Thoughtful Thursday: Search

Many bloggers seem to be sensitive to the types of web searches that will bring people to their blog. Some make their blog unsearchable or password-protected. Many make their blog searchable in general, but use tricks to hide specific words from search terms. A common one is to add a period in the middle of a word, such as Lu.pron or Fac.ebook. Occasionally a blogger will use a lookalike character, such as 1VF, or leave a letter out, like Cl*mid. I’ve also seen people use an image of words instead of the words in text.

Personally, I haven’t done any of these. If I don’t want a word to appear in a search, I just don’t use it. For example, our real names. Or my profession. Or where I live. It would be too easy for either me or my commenters to slip up — which I see all the time on blogs that use the above tricks.

Aside from the words that I purposely omit, I’m happy to have web searches point to my blog when appropriate. Sometimes people stumble onto my blog via strange off-topic searches like “13 years baby bitches” or “back seat trash containers.” But for the most part, Google brings people here because they’re looking for information about infertility. If the details of my IVF protocol or my emotional reflections on infertility can help someone, that’s wonderful. I’ll put out the welcome mat.

There aren’t many places to see literal or imagined infertility Christmas cards, nor a cookie shaped like a uterus. Those searchers have come to the right place.

If someone comes here because they want to know about the infertility storyline on Mad Men or Angela Bassett or the Clayby, I’m happy to have them hear my take on media portrayals of infertility — maybe it will balance out the rampant misinformation in the mainstream media and blogosphere (Octomom, anyone?).

Heck, Googlers are even welcome if they get here through a totally random search for cherimoyas or nursing with large breasts or even, like a search that landed someone here earlier this week, just “large breasts.” Well, maybe not the last one so much. My point is that I don’t care who comes to read, because many of those searchers will get something out of it (I guess even the breast ones will get something out of it, just not what I intended). But, many bloggers do mind showing up in certain searches, for whatever reason. What about you?

For what web searches do you want your blog to be found? For what searches do you want to hide? Why?

Perfect Moment Monday: Repurposed

When the Burrito had his bris, the moyle gave DH a list of supplies we needed to help him recover. With a house full of guests, DH came running to me and declared urgently, “I need to go to the drugstore before it closes.”

He didn’t need to go to the drugstore.

Baby Tylenol? I already had it stocked.

Petroleum jelly? I have Aquaphor, which is supposed to be superior to Vaseline for babies.

Gauze pads? No way we had gauze pads, right? Wrong! I had them tucked away in a bag in the bottom of my closet, along with a sharps container, alcohol swabs, and over a hundred syringes and needles. Leftovers from IVF #2 and Perfunctory IUI #7 (the one that produced the Burrito and the Tamale).

It was tremendously gratifying to be able to help the Burrito with the vestiges of old pains.

Who would have thought that infertility would ever come in handy!

See some other Perfect Moments at Weebles Wobblog.

Thoughtful Thursday: Experience

(Note: Pregnancy and babies discussed.)

In addition to breastfeeding difficulties, the other big component of the hard time I’ve been having is some sort of hormonal baby blues. Much of the time I’m fine, but every few days for a few hours I’m not fine at all.

Right after giving birth it was more obviously hormonal, and I’d burst into tears at the slightest provocation. For example, almost any song. Or a particularly nostalgic Sesame Street clip on YouTube. (Seriously, when that happened, I knew I’d totally lost my mind.)

After the first week, there has been less crying. Instead, I either feel fine, or I feel desperate and forlorn. Thankfully, much more of the former than the latter. The main things that have been setting me off have been:

• Breastfeeding difficulties
• Being overwhelmed, generally by my inability to manage more than an hour of work per week or by dealing with two screaming babies on my own (which rarely happens — the alone part and the both screaming part — but oh boy, when it does…)
• And, shockingly, thoughts of pregnancy

Before becoming pregnant, I wanted to have biological children but pregnancy itself wasn’t that important to me. When I was finally pregnant, I was so thrilled that I cherished every moment I could; even the difficulties like debilitating fatigue and hospitalization were special in their own way. Both before and during pregnancy, I reserved the right to consider additional children later.

