middle school (yikes!).  Professionally I'd like to finish up the two book projects that I have lingering (a co-edited collection that's in review, and a hybrid creative/scholarly monograph thing that I've been working on since I was pregnant) and solidify what my next thing will be, as I'm eligible to apply for an internal grant again next fall. Personally I'd like to lose 5 pounds (which is such a weird thing to say, because I've historically had the opposite problem) mostly by increasing exercise (which should happen anyway) and paying a bit more attention to my diet (I think I need to go low histamine/low inflammatory because I'm getting a ton of headaches lately).  And read more outside my field(s), probably social science (psych, anthro) and cognitive/neuroscience designed for "lay" readers.**  I'd also like to do better about routinizing certain things (cooking, cleaning) to free up some head space and time.

And how nice it is that none of this is high drama, just routine life.  Hope all of you have a great year. If you're reading and haven't commented in a while (or never!) please do say hi.





* what's stupid is that these won't "count" for much of anything because book publication already earns highest merit in our annual review process, so it's actually better to sit on things and deliberately space out publication.

**if you have recs, send them my way

Post Infertility Freak Out

I return to the Mother Ship tomorrow.

Not as a patient but as a guest speaker.

I think I can count on a couple things.  Dr. Gorgeous will say she likes my new boots.  And I won't get out of there without crying.

I'll let you know what happens.

Community

I am astonished by what happened in Ferguson yesterday.  And yet not.  But it is so hard to live in a world where violence and injustice and racism are just part of the norm.  I don't accept that.  I have to.

*

Today there was a bomb threat on campus.  Quickly determined to be a hoax, and not immediately threatening enough to be frightened, in the way that I was when a gunman opened fire last summer at the pharmacy close to my house and my kids' schools were on lockdown for hours.  But enough that my students--the few that showed up on this last class before Thanksgiving--wanted to go home.

In the hour I would have spent teaching, I called Dr. Boy.  We have not been a couple in any way in many years, yet he's the person I go to in moments of crisis.  He also happens to be a black man.  It was him I was thinking of when I heard about Ferguson yesterday.

*

He asked me about how my books are doing.  These books published by small presses that haven't really been reviewed yet.  But I have received so many kind emails and notes.  Long lost ones reconnecting.  Other SMCs.  I agreed, today, to do a reading and workshop at Dr. Gorgeous's place in a few weeks.  The thought of reading some of that stuff in front of her I find absolutely nauseating, more revealing than any procedure in which her hand was up in my uterus.  But it's also absolutely the right place for me to be.  That is, and always will be, my community.

Post-Infertility (Again)

It's been a weird week.

*

Because my collection of poems is being published by an imprint that focuses on illness, my editor asked me to secure someone to write a "medical introduction."  For reasons that I assume would be fairly obvious, I sent an email to Dr. Gorgeous.  Who said she'd love to do it.  And then followed up by talking about an open house at her new facility, with an art exhibit, and to contact her staff about it.  I have no idea what she has in mind.  I'm not sure I can stomach going, regardless of whether she wants me to participate.

It's an odd thing.  I can imagine, in another life, being friends with her.  But having her read this book makes me feel more exposed than during any medical procedure in which her hand was up in my vagina.  Not sure why that is.  Not like she hasn't seen me cry.

*

So I was on a keynote panel for a conference, at which I read chunks of my memoir and answered questions asked by my editor's students.  It seems I have a small fan club.  Some of them are now following me on twitter.  That's all kinds of fun.

*

The conference was great.  Good food, good conversation, hotel bath, walk in an actual city, time away from kids.  Met some really cool people.  The book sold out.  Sleep could have been better (but also could have been worse).  And now I'm home and have a ton of catch up work.  But not tonight.

Post-Infertility

I'm guessing I have at least one other post in the archives with that title.  Some post-infertility moments this week:

1. I'm teaching The Handmaid's Tale and remember quite viscerally what it was like teaching that book while undergoing IVF.  I have much more objectivity now but I still have to say for all I think of that book as a powerful feminist text, it has no sympathy for infertile women.  An article in there for me, if I ever get back to that sort of work again.

2. Our local paper had an article on home vs. hospital births featuring both of the obstetricians I saw during pregnancy with Tiny Boy.  The one I liked and didn't choose, and the one I chose but didn't like.  Weird weird weird.

3. My sister in law had an IVF transfer today.  Although she's never really talked to me about it, my brother has, and I wish them only the best.  I wish we didn't have this as a point of connection, but I'm glad I can offer my brother some perspective, comfort, or whatever he needs from someone who has been in the same place.

4. I need to call/email Dr. Gorgeous and ask her if she'll write the "medical introduction" for my next book.  Gulp.

5. This was October 2011.  And the old bathroom.

Getting Over It (Or Not)

A remarkable thing happened a few weeks ago:  I taught Brenda Miller's Season of the Body, in concert with a theoretical discussion of pregnancy loss.  And I didn't cry.  I was completely able to have a normal, intellectual conversation about pregnancy loss, without importing all kinds of personal baggage.

