"Happy" Fouth of July

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women are not created equal. That some are endowed by their creator with the ability to procreate while some are doomed to barren despair, and that amidst their griefs will be no new life and little happiness.

So, there I am at yet another infernal barbecue. This one really was enough to make an infertile relinquish all hope. The place was crawling with kids. My husband and I were literally the only couple there without spawn.

I felt like I was missing the season’s crucial accessory. Everyone else knew how to get a child. Several, clearly on very good terms with the Designer, had as many as three. Others had one or two, probably picked them up cheap at a sample sale somewhere. But still. I was the only one without the must-have look.

And these kids were all exceptionally adorable, beautifully behaved, beautiful looking, a sort of photo-shoot fantasy of having children. No one fought. No one spilled their juice (which in any case was the can’t-go-wrong parenting-professional choice: juice boxes of organic apple juice sipped through micro straws). They played on the swings. They pushed each other gently on slide. They sang. They got out the dress-up box and put on a very elaborate play the grow-ups were not allowed to watch. The infants smiled and cooed when they needed attention.

By the time I’d been there an hour, everyone knew my story. I felt compelled to explain myself. I felt that all those strangers needed to know that I read Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily. I *know* a single-minded focus on career is, like, so last season. I love children, really. And I deeply appreciate the value of family (an altogether different thing than so-called “family values”—don’t get me started). It’s just that my damn credit card keeps getting denied.

Must be an error with the fraud-prevention program. I swear I am an excellent credit risk. You let me have a baby and I promise I will never miss a payment. I will shower that child with love.

For now, I have only tears. Who knew a simple barbecue could make you so blue? Add the cold white shock of seeing the red of my period again this morning and there you have it: another holiday in hell.



P.S.
I am officially going to be on vacation, in the real world and in the blog world, for the next two weeks. I’ll be thinking of all of you and especially folks like Susie, and PJ, and Danae, wishing you all the best. See ya’ll when I get back.

Breaking News, Part II

More news from the wild and wacky world of ovulation prediction and pregnancy test kits.

Women today have more options for pregnancy testing than ever before. Ever eager to determine what women want, kit makers introduce new varieties of test kits all the time. Now you can choose tests that give results five days before your expected period. But no rush. No pressure. They still sell the less sensitive tests too. So if you’re a masochist, you can still wait till after you’re a few days late to test.

Of course, there are lots of consumer reports articles out there you can find to go over the boring stuff, like how many milligrams of which kinds of hormone have to be present in how many milliliters of pee before a given brand of test will register results. I want to discuss more important things. Like the presentation of the results.

If you're an IF veteran, you're probably already used to looking for pink lines. After months, if not years, of straining your eyes to try to determine the relative shading of the pink lines on ovulation-prediction kits, it’ll come as a real relief to graduate to pregnancy-test kits, where the key question is HOW MANY pink lines there are. One? Sorry, please play again. Two? Snake eyes! You’re goin ta Vegas, baby.

For those partial to pink lines, First Response makes a very nice product. Anecdotal evidence suggests that testing with a kit that presents results in pink increases your likelihood of having a baby girl by an unquantifiable percentage.

For those hoping for a boy, however, allow me to suggest the use of Clear Blue Easy. True, this test is a bit less sensitive than First Response. But it does have important advantages. The best part is that the results come in *blue*! AND, there’s no need to count lines with this test. Instead, you look for a plus sign or a minus sign. Plus? Your result is positive. Minus? It’s negative. See? It’s clear. It’s easy. And it’s blue! This test goes great with the yellow and blue nursery décor favored for little boys. In fact, you’ll want to be sure to buy multiples of this kit so you can generate lots of pretty blue plus signs. Then you can buy the Pottery Barn conversion kit and use them to make Junior his own very special personalized crib mobile (fishing line not included).

Of course, the kits mentioned above can be a little confusing. With First Response you have to *count* the number of lines in order to interpret your result. Kit makers realize the strain that such counting puts on the female brain. In fact, extensive survey results reveal that, on average, an infertile woman will wait just 2.5 days post-ovulation before beginning to test for pregnancy. Yet even the most sensitive tests won’t work until 9 to 10 days post-O. Recognizing that most women can’t count as high as ten, much less tell the difference between one line or two, scientists have worked to address the problem.

Clearly, Clear Blue Easy, with its confusing mathematical symbols, does not mark much of an improvement over the one-line-versus-two-line tests. Plus signs? Minus signs? Don’t they realize that women who can’t count are only going to be further frightened by symbols for computation? What does a positive mean anyway? Good news, right! Which could mean either pregnant or not pregnant, depending on what you’re hoping for… Sheesh.

Enter the good folks at E.P.T. They call their test the EARLY Pregnancy Test, even though it can’t be used until you expect your period. Apparently they mean not that you can use their test early-—you can’t—-but that it can be used to confirm an already detected early pregnancy with Certainty. Knowing how much better women are with English than math, product developers at E.P.T. now offer the “Certainty” test. E.P. T. Certainty promises you results written in plain English, saying either “pregnant” or “not pregnant.” Now how thoughtful is that? Too bad for you, if you’re not an English speaker.

Don’t even get me started on pregnancy testing for the blind. Until now, nothing has been available for those who can’t see. But hope is on the way. Because manufacturers realize how few women with the disposable income available to waste on their products can actually read in the first place. So they are now developing a new line of pregnancy tests designed to deliver results audibly instead of visibly.

Still in the prototype stage, these new tests will work like singing telegrams. Your pee stream will activate the miniature audio speakers, making the result loud and clear. Searching around for an appropriately catchy tune, drug companies are reaching back to the glory days. Remember those service announcements that aired in the 1970’s warning children not to mistake medicine for candy? Well, now that those former children are reaching the infertile years, manufacturers have decided to resurrect the “We’re Not Candy!” jingle.

Remember ladies? It went like this:
‘We’re NOT can-dy.
Even though we look so fine and dan-dy.
When you’re sick, we come in han-dy,
BU-Ut
We’re NOT can-dy.”

Coming soon to a drugstore near you, the BOS (Blind or Stupid) Pregnancy Test:

"You're NOT preg-nant.
Even though the news makes you in-dig-nant.
IF you were, you'd feel tran-scend-ent,
BU-Ut
You're NOT preg-nant."

Damn. Now I can’t get that tune out of my head.

I Am a Fertility Goddess

Well, I meant to not post for a few weeks. To try to focus on my actual life and work, not the inside of my computer. But it seems I’m addicted to the blog world. Or I miss ya’ll or something. Anyway, I managed to read about Get-up Grrl’s cat without posting, but Reprogirl’s posts tipped me over the edge. I just hadda share the latest:

See, I started feeling pregnancy symptoms on Saturday, the same day I had my first positive OPK. I had the fatigue *and* I kept having to pee a lot. I mean a LOT. And that always happens to me really early in the pregnancy. So I just went around all day peeing & peeing & thinking, wow, they really ought to improve the technology on those pregnancy tests. I mean, if my body can sense the hormonal changes this soon, there *must* be measurable amounts of chemicals in my pee. Not that I actually tested, mind you. I know those tests don't work the day of ovulation. I just walked around feeling smug and pleased with my secret, impressed with my earthy intimate knowledge of my own body.

We went to a friend's barbecue and there were infants and toddlers galore. But secure in my secret knowledge, I was fine. One idiot metrosexual with a five-month-old son in a sling actually went on and on about how it would be his first "Daddy's Day" the next day causing my highly sensitive yet wholly inarticulate husband to accidentally impale his own hand on a barbecue skewer. I almost gave my husband the good news, just to make him feel better. But I didn't want to jinx anything. Instead, I went home and had some totally unnecessary--wink, wink--conception sex, then fell into an exhausted sleep around midnight.

You can imagine my glee when I woke at 2:30 AM with the most ferocious need to pee. See, I told you! And then I peed. And the PAIN. The PAIN. It was excruciating. There was an effing barbecue skewer up my urethra. There was actual blood, people. I was up the rest of the night. And antibiotics and Pyridene notwithstanding I’ve been way too uncomfortable for sex ever since. See how well this cycle is shaping up for me?

Please, please, tell me I'm not the first person to diagnose a UTI as a pregnancy!

So, ball's in your court. What's your worst/funniest "hysterical pregnancy"* story?

*See Reprogirl June 16

Harumph

The blog, she is feeling a mite bit peckish these days. Maybe it's the old age. Maybe it's the heat giving her the vapors. Maybe it's the utter lack of incident on the baby-making front. She don't rightly know. But she's going to draw the blinds and have a nice lie down with a cool compress. She'll be up and about again when she's able. Till then, she sends her regards. Do stop in and pay her a call if you're in the neighborhood, hear?

Breaking News

The world of ovulation prediction tests and pregnancy tests is changing rapidly. With new scientific improvements occurring every day, there are a few key things every woman should consider before selecting a test kit.

Start by assessing your own scientific skills. Did you flunk 9th-grade biology? Tenth-grade chemistry? Do you remember what a pipette is? If not, better steer clear of the kits that come with collection cups, droppers, test trays, etc. Too many steps! Too much equipment!

We know, we know, if they'd made the real-world implications of learning to pipette clear back in high school, your whole life would be different right now. You might have stopped passing notes to your best girlfriend, asked the guy in front of you for some pipetting tips, invited him over for a study session, done your studying on the basement couch, gotten knocked up as a youngin, and never reached the stage of thirty-something, fading-fertility desperation that has you squinting bleary eyed at little pearls of yellow pee first thing in the morning, watching them tremble tremulously from the end of dropper, as you think, "drop, damn it, drop, fulfill your destiny, live up to your name, drop you damn droplet...Damn!--how many drops just fell?" Education reform now. That's all I'm sayin.

Right. So where was I? Ah yes, selecting kits. You are much much better off choosing the wand-style kits. Confusingly, these also come with cups. But no droppers. And no trays. At first you may want to ease into the transition to a new testing technique by peeing into a collecting cup like you're used to doing, then dipping the stick, then waiting for the results. Problem is, you still have to dispose of those little shot-glasses full of urine. And they don't offer you a chaser. Ick. Eventually, you will realize what a simple matter it is to just stick the damn stick into you urine stream, count to five, wait for the results. Voila. So simple. And those unused little collection cups? They make great paperclip sorting trays at the office.

With the sample collected, the hard part becomes interpreting the results. Almost all ovulation-prediction tests show results in the form of two pink lines. Your job is to decide which line is darker, the test line or the control line. If the test is darker, I mean if the control is darker, I mean if... Never mind. It doesn't really matter if you can remember which line is supposed to be darker, because just trying to determine if one of them actually is a shade darker than the other is going to drive you bananas. And, frankly, if you can read one of these things, you're pretty much already shit out of luck.

According to "Great at Any Age," the handy "guide to enjoying the best years of your life" offered on page 280 of the June 2005 issue of InStyle magazine, color vision "steadily improves until it reaches its peak in your thirties." My point? If your color vision is good enough to interpret one of those OPK's, you can go ahead and skip the damn test altogether. No need for a Day-Three FSH test. Your eggs are old. Your body has redirected its waning resources away from your ovaries and into your retinas.

Good luck, though. Once you've mastered the trick of peeing on a stick, one ovulation-prediction test is much like another. There's not a lot more to think about in choosing generic over brand. And, if you're very very lucky, you'll have many more chances to perfect your technique month after month.

I know I'll be working to hone my skills again this month...

Of Germination and Generation*

It’s June and maple seedlings are sprouting all over the lawn,** piercing through the mulch in the flowerbeds, springing up through cracks in the patio. Each little sapling has only a couple of leaves, rippling flags of the tenderest, yellowest, youngest shade of green. The funny thing is that the leaves are nearly full-sized. They're nearly what you’d see on a mature tree——much like human embryos I suppose, all head and little limb. They look so foolish and yet so brave, flapping and waving from their slender four and five inch stalks.

Most of them won’t make it, I know. They’ll be nibbled bit by bit by insects or browsed whole by deer, drowned in floods or withered by drought. Many will be unceremoniously mown down with the grass. I may even rip a few from the sheltering earth myself. Oh, my heart will tear a bit along with the leaves, but the eternal quest for order in the garden must be met.

And soon the whole cycle will begin again. Every year, the old Norway maple standing sentinel in the center of the lawn sends hundreds of glittering green seedpods off on lazy, dizzy, circular flights. The silent droning of their papery propellers marks the slow passing of August afternoons.

It’s such a lovely feeling, that green forest vertigo feeling you get when lying under spreading branches and looking up, watching the helicopters sputter to the ground. And what fun, once they've fallen. When I was a child, all the neighborhood kids used to gather under the cool green, collecting pods and hanging them from our ears. Earrings for little wood nymphs.

Seeing these seedlings now, I think of the tree and its seasons. How deeply do I yearn for a child to share this sense of wonder with. Yet, so very few seeds ever sprout. And how few of those spouts grow into saplings...how few of those saplings stretch into trees. Nature is profligate with her offspring, extravagantly inefficient in her spending.


I do so hope my own three spent pods may be off flying somewhere, winging their way through the blue. So, it makes my breath catch to see the shallow-rooted seedlings now scattered about, tiny and determined, nodding and bobbing in the breeze.

*Alternate Title: On Mourning My Losses yet Being Pro-Choice

** I do in fact live in Manhattan, but I also have some country access.

P.S. For those of you still following along: it's cycle day 26 here. Progesterone suppositories notwithhstanding, I've never felt less pregnant in my life.

Honest, Officer, I Never Saw No Signs

When you have your first miscarriage, you think, “Who me? Sorry, officer, but you’ve got the wrong woman. No really. Look at your profiles—we know you like those profiles—I’m much too young and cute for this to be happening. I’m only 30. And my hair is shiny.” The officer appears unmoved by the shiny hair. He probably prefers blonds. With curls. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he says, “but we got you red handed, er, red padded, er anyway, you’re definitely having a miscarriage.” Then he writes you up a warning ticket for some Percocet and sends you on your way.

For a while you’re too stunned to get back in the car. This can’t be real you think. Eventually, the evidence around you is too great to be ignored. “Fine,” you think, “OK, fine. I had a miscarriage. But it was an accident, a slip up. Could have happened to anyone, honest, and I barely had anything to drink.” Friends and family reassure you that it happens all the time. People you hardly know come out of the woodwork to tell you about the time it happened to them. And look at them now: three kids, six step kids, from two different marriages, more grandkids and step grandkids than they can count. “Right,” you think, “I’m gonna get my life back on track. I’m gonna turn over a new leaf. No drinking. No late nights. No tuna fish.” This happened once, but it ain’t gonna happen again and that’s a promise.

When you get pulled over for your second miscarriage, the officer cocks an eyebrow. “What seems to be the problem, officer?” you ask, sure that if you just bat your lashes and visibly blink away tears, he’ll have to take pity. “Do you know what the speed is supposed to be?” he asks. You search your brain frantically, trying to remember what the normal beat per minute range is for fetal heartbeats…”Um no, officer, I don’t,” you say as innocently as possible. “Well, this one’s too slow,” he tells you. Days later, he says the words you’ve been dreading: “you’re having a miscarriage.”

You accept the news quickly this time, but what does it mean? “Are they going to put points on my license?” you ask. “Yes,” says the officer grimly, making notes on his pad, “we give you 40 points.” FORTY points? A forty percent chance of a third miscarriage? Shit. Oh, and this time there’s a fine. You’ll have to pay up front for a D&C. Oh, you can go to traffic court and protest. Maybe eve get the fine reduced. But even if health insurance covers 80%, that’s still a hefty chunk of change. Once in court, you realize your life has changed forever. The judge tells you you’re going to be on probation through your next pregnancy. Furthermore, this is going down on your permanent record.

Come the time of your third miscarriage, the officer rolls his eyes, gives his siren a quick burp, and pulls you over to the curb. “All right lady, let’s see it, open up the trunk,” he demands. You wonder if you should tell him to get a warrant, but you’re too scared to protest. He slaps you around with the nightstick, shoves his flashlight in your trunk then says, “this is going down about like I thought it would.” Shit, shit, shit, you think. I cannot get this monkey off my back. His radio crackles as he speaks into it, “this is unit 666 to base, unit 666 to base. We got ourselves an NFHB.” No Fetal Heartbeat.

This time, the judge is not amused. “Type a situation ya got here, we call it habitual spontaneous abortion,” he says. Now you’re really ashamed. Everyone knows about your nasty habit. Once you have your third miscarriage, they label you a hopeless recidivist. They lock you in the airless cell of infertility where you meet your fellow prisoners, Rage, Grief, and Disbelief. The cruelest joke of all hits when you realize your own body is site of your incarceration. “Fuck,” you think, “am I in here for life?”

Infertility (and Illumination) in Unexpected Places

From time to time there are discussions in the IF blogosphere about literature that treats themes of infertility. I just came across a book that deals with the subject beautifully: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Books, 2003). The book, about a young man from Afghanistan, has little to do with infertility overall. But, midway through the book, infertility unexpectedly enters the life of a character-- as unexpectedly as it has entered many of our lives. Hosseini writes about it with such knowing detail (both medically and emotionally) that I think he must have some direct personal experience with it. I want to share one especially moving passage (but I'm blacking out the characters' names so as not to spoil the plot for anyone who wants to read the book):

"Sometimes, [with her] sleeping next to [him], [he] lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And [he] could almost feel the emptines in [her] womb, like it was a living breathing thing. It had seeped into [their] marriage, that emptiness, into [their] laughs, and [their] lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of [their] room, [he'd] feel it rising from [her] and settling between [them]. Sleeping between [them]. Like a newborn child."

Tears filled my eyes as I read that passage and again as I transcribed it now. It captures a lot for me. Please, if you come by and read this, won't you leave me a comment and tell me about something, anything, a poem, a novel, an essay on infertility that has affected you too?

Smoke Gets in Your Eggs

Haven't you always loved that old jazz standard, you know, the one with the lyrics by Bryan Ferry? The words go something like this:

They ask me how I knew
What I want to do
I of course replied
Something here inside
Cannot be denied
They said someday you´ll find
Maternal instinct's blind
When your heart´s on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed
And kept up my maternal plans
Yet today my hope has flown away
I am without my babes
Now soothing friends decry
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When Granny smokes her cigs
Smoke gets in your eggs

Wait. What? You say that's not the way you remember the lyrics? Well, you clearly have not been reading the Wall Street Journal lately. (And more power to you; their editorial page gives me hives.) But if you had accidentaly come across a copy over the weekend and just happened to turn to the May 13, 2005 "Science Journal" section, you'd have stumbled on the article:

"Grandma's Behavior While Pregnant Affects Her Grandkids' Health"
— by Sharon Begley.

Read my excerpt and weep:

"Scientists are discovering that nature...can visit the sins of the grandparents on the children... Transgenerational effects are the latest focus of a growing field called fetal programming, or the fetal origins of adult diseases. It examines how conditions in the womb shape physiology in a way that makes people more vulnerable decades later to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immune problems, and other illnesses...Last month scientists reported that a child whose grandmother smoked while pregnant with the child's mother may have twice the risk of developing asthma as a child whose grandmother didn't flood her fetus with carcinogens. Remarkably, the risk from grandma's smoking was as great or greater than from mom's...The harmful effects of tobacco, it seems, can reach down two generations even when the intervening generation—mom—has no reason to suspect her child may be at risk...What causes the grandma effect? One suspect is DNA in the fetus's eggs (all the eggs a girl will ever have are made before birth). Chemicals in smoke might change the on-off pattern of genes in eggs, including genes of the immune system, affecting children who develop from those eggs. Men whose mother's smoked don't seem to pass on such abnormalities, probably because sperm are made after birth...When immune compromised girls become pregnant, they have less chance of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Score another one for the grandma effect."

Are you angry yet? Are you crying? I am. Because my grandmother (until her premature smoking-related death) smoked a good two packs a day every day of her life and all through her pregnancy with my mother, even as my then-embryonic mother was busy in utero making the egg that would one day make me. And I, despite being in overall good health and testing negative for every damn disorder that a hematologist, four reproductive endocrinologists, and a rheumatologist can think of to test me for, don't seem to have much "chance of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby." Indeed, they tell me my best hope is probably to act as if I DO have an immune disorder, one they simply cannot find or diagnose, and go on anti-coagulation therapy in my next pregnancy.

One of the "luxuries" of suffering from UNEXPLAINED Recurrent Miscarriages is that you get to grasp at any and every possible explanation that comes your way, no matter how hazy the details. So I'm singing through angry tears this morning, "Smoke gets in your eggs."

Compass Points

Thank you all so much for your comments.

I logged on today with a post already half-written in my head, knowing that I had a bit a free time to type my thoughts down. But I'm so moved by your comments that what I meant to say has flown out of my head. I think I sort of thought in the back of my mind that this might be what it would be like to blog, but I really had no idea.

On Wednesday I wrote a post about feeling lost on the path to parenthood. I didn't even realize that I was asking for help in knowing where the heck I am. I just sent a smoke signal into the ether. "Helllooo. I'm heere. Can anyone hear me? Can anyone tell me where is here?" One by one, you arrived. No one could necessarily point the way north, but each came bearing something: a magnet, a needle, a cork, a cup, the last water in the canteen.

Bugs writes a blog that I love, how great to have her say that something I wrote sums up just how she feels.

Ann moved me to tears with her recognition of my story, with its unwritten ending, and even more with her offer of her story, in which infertility has become a closed chapter. I long for the day when the last paragraph in this chapter of my life will be written.

Journeywoman's name says it all. She knows how hard this trip is.

Sarah and Alisa understand the sense of accidental sisterhood that binds infertiles. Getup Grrl has said she once thought of calling Chez Miscarriage the Miscarriage Club to capture exactly that feeling.

V's Herbie just got out of the car for a second and hopes to get right back on the road. I wish you Godspeed, but in the meantime I'm glad to have you here in the clearing.

Sol traveled through a lot of cyberspace to get here. I'd love to know where you're writing from.

Angela's metaphor about trying to retrace her steps moved me deeply. Where is the damn trail of breadcrumbs when you need it?

Each of these comments is like the strike of a needle across a magnet. And while I may not yet know the way North, I feel so heartened by the needle's feeble wiggles. Someday, somehow we'll find a path out of here.

In the meantime, the extraordinary experience of writing what I'm feeling and having perfect strangers "materialize" (etherize?!) to say, yes, they know what it's like to face in just this direction is something I'm very grateful to have.

"Compass" has so many meanings. As verb it can mean to draw an enclosing line, to measure a curve. And I wonder if it might not also be related to the word compassion. Because what I feel in having written and then gotten your responses is that I've been circled, compassed with compassion. I hope that people reading this will feel that too.

Each of you is a compass point.

I'm glad I decided to take a try at this blogging thing.

When Sartre Is Your Chauffer

Dearest Readers,

With the help of the fabulous Suzie of the aptly-named Not a Habit, I recently figured out how to make links, including an all-important link to the mother of all blogrolls Julie's big list. Thanks to Julie's recent update, I am now actually included on that big list, my very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And because of that link, I have received dozens on dozens of visits today. But no comments. What gives?

Are you all ferociously shy? Bored to tears at the thought that another hapless infertile has started a blog? Just really not interested in the thoughts of this particular hapless infertile? I would really love to know YOUR thoughts.

So, I'm going to ask you a direct question and hope for some responses. Where are you on the path to parenthood? Cruising the blacktop with the hood down? Stuck in the mud? Crashed into the guard rail? What do you do to keep yourself occupied on the journey? Are you the kind who packs the car with lots of healthy snacks and classic books on tape? The kind who stops after 15 miles cause they have Nathan's at the rest stop & Nathan's sells those awesome crispy crinkled french fries with the mini pitchfork (the forks are red cause those greasy tasty fries are the devil's own food), plus that way you can pick up copies of Cosmo and People? The kind that drives all night, pees into a bottle, and coasts into each gas stop on fumes?

I am finding it a little hard to keep myself occupied on this damn road trip. We've taken so many wrong turns, the whole thing is lasting way longer than I thought it would. I've eaten through my homemade GONC (that's good old nuts and chocolate, cause who would ever waste their time on raisins). I've eaten some good, greasy fast food. I've driven in silence for grim determined hours. But we're still not there. And the road is so foggy, I can't tell if I'm getting closer, or driving in circles, or possibly heading straight for a cliff.

Objectively, I have a very nice life. But after a lot of debate and discussion, my husband and I decided we were ready to change that life. Yet, life decided to stay the same. Instead, I changed. I can't seem to get comfortable again in the life that I had, but I don't know how to get to the life I think I want. I'm on a road that seems to go nowhere and has No Exit. Eh bien, continuous. . . .

On Surviving May 8, 2005

Mother’s Day

what a
Miserable Date
what a
Maddening Display
for those with
Maternal Desires
but
Much Delay

society's
Moronic Demands
inflict
Mental Depression
on
Medical Deviants
suffering
Major Dejection

still,
Misanthropic Disgust
only prevents
Mindful Deliberation
so better turn to
Mournful Daydreams
and
Maintain Determination

The Hissy Fit as a Form of Contraception

A student at MIT named Gauri Nanda has recently created a novel new form of alarm clock. Known as "Clocky," it's designed to act as a robotic pet, a kind of techno Fido that barks for you to wake up and play. The clock, padded and covered in brown shag carpet, has wheels and a navigation system. Once the alarm goes off in the morning, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and then into some unknown corner. The idea is that you'll have to get out of bed and find it in order to turn it off. My husband really needs something like this.

Every single morning, my husband's alarm goes of before dawn. He's got the kind of job where you have to get up to make the donuts. But he's a heavy sleeper, ergo, he needs an alarm. And every single morning after it goes off, he hits snooze over and over. Eventually, *I* become fully awake and team up with the clock to rouse him. Sometimes I have to physically push him out of bed. By that point, I usually can't fall back to sleep. Ironically, I'm a light sleeper that needs a LOT of sleep. So, even though I have a better schedule and a much shorter commute and could potentially sleep for more than another hour after he gets up, his routine leaves me chronically sleep deprived. This causes us a fair amount of conflict. In fact, it's one of our biggest points of tension. He claims that there's no way he can get up without an alarm. I say, yes I know, but you have to get up when it goes off, not hit snooze and go back to sleep till I force you up. He says he never even consciously hears the alarm and there's nothing he can do. I say constantly disrupting my sleep is a human rights violation!!!! Weekends are the only thing that save us. Otherwise, I'm cranky and sour in the mornings, Mrs. Jack Sprat on the grapefruit diet.

So, a couple of weeks ago, a day or two after I ovulated, I had a big performance review at work and I was nervous. Really really nervous. I wanted the day to go well. I worried it wouldn't. I keep losing babies, why not lose my job while I'm at it? I was an emotional mess. So, the night before my big review, we have a little talk about how I need a good night's sleep before the big day. I, of course, toss and turn and sleep even more lightly than usual until I finally drop off for real around 3 in the morning--only to be rudely awakened again by his alarm at 5:15 AM and at 5: 24 AM and at 5:33 AM. At which point I started screaming like a banshee. I am not kidding, it was ugly. I screamed and shrieked and sobbed and screamed. I pounded the mattress with my fists. I said all sorts of angry things. For an hour. My husband could not have been more contrite, more apologetic, more placating. Eventually, he got out the door, very very late for work. I got up, went to work, sailed through my review, regained my sanity, and apologized abjectly for my behavior when we got home that night. He has gotten up BEFORE his alarm every week-day morning since, and I had almost managed to forget the incident had ever happened.

Until I peed on a stick this morning... Clearly an animal in full-on, adrenaline-pumping, fight-or-flight mode is not going to be optimally primed for reproduction. I think maybe I wasn't quite ready to try this month...

Mark Your Calendar

Well, I am officially halfway through the 2-week wait. My mood is somewhere between defiantly pissed off and drearily resigned. On the one hand, why should I even care if I'm pregnant, seeing as how if I do get a BFP, it'll only mean I can count forward 5 more weeks and pencil in the date of my upcoming miscarriage in my daybook. And, on the other hand, with pre-partum depression this impressive, does it even matter if I ever get to experience the post-partum variety?

So, how soon should I start peeing on sticks? If Hallmark was the proud sponsor of my life, I’d wait until Sunday, *Mother’s Day,* to test, then present my husband with those two glorious pink lines as a token of my love. He’d blush and shyly pull out a gorgeously wrapped present, the one he bought cause he just knew in his bones we were having a baby. Cue the violins, you know how the rest of this fantasy goes…

Unfortunately, my life seems to be underwritten by a grant from the Waste Management Foundation. So I’m debating between Wednesday and Thursday. If I ovulated last Saturday, as I think I did, then using an early-prediction test, I could possibly test as early as Tuesday, four days before my expected period. Trouble is, the test is only about 60% accurate then and a false negative is only going to further mess with my head. So, it seems worth it to me to wait a few days. But how many??? And will the days pass faster if I spend most of the hours between 2 and 5 AM pondering this question?

So, Mother’s Day. Is there really any more depressing holiday on this earth? Did they make this up just to torture us infertiles? