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?

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: 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?

Barren Bitches Book Brigade: It Sucked, and Then I Cried

Welcome to the Barren Bitches Book Brigade, featuring It Sucked, and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong of dooce.com.

(Note: pregnancy and children mentioned.)

If you are in a relationship right now, do you relate to how Heather talks about her husband, Jon, and what a great father and life partner he is? From what she described about Jon, what qualities do you have or want in your life partner?
I truly have the best husband ever, in a thousand ways that I don’t currently have the mental wherewithal to enumerate.

Here is an exchange we had today which illustrates why he is so fantastic. Before this conversation, I was very grumpy from spending the day with an unpleasant NICU nurse plus physical pain.

DH, cheerfully: The babies would have been 35 weeks today.
Me, zombie-like: Oh, I forgot it’s Tuesday. Tuesday used to be the special day. Now Saturday is the special day, because they were born on a Saturday.
DH, almost jumping up and down with enthusiasm: Now that we have babies, every day is the special day!

And then I burst out crying. And then he hugged me, while driving.

I have only watched him as a father for a week and a half, but already he has surprised me so much, all in good ways. I need to write a separate post about the changes I have seen in him — stay tuned.

Heather obviously has a very distinctive writing style that comes across in both her blog and her book. What do you think has made Heather such a famous blogger? Her writing style, honesty, or something else? Do you write with the same passion and honesty that Heather does?

Dooce is many things to many people. My husband mostly cares about the pictures of Chuck and Coco, her dogs. I often enjoy her Daily Style feature and her photography, but the big draws for me are her humor and her posts about parenting. Our personalities are clearly very different, but I think I write with as much passion and honesty as I have to give.

If you had postpartum depression to the degree Heather describes, would you have the courage to check yourself into a psychiatric ward? (It’s hard to say when it’s not actually happening in your own life, but I’d be curious to know if there are some people who are completely against it, some who would do it if they felt there was no other way, etc.)
I’d like to think so. I’d also like to think that I would nip it in the bud more, rather than letting the problem get that severe. In the past week and a half, when I’ve been more emotional than usual because of post-birth hormone changes, my husband has been quick to point out the contrast between that and my usual logical self. If I were to develop severe depression, the further I got from myself, the more I think he’d try to help me pull myself back in.

Heather Armstrong writes candidly and unapologetically about all aspects of her life – the good, the bad and the ugly. What, if anything, in your life that would you like to be as unapologetic about? What’s the first step you could take? What’s holding you back?
Infertility, of course. I’ve already taken the first step: since giving birth, I have straightforwardly explained the babies’ origins whenever anyone has asked whether twins run in the family (which is surprisingly often, given that I haven’t talked to anyone outside the hospital). Strangers are becoming easy, but telling the truth about infertility to friends and family is another hurdle entirely. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get over feeling like it’s just none of their business.

The author’s blog is well-known for her biting sense of humor, interspersed with expressions of deep emotion toward her children and husband. Although there was plenty of humor, I found the book to be much heavier on emotion than I expected based on reading her blog. On your own blog, how much emotion do you express? Is that more or less than you tend to express in real life?
This was one of the questions that I wrote. Heather Armstrong offers such an unusual combination of sarcasm and raw emotion. 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.

Whatever I do, I certainly appreciate the precedent that Dooce has set, in terms of non-maudlin emotional expression as well as acknowledging the hard work of belonging to a family.

The author talks about how she imagined her future children before becoming pregnant:

When you’re childless and young and hopeful, you have this idea of what your children are going to be like, and you make mental notes when you see other kids in public. You say to yourself, “My kid will be cute like that,” or “My kid won’t ever throw a tantrum in public like that little demon.” I had always envisioned a sweet little princess who looked just like me sitting quietly in a high chair, her pressed velvet petticoat creased perfectly as she sat and waited to be handed things in a timely manner. And then you grow up and have kids and realize that YOU HAVE NO SAY…

Before starting to try to conceive, how did you imagine your future children? If you now have children, how did your expectations fit reality?
This was the other question that I contributed. When I wrote it I had not yet given birth, and now I have. I don’t know much about my babies yet, but I certainly know more than I knew a couple of weeks ago. I really had no idea how they would look; it turns out that one of them looks so much like my husband, and one of them rather looks like me. One has hair color and features that I didn’t think could happen on a child of mine. One seems to have their father’s temperament, and one mine. Between looks and temperament, each of them has some of him and some of me. As for the rest of it, I’ll have to get back to you in a few years.