The same week I was involved in a class discussion (not my class, a guest lecture sort of thing) of SMCs.  Also, did not completely get choked up about it, even when INFERTILITY and miscarriage came up as a topic of conversation.

I thought, huh, maybe this is what it means when people talk about "getting over" infertility.  I mean, the miscarriage that undid all my grand plans for easily conceiving baby #2 happened FIVE YEARS AGO.  I haven't been a fertility patient in three years.  Tiny Boy is on his way to preschool (and annoying sentences, like "It not nap time, Mom.  My eyes open."  Yes, brilliant).

I thought maybe with all these books I'm just done spinning my wheels.  I've written myself healthy.

But then holy shit I was at Target looking at onesies for Tiny Boy, and I came completely unglued.  Baby things.  Oh my goodness I need baby things.  And a baby to put in the baby things.  Why are there so many pregnant women and I am not one of them.

My left ovary is going  haywire in a familiar follicular development sort of way.  It's just the estrogen talking, right?

*

I should have a piece up at Role/Reboot marking National Infertility Awareness Week.  To all of you who have not yet and might not ever be able to complete your families and "get over it," I wish you well.

Oh, yes that

Well, there's really no question that Prometrium makes me sleepy.

I'll let you know tomorrow if it makes me SLEEP.

There's something ridiculously ironic about taking fertility drugs for post-infertility insomnia.

Write It

So the problem with writing a book about one's sordid story with infertility and pregnancy loss?

You have to reread the thing in order to edit it.

And it hurts.  Even eleven years later.  It really hurts.

Forum on Egg Freezing

Just checked out a book on egg freezing, as it's a topic that may or may not make it on to a course I'm teaching in the spring, on issues related to motherhood.

I have to say, I read a couple pages, including what seemed like ridiculously high success rates for IVF, and I shut down.

As a woman invested in reproductive choice, as a woman who needed to use an egg donor, I should like egg freezing as a general concept. 

So why does it make me so queasy?

Talk among yourselves.

*

And sort of related, I think my head might explode:

http://www.rolereboot.org/family/details/2013-11-8-surprising-facts-about-egg-donors

The Spin Cycle

Before we begin, let's get out of the way that (1) life is exactly what I want it to be, thank you very much and (2) really, life is exactly what I want it to be (well, minus the sleep deprivation).

I've been spinning lately.  Infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, egg donation that is.

Without paying my therapist $125 I can self diagnose that this has to do with it being the anniversary (of sorts) of my first pregnancy loss (things started to go wrong on Oct 29 and ended with d&c on Dec 19) so this time of year can be hard.  And then there's the fact that I'm writing about all this stuff, because the two book manuscripts deal with it so there it is.  Sometimes I look at Tiny Boy and LG and my heart just breaks for all that I have and all that I don't.

I'm not cosmically sad in the way that I was three years ago, on the verge of making the DE decision.  Or the way that I was eleven years ago, when I lost baby #1.  But it's this off-kilter feeling I can't shake.  Better since I decided not to donate the embryos.  Better since it's been a while since I weaned (I think my hormones are evening out) and I'm getting more sleep.  But it's there.  And I wonder if it will always be there, if I'll ever be able to write anything else (even when I think of switching genres and writing fiction it's about lost and distraught mothers).

I wear a pomegranate charm and the other day it slipped off my wrist into the toilet.  That has to be some kind of metaphor, right?

Frozen

So, as I said, Dr. Gorgeous has called me twice now, and left me messages, because the calls came at times I was dealing with LIFE and didn't even hear the phone ring.  I think this means she has a new idea about how to handle these embryos in storage.  And really truly I was ready to give them up last May when we talked and she asked me point blank if I was ready, in the same way she asked me if I was ready to do DE.

But now I'm not sure.  I mean, I think I'm 100% sure that I would never try to get pregnant with these embryos.  I wanted two kids, I have two kids, and there's really no way that three kids is even a remote possibility.  I also think for as much as I like being pregnant, this pregnancy with Tiny Boy fucked me up so much emotionally that I couldn't go down that road again.  But.  But.  But.  Am I really 100% certain that someone else should try to make a child with them?  I like the idea of helping a fellow infertile, I really do.  And then I see a baby or a pregnant woman at the supermarket and it just hits me in the same way it always did.

I'm meeting a friend for lunch tomorrow, and she suggested a place that looks to be on the same road as the clinic.  And just getting off that exit, honestly, has me spinning.

I have a 22-month-old.  I should be over this, right?

This Is Why I Hate Cell Phones

Because more than two years after you stop being a fertility patient, it's entirely possible for your former RE to call you when you are taking a walk with your kids, just having a normal day, NOT thinking about being a former fertility patient.

Embryo Donation Conversation, Take 3.

I'll update once I've actually called her back...