Now, simultaneously I want nothing to do with future pregnancies or children and I also burst into tears mourning the absence of those pregnancies and children. Pregnancy kicked my ass, birth almost killed me, and I can’t even manage the two children I have. I have no business trying for or having more children — if I could even get pregnant again, which is almost impossible without treatments, which we’ve sworn never to do again. I’ve shed more than my share of tears over BFNs. TTC turned my life upside down for 7 years. Yet…

The yearning hits me at random times. Tidying up papers and finding an ultrasound photo, and realizing that I’ll never have a 3D ultrasound image of any baby because the Burrito and the Tamale were never in the right positions in the womb. Watching one of them move their legs now, thinking about how the kick would feel if they were still inside, and realizing that I’ll never feel another fetus kick. Jiggling the jelly that is my new abdomen, and remembering my beautiful pregnant belly. Looking at my now full-term babies (39 weeks gestation!), and wondering how it would have been to carry a baby anywhere close to full term, to hold that baby right away instead of touching it for a minute through a window in an incubator, and to go home with that baby instead of spending weeks in the NICU.

I think what gets to me most isn’t that I won’t experience these things again (or for the first time).

What gets to me is that I don’t have the option.

Most of the time now I couldn’t be happier, but sometimes I couldn’t be sadder. Who knew.

How important was/is the experience of pregnancy, as opposed to the baby itself, to you?

Thoughtful Thursday: Quitter

Welcome to November. Wow, what an October I had. Anyway, here are the Intelligentsia (people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post for the month of October).

Wiseguy from Woman Anyone? still holds the record with 10 out of 10 Intelligentsia appearances.

Close behind is Ernessa from Fierce and Nerdy, back for the 7th time.

Photogrl from Not the Path I Chose makes her 6th appearance.

Jules from Just Multiply by 2 and Lost In Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV are both four-peating.

Two-timers include Elana from Elana’s Musings, Mel from Stirrup Queens, and Stacie from Heeeeere Storkey Storkey.

(Discussion of infertility as well as baby issues ahead.)

I’m a big advocate of cutting losses. People tend to stick too long with things that just aren’t serving them well. For example, spending more on car repairs than the car is worth, or staying in a bad relationship because of all the years you’ve already invested. You started eating a cookie and you don’t like it? Throw the rest away!

Simultaneously, I refuse to be a quitter. Sometimes I take on challenges that are beyond me, then I have to keep going until I’ve seen them through. Household repairs, for example — I don’t even enjoy them, and in the four hours it took me to do that plumbing repair, I could have earned enough to pay a plumber to do it in half an hour.

Or, to use another example, infertility. I never got close to that point, but I think that if treatments hadn’t succeeded when they did, I would have kept going with IVF cycles until I ran completely out of money, the physical ability to continue, or time.

Now I am faced with a similar situation. A few days ago I alluded to having had a hard time lately [and many people were kind enough to comment or email with support, thank you]. There’s a lot of things contributing to it, but probably the biggest one is breastfeeding.

Put simply, breastfeeding is not going well.

Right after birth, I couldn’t nurse for quite a long time because the babies weren’t able to feed by mouth. Then, once they could start practicing, their level of prematurity meant that nursing did not come naturally to either of them. Tamale has nursing down quite well now, but for a long time her little cheeks got tuckered out very quickly. Burrito’s problems have improved but still continue even now that he’s in the full-term range. I love that little guy with all of my heart, but nursing him is not my favorite time together: biting, blocking his mouth with his tongue, and flailing his arms for several minutes each time before he can nurse properly really pushes me over the edge sometimes.