In terms of imaginings, I’ve mostly envisioned my children having the kinds of traits that would enable me to engage in activities like museums and world travel with them at a young age: intelligence, patience, curiosity, gentle demeanors. DH likes to say that it will depend on whether they are “his” children or “my” children. If they take after me as a child, by age 7 they will be leading the way through the Louvre, floor plan and guidebook in hand. If they take after him as a child, they will never make it inside the Louvre and instead will gather a crowd of Parisian children into impromptu game of tackle football in the Jardin des Tuileries. Hey, either way, Paris is Paris, right?

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

Thoughtful Thursday: Complete

Today’s Thoughtful Thursday topic can apply to any phase of the infertility/loss/adoption process, but I will focus on my own recent experiences of pregnancy and new parenthood after infertility.

To what extent is your blog a complete and accurate record of your life?

During infertility, I felt like Baby Smiling was my main outlet for truth. I flat-out lied to most people in real life about infertility. With others, I lied via omission. At best, I provided a few people with the partial truth. The people who were closest to us sometimes knew that we were doing treatments, but not the details, timing, nor outcomes. This is in stark contrast to blog readers, virtual strangers who have been kept up to date on the day-to-day details of treatments as well as my intimate emotions.

Of course, because this is an anonymous blog, there are certain details that I have left out, and I have disguised some details to preserve anonymity while keeping the same spirit.

During pregnancy, I’ve left a larger number of details out because I wanted to keep this an infertility blog rather than a pregnancy-after-infertility blog, but you’ve still been privy to far more of the details and emotions than real life friends and family.

But, some non-pregnancy/non-infertility issues have come up during the course of the pregnancy which have had a huge impact on my life. Some are in realms that I don’t discuss on this blog, such as work, but one major event in particular felt strange not to tell you about. It was one of the biggest events of my life, and I didn’t even hint at it.

Now, post-birth, I feel like I’m living dual lives. I will give readers of this blog a few photos and some basic information about the babies, as a thank you for following me through failed treatments, successful treatments, and pregnancy. But, you’ll never hear key details like the babies’ real names. My focus will continue to be on my own reproductive experience and infertility. As part of that, I’ll be giving you every detail of the birth story, which has major infertility implications. I’ll continue to view my life through the lens of infertility, and I’ll keep asking Thoughtful questions. Little will change on this blog — even though everything for me has changed.

As for the other half of my dual life: For people I know in real life, they are hearing every minute detail about the babies and receiving daily photos, but only a couple of close friends will get even the smallest hint at what I have gone through medically. We haven’t told family anything, and we don’t plan to.

Some of the silence about my experience concerns whose story it is to hear: our parents are entitled to know all about their grandchildren, but not about me. Some of the silence is about not dealing with people’s reactions. Some is leftover discretion from infertility.

And thus, there is no complete record. If you combine this blog with real life sources you get a pretty good sense, but there are only a couple of people in the world who get both versions.

Part of me feels funny for leaving you out of the loop with certain topics, and part of me knows that this is how it has to be.

For what it’s worth, even though it doesn’t come with as many cute pictures, I think you’re getting the more authentic version of me.

To what extent is your blog a complete and accurate record of your life?

Thoughtful Thursday: Lurkers

Happy October. No, really, I mean it.

Happy October! October Babies!!!!

Here are the Intelligentsia (people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post for the month of September). September was a busy month for Thoughtful Thursday, and it was an extra-busy month for several members. There are quite a few mothers of multiples this time around, including some who gave birth in the past month. Given my own current status, it seems appropriate to point those out (but kudos to all, including parents of singletons achieved through any means as well as those without children). This says to me that people with all sorts of similar experiences gather together, and it also says that you can’t keep some people away from blogs no matter what.

Wiseguy from Woman Anyone? continues her remarkable streak with 9 Intelligentsia appearances.

Ernessa from Fierce and Nerdy and Kristen from Dragondreamer’s Lair are both back for the 7th time; in the middle of Ernessa’s June Intelligentsia participation she gave birth to her daughter.

Jill from All Aboard the Pity Boat and Photogrl from Not the Path I Chose return for the 5th time.

Making her fourth appearance is Cat, non-blogger but mother of triplets.

Jules from Just Multiply by 2 is a twin mom, and Lost In Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV is a singleton mom who first achieved Intelligentsia status at 41 weeks pregnant.

Heather from Joys In My Life took time out from her twins and singleton for Intelligentsia appearance #2.

There are lots of new members. Long-time commenter, first-time Intelligentsia member Lori, a.k.a. Lavender Luz, from Weebles Wobblog; twin mothers Elana from Elana’s Musings and Stacie from Heeeeere Storkey Storkey; Jamie from Sticky Feet and Michele from My Life After Loss, who both gave birth to twins this month while also achieving Intelligentsia Status, and Carrie from Tubeless in Seattle, expecting to deliver triplets sometime in October (the later the better!).

Now for this week’s Thoughtful Thursday topic. Skrambled recently had an interesting post about the reasons she writes her blog.

In my comment on her post, I wrote:

In addition to those, I’d say that I blog to connect to others with the benefit of a cohesive story and set of people. In earlier IF days I often read and considered message boards, but usually unless people are following a board closely, each post ultimately stands alone (plus the little signature at the bottom with all of the details of your cycles etc.).

One thing that really appealed to me about blogging is that you don’t have to retell your story over and over, that instead people follow along with you over an extended period (and I them). When I have read someone’s blog for a long time and feel like I know them as a person, their highs and lows are much more meaningful to me.

Sometimes this involves feedback/comments and sometimes none at all. Of course I love my regular commenters and I enjoy it when my lurkers show themselves, but I’m also happy to have lurkers who continue to lurk. Whether or not they’d get more out of the experience if they started participating in the conversation (which varies by person and is not for me to judge), if they’re getting something out of one-sided reading, mission accomplished.

This leads us now to another blogging-about-blogging topic, but one that we haven’t addressed on Thoughtful Thursday before: Lurkers.

As a blogger, how do you feel about lurkers? As a reader, when and why do you lurk? When and why do you delurk?

One feature that causes ALI blogs to accrue lurkers more than other types of blogs is the secrecy that often accompanies these topics. Many of us create pseudonyms with associated email addresses for our ALI life, but even so, people can find it difficult to comment on a blog and therefore out themselves (even if anonymously) as adopting, dealing with loss, or infertile — or some combination of those.

On the other hand, ALI blogging seems to engender more commenting than any other corner of the blogosphere that I’ve seen. Much of this is due to Mel’s efforts to encourage commenting through ICLW, LFCA, and the general atmosphere. Other types of blogs, even very widely read blogs, often receive few or no comments (except perhaps during National Delurking Week), but in the ALI blogosphere, the ratio of readers to commenters seems vastly higher than usual.

Which, therefore, means that the people who don’t comment can stand out in a way they wouldn’t for blogs on other topics.

To answer my own questions, as I said above, I am personally in favor of lurkers if that’s what they need to do. I also enjoy seeing them delurk when they think it’s time. Part of why I chose this topic now, aside from the related post on Skrambled, is that I have already experienced some delurking here recently, and expect to see more soon — perhaps when I have a birth announcement to make.

As a reader of others’ blogs, I am the opposite of a lurker. On many blogs I comment on just about every post, and on quite a few others others I comment on a fair number of posts. There are some blogs I follow where I comment less often, typically because the person is in a different place and I want to be sensitive to the fact that they may not want sympathy on a failed cycle from a pregnant woman (though if I’ve been commenting on the blog for a while, I often comment anyway). My commenting has gone down lately due to logistic constraints of horizontal typing during bedrest, but I don’t think there are any blogs that I read regularly (and there are a lot of them) where I’d consider myself a lurker. I do follow some as a Clicker for which I comment rarely but post news often, but that seems to be a different situation from regular blog reading.

And so, I can’t really answer the delurking question because I don’t lurk in the first place. I guess I used to lurk before I had a blog, but once I started my own, I tried to fully join the community, and I’ve never looked back.

As a blogger, how do you feel about lurkers? As a reader, when and why do you lurk? When and why do you delurk?

Pssst… hey, lurkers: now would be a perfectly fine time to delurk. Are you really going to lurk on a post about lurking? C’mon! Say hi!

28w3d: Progress

Not the bad kind of progress, as in “labor is progressing.” The good kind of progress, as in “there is some progress toward a positive outcome.” No contractions at all during any TOCO monitoring in the past 2 days. I have only noticed one contraction in the last 24 hours (but I didn’t notice them at all when they were rampant, so I may not be the best judge). The medication seems to be holding.

They’re talking about sending me home early next week.

I don’t know if I want to go.

As long as I’m here, if anything bad starts to happen, I feel like they can make it okay. At home, I’ll go to the doctor once a week and continue with medication and bedrest. I will most likely wonder constantly what symptoms I’m not noticing, and I will dwell on whether I can catch them in time. If I go home, there will almost certainly be another ambulance ride in my future. It could be after one week or one month, and it could result in another stabilization or an emergency C-section, but none of the doctors think I can make it to 34 weeks.

By all accounts, November is now laughably out of the question. Early October seems to be the best case scenario. For now, it seems pretty sure that we will at least get to September, and that is so much more than I had a few days ago.

Thank you to everyone for your kindness and hope. Apparently all of the other patients around here are blaring the TV all day long (I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t left the room), but your comments are way better than TV.

Thoughtful Thursday: Timeline

Last week Baby, Interrupted had a wonderful post about the tenses of infertility. The future (or perhaps subjunctive?), “I might be infertile;” the present, “I am infertile;” and the past, “I was infertile.”

This reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, particularly in the context of IF newbies I’ve encountered online and in real life.

What was the hardest phase of infertility for you?

It can be natural for long-time infertility veterans like myself to look at those who have just started having trouble and think, “You think it’s difficult now? You have no idea. Keep failing for a few years and see how you feel.” I’ve heard many infertiles complain when a friend comes to them upset because of trying a few times without success (“Three whole months? Boo hoo!”). Think back, though: the first BFNs might have struck you as flukes, but within a few months after each stark white pee stick, you probably wept. Even though you may have no idea what’s coming, that 5th BFN is as much disappointment as you can possibly imagine.

At my now-disbanded real-life support group, most people had been TTC for one to two years, except for myself (7 years) and another veteran (6 years, with many losses including multiple late-term losses). Occasionally one of the young’uns would say something like, “7 years and you still don’t have a baby? I think I would die if it took that long!” (Thanks a lot!) The other vet and I would reassure, “Actually it gets easier after a while. You’re probably in the hardest part now.”

In Tertia’s book So Close, she also talks about this issue, describing a peak in emotional difficulty after the reality of IF sets in, then eventually some level of acceptance. Of course, many people resolve their infertility before they make it all the way along the long path to acceptance.

For me, I certainly cried plenty during the first year and a half of trying, but the real heartache came when I started seeing my first RE and got pulled into a whirlwind of escalating treatments. It was awful. Awful, but there was lots of hope. “This next one has to work!”

Then, after I hit rock bottom with Miscarriage #1, I stuck my fingers in my ears and pretended la-la-la-la that the problem didn’t exist.

My next low point came a couple of years later when we’d resumed trying naturally (augmented by alternative treatments like acupuncture and herbs) but were still staying far away from the RE. I wrote about this period last year:

The proportion of our friends who are parents went from Just A Few to Basically Everyone quite suddenly. I became aware of this transition when we heard two announcements in one week.

–My uncle (whose kids are my age) and his new wife (who is also my age).
–A very good friend of my husband (who has been strangely paternal since he was a teenager, and who obviously would be a wonderful father) and his bitch of a wife (the least maternal person of all time, who loves no one but herself).

As it turns out, both of those couples had some problems conceiving. My uncle after his vasectomy-reversal required something like Three Whole Months to conceive my new cousin. The other couple, Mr. Dad and Anti-Mom, were married almost a decade. I always assumed that they were not trying most of that time, but Mr. Dad’s question in response to our announcement of a twin pregnancy proved unequivocally that they are members of the club:

Did you find out they were twins at the 5-week ultrasound or the 8-week ultrasound?

Maybe knowing about their difficulties at the time would have made me feel less forlorn — but, I didn’t know, and it was one of the worst times of my life.

It took me a few months to recover from that reality check. During those few months, I decided to resume treatments and made peace with the need for major intervention. After half a year of treatments including my first IVF, I started blogging. Soon after, I reached a place of acceptance. It seemed to have a lot to do with the revelation described in my Bridge post. Not that I never had difficult moments after that (such as medication-induced batshit nuttiness or the 2WW during IVF #2), but for the most part, infertility became not so bad, just another part of my life.

To sum up:

• First 1.5 years: weepy but hopeful, lots of denial
• Next year: the worst ever, but still hopeful
• Next couple of years post miscarriage: total denial hiding hopelessness and fear
• Year and a half after that: mostly okay, with a few very-close-to-the-worst weeks in there
• Year after that, once blogging started: acceptance

I reached a place of true acceptance, and it only took 6 years. For some reason, newbies don’t find that very reassuring.

What was the hardest phase of infertility for you? Feel free to replace “infertility” with “loss” or “the adoption process” or whatever is appropriate for you.

99 Things

It’s my 200th post! I have something else to report today, but it’s not very pleasant for a 200th post, so first let’s do something else totally different, the 99 Things meme. I’ve seen it on many blogs, most recently at Two Kayaks.

The rules:
Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to – leave in plain font

If you want to do it to, just leave a comment with the link to your post.

Annotated, because I’m me.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band Not a good band, but a band nonetheless.
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyworld
8. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Written something that was published
11. Bungee jumped or parachuted
12. Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge I have driven, but not walked.
13. Been in a fist fight
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch Several, actually.
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning Booo!
17. Seen the Rings of Saturn with a telescope
18. Grown your own vegetables It didn’t go well, but yes.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train “Failed to sleep” would be more accurate.
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when not ill
24. Built a tree house or snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Fired a gun
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David More stunning than I ever imagined.
41. Sung karaoke In the U.S. and in Japan!
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal
44. Visited Africa
45. Cried yourself to sleep
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted Drawn but not painted.
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person Wow.
50. Visited the Eiffel Tower
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling Snorkel, yes. Scuba, no thanks.
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Pretended you cooked something from scratch when you didn’t
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie or commercial
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen I sorted cans in the back. That counts, right?
61. Sold something door to door Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale or dolphin watching
64. Donated blood, marrow, etc
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter Hopefully not a medical helicopter, please.
69. Held onto a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten frog legs or caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London Athens and Copenhagen, yes.
77. Broken a bone
78. Done something illegal
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Sang a solo
81. Visited the Vatican The best museum I’ve seen anywhere.
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Climbed a mountain I climbed a 4700-foot rock formation, but technically not a mountain.
86. Visited the White House Outside but not inside.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had surgery
89. Directly saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury Civil and criminal juries, and I’ve been the foreman!
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Seen a loved one die
94. Given birth to a baby Not for a couple of months, please.
95. Visited the Alamo
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Sent a text message while driving
99. Been stung by a bee By a wasp, in the face!

Total: 55 done.
Stay tuned for the not-so-good post.

Show and Tell: Blogoversary Contest Winners

My Blogoversary Contest is over! We have two winners! Congrats to the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered!

The first one came easily, but it required an extra round of guessing to get the second winner — I think the title of the second winning song scared some people off. I’ll reveal their prizes at next week’s Show and Tell. In the meantime, here are the identities of the winners as well as the winning selections.

First, honorable mentions to S for pointing out a lyric I never noticed in Neon Bible:

A vial of hope and a vial of pain,
In the light they both looked the same.

…and to Kristen for guessing My Body Is A Cage. Yeah, that would seem like a logical choice for my IF anthem (as Rebecca pointed out in her comment, too obvious?), but not as much as the winning songs. It is a damn fine song, though. Haunting and evocative; the organ really amplifies the chord structure. Good stuff.

Second prize goes to Lori from Weebles Wobblog. I swear, it’s not fixed. It’s not some conspiracy to make her the #1 collector of my pottery. Yes, she won a little vase in my very first contest and I also brought her a little dish when I visited her house. But Lori won because she wasn’t afraid to guess (Antichrist Television Blues). Most of the song is not infertility-related — in fact, apparently the song is about Jessica Simpson’s father — but one part literally screams IF to me:

Dear G-d, would you send me a child?
Oh! G-d, would you send me a child?
…
Lord, would you send me a sign?
’cause i just gotta know if I’m wastin’ my time!

Take a listen — that section is at the 3-minute mark (cued up if you click through rather than watching the embedded video below).

I think that many infertiles have asked the universe to send us a sign because we just want to know if we’re wasting our time.

First prize goes to Birdless, who delurked just for the contest. Through her careful reading of the lyrics, she correctly guessed that the Arcade Fire song which most speaks to my infertile heart is Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles).

I am waitin’ ’til I don’t know when,
cause I’m sure it’s gonna happen then.

The ideas of waiting (and waiting and waiting) and of not knowing when is very familiar to those of us who have struggled with family-building. There’s also an explicit reference to unborn children in the song:

My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids,
but my heart keeps watchin’ through the skin of my eyelids.

Here is my very favorite section of the song, both lyrically and musically. More than anything else I’ve ever seen, it truly sums up my seven years of infertility. Waiting, then not paying attention to waiting, then waiting more, then showing patience, only to see that patience get me nowhere:

They say a watched pot won’t ever boil,
well I closed my eyes and nothin’ changed,
just some water getting hotter in the flames.
[interspersed with marvelous swelling orchestration]

Oh, the orchestration. You really need the album version to hear the orchestration. Go to 1 minute 55 seconds.

And finally, a call for true patience. Not patience as in pretending that you’re not paying attention but really you’re peeking with one eye open, but truly believing in the good things to come.

Just like a seed down in the soil you gotta give it time.

Partly I wanted to hold this Blogoversary Contest because it’s fun to hold contests and give out pottery, but I also wanted to share these songs with all of you. When you’ve finished shoveling your car out of the snow and you’re driving to the RE at the crack of dawn for the 5th time that week, these songs make the trip a little easier. Trust me.

See what the rest of the class has to Show and Tell.