The biggest problem, however, is my milk supply. The culprit, apparently, is losing almost half of my blood volume during delivery. Plus, who knows if I ever would have had a full supply — many women can’t make enough for two babies, and some women’s bodies never make enough milk for even one baby. Sometimes I do everything right and pump every 2-3 hours. Sometimes I get frustrated and pump just a few times in a day. Either way, the amount of milk doesn’t seem to vary. I’ve seen many lactation consultants. I’ve tried fenugreek, which doubled my supply — but 2 times a tiny number is a slightly less tiny number. I’ve tried power pumping, which doesn’t seem to trick my body into making more milk the way it should. Nursing the babies directly doesn’t seem to make a difference, so at this point almost all of their feeds are by bottle, either formula or, once a day, pumped breastmilk. I produce enough for about 5% of their total intake. The only possibility left is to try to increase supply using strong drugs, but my emotional functioning is already so tenuous that I’m afraid I couldn’t handle the side effects.

I believe strongly in breastfeeding, for all sorts of reasons. I always envisioned that I would nurse for a long time (and that it would be idyllic, like people say). I’ve long ago given up on the hope of exclusive breastfeeding, and I’ve accepted that it’s not always fun, but pumping nonstop to yield only 5% is really frustrating. Several people have suggested that I give up, reclaim those many hours a day, and spare myself the heartache.

But, right now, I can’t. My body took so many years to create them, and my body couldn’t gestate them as long as I wanted, can’t my body at least feed them? Plus, I’m too wedded to not being a quitter. I should know better. I should be willing to cut my losses. Right now, I am stuck. My head and my heart both want to continue, but my head and my heart also both know that I should move on.

At some point, perseverance becomes stubbornness.

What are the limits of your perseverance — with family-building or with other realms of life? How much do you value not being a “quitter”?

Show and Tell: Raffle Prize

This week for Show and Tell, I present a pair of nesting bowls. I did the glazing, but they were thrown by someone else (I can’t make bowls this big yet). I’ve donated these bowls to the raffle for Share Southern Vermont, the organization for bereaved parents run by my bloggy friend Cara. The drawing will be held on November 15, and you can enter online. You can even designate your raffle tickets toward specific prizes, so there’s no chance you’d waste the karma of winning on a prize you don’t want.

Side note about the glaze: This is an example of form following function. The glaze bucket wasn’t big enough for me to dip the bowls in one dunk, so I glazed each bowl in sections. The overlap of glaze in some areas but not others caused a wonderful pattern. This glaze in particular has different qualities depending on how thickly it’s applied, resulting in variation in color as well as texture. The photos don’t do the bowls justice, if I do say so myself.

For everyone who has said that they wish they’d win some of my pottery, here’s a great chance to control the odds — with the additional benefit of donating money to help bereaved parents. If you’d like a chance at winning these bowls or many other great prizes, enter the raffle right now!

Perfect Moment Monday: Backdrop

Remember way back to February when I was about to embark on Perfunctory IUI #7 in preparation for IVF #3 and, to honor the occasion, I purchased a piece of abstract artwork depicting Don Quixote? Or the next month when I was in Quixote’s homeland and couldn’t resist a Quixote sculpture, having just become pregnant via a treatment that wasn’t supposed to work? The drawing and sculpture are on display together in my house, and I look at them many times a day.

The Perfect Moment occurred when I was taking some photos of the Burrito in his father’s arms, and I realized that, just by happenstance, the two Quixotes formed the backdrop. (Child pictured; click through to see the photo.)

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time lately (more on that soon), so the reminder is particularly poignant: He and his sister are my Impossible Dreams come true.

Thoughtful Thursday: Stickler

By nature I am a detail-oriented person, and I take a lot of care with every kind of detail. I am well aware that not everyone else is so concerned with precision. When other people make an error, sometimes I can be quite a stickler, and sometimes I let things go. Strangely, the issues that get to me the most aren’t necessarily the ones that matter the most. Here are some examples.

Perpetual stickler:

• My name. My real name is impossible to spell and pronounce, and I have spent far too much of my life correcting people. The only times I let people use the wrong name are when I’m about to never see them again, as when my order is ready at Starbucks. Otherwise, I just can’t let it go. When I first met DH, he mangled my name, and I was so intent on correcting him that he thought I couldn’t stand him, and our relationship almost never got off the ground. Good thing we worked that out.
• Misinformation. Especially as it pertains to my profession, there are issues that I just can’t let slide when I hear someone say something horribly wrong. I try not to be bossy and know-it-all, really I do, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

Sometime-stickler:

• In the hospital both pre- and postnatally, the babies’ conception came up frequently. Quite a few times, a health care worker stated that the babies were conceived through IVF rather than IUI. Sometimes I was careful to correct them, when it seemed like the misinformation might make its way into the chart or otherwise stick around. Other times, especially when it was one practitioner talking to another rather than to me, I bit my tongue.
• Also on the topic of fertility, sometimes I hear people say outlandish things about infertility problems and treatments. Sometimes I feel the need to educate them, and sometimes I shrug and move on.
• The name of this blog. There is no “the” in the name. As I explained when I first started blogging, the blog name is a line in a Radiohead song. I realize that it doesn’t look quite right unless you know the song. I’ve seen lots of people add a “the” in their blogrolls, links to my blog on their blogs, etc. Occasionally I send someone an email with a friendly correction, but usually I don’t say anything because I don’t want to go around the blogosphere bossing people around. (But, if you have the name written wrong somewhere on your blog and now you would like to correct it, that would be lovely.)
• “Are these your first?” As in, “Is this your first pregnancy?” or, other times, “Are these your first children?” To health care workers, I carefully explain my two miscarriages. To everyone else, I evade the pregnancy part of the question and simply say that these are my first children.

Non-stickler:

• Tamale’s name. Burrito’s name, like the word burrito itself, is rarely mispronounced or misspelled. Tamale’s name, like the word tamale, has a few potential proper pronunciations (such as ta-MAH-lay and ta-MOLLY…) and many more mispronunciations (TA-muh-lay, TA-mail, ta-MAIL…). When I chose her actual name long ago, I had no idea that people would consider it as exotic as they do, and I had no idea that anyone would think to pronounce it any way other than the “right” way. Already in her short life, I have heard an incredible number of guesses as to the pronunciation. So far, I have been saying it properly to each person once, and then letting any subsequent mispronunciations go. As she grows up, I don’t want her to have the same visceral reaction to hearing her name misspoken that I do for my name, and I don’t want her to have to waste so much effort making people get it right. So what if a restaurant hostess or substitute teacher doesn’t say it right? I certainly don’t want her to be such a stickler about her name that she risks shooing away her future husband like I almost did. Some things are more important than the details being exactly right.

When are you a stickler? When do you let things go?

Thoughtful Thursday: Partner

As I mentioned in last week’s BBBB post, one of the biggest surprises since the Burrito and the Tamale were born has been the changes I’ve seen in their father.

Normally, DH is a highly emotional guy — mostly when it comes to unimportant things. When he watches sports on TV, his yelling has been known to send pets and neighbors running for cover. He shows uncommon enthusiasm in response to new flavors of ice cream and sunny days. Don’t even get me started on what happens when he sees a puppy.

In terms of negative emotion, he is usually very even-keeled. He gets worked up over abstract issues like government encroachment on civil liberties, but if something unpleasant happens to him personally, it’s like water off a duck’s back.

He is fiercely loyal and effusive when it comes to me and his friends, but less so with family.

His high levels of energy and emotion have made it all the more bizarre that over 7 years of infertility, he was almost always calm to the point of being blasé. He’d get riled up about the money or about minor inconveniences, but the big picture didn’t seem to bother him the way that it got to me. There were hints, but, like the physical toll of the treatments, most of the emotional toll seemed to fall on me.

During the pregnancy, he was phenomenal as far as helping me during the months of 1st trimester immobility and 3rd trimester home and hospital bedrest. But, when it came to the babies, I was disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm. The correct response to, “Do you want to feel the baby kick?” is “Yes!” Instead, he often answered, “I guess,” or even, “No thanks, not right now.” Instead of cooing at cute baby items, he questioned the cost. During every minute of each ultrasound my eyes were as wide as a kid’s on Christmas morning. Being in a dark room for an hour made DH sleepy.

I didn’t question what kind of father he’d be nor the kind of husband he’s been all along, but, during a supposedly happy time for which we’d worked so long and so hard, I found his reactions (or lack thereof) disheartening.

And then the babies were born, and all of the emotion burst out. Not the screaming-at-the-TV emotion, but the sweet, joyful, loving emotion that I fell in love with, a decade and a half ago. He marveled at the Tamale’s resemblance to me, chuckled at the Burrito’s antics, told them sweetly about the cat waiting for them at home, made up songs to sing to them in the NICU.

When I pointed out the contrast between his pre- and post-birth reactions to the babies, DH said, “We weren’t counting our chickens before they hatched. I didn’t want to get too attached. Now they are here, and I can love them.”

When I pointed out the contrast between his effusive reaction to the babies and his stoicism during infertility, he said, “Infertility was depressing! If I’d showed emotion then, it would only have been bad emotions.”

7.5 years of DH’s guarded emotions during IF and pregnancy in exchange for singing and dancing through the house for the next couple of decades? Not a bargain I expected to make, but I’ll take it.

How has your partner reacted to infertility/loss? Is this consistent with your partner’s typical style of emotional expression?

Show and Tell: Delegation

Goodbye NICU and hospital that I’ve inhabited since August; hello home!

For Show and Tell, I present the delegation that showed up to welcome the babies to our home:
A doe and twin fawns.

See what else Miss Lollipop’s class has to Show and Tell.

Thoughtful Thursday: Emotion

Quick health/baby update before we begin Thoughtful Thursday: I am feeling better and better every day; the percentage of the day in which I feel Human has gone from 0% for several days post-birth to 80% today. The Burrito and The Tamale are developing incredibly well — so well that we’ve been discussing discharge with the NICU team. Looks like just a few days until they come home!

Today’s topic follows from a question I submitted (and then subsequently answered myself) for this week’s Barren Bitches Book Brigade on It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather B. Armstrong of dooce.com. Since only a few people participated in the book club, I’d like to open the topic up for discussion more broadly.

On your blog, how much emotion do you express? Is that more or less emotion than you tend to express in real life?

From my BBBB post:

In real life, I am very guarded with emotional expression. On BabySmiling, I am considerably more expressive.

For years I have enjoyed Dooce’s monthly newsletters about her daughter. They combine snapshots of Leta’s growth, snarky humor, and pure love. I think that I will be comfortable expressing emotion directly to my children, but it feels strange to think of writing emotional public newsletters under my real name for friends and family (and strangers) to read. Do I save the emotion for BabySmiling, even though it goes against the mandate of the blog as an infertility blog? Do I write the letters privately? Do I remain guarded and let the emotions go undocumented? Probably not the latter, but I’m still figuring this one out.

To elaborate on what I wrote earlier this week…

I have never felt more emotion than in the past couple of weeks. Part of it is attributable to fluctuating hormones, sure. Some is attributable to having babies, the same as anyone. But a big part has to do with the realization of 7 years of infertility plus months of more-difficult-than-usual pregnancy. I am so filled with love, but there’s also a good measure of disbelief, overwhelming retrospective sorrow, hope, worry, wonder… And there you go. I am expressing emotion here on this blog. Emotions which most likely will never be expressed anywhere else, certainly not in writing.

I just don’t see myself writing gushy love letters to my babies under real name for my friends and — gah — family to see. But I am feeling that gushy love, so where do I put it? Here, where I never set out to mommyblog? Some sort of BabySmiling annex? Privately, for only my babies to see someday? I didn’t have an answer on Tuesday during BBBB, and I don’t have one today.

On your blog, how much emotion do you express? Is that more or less emotion than you tend to express in real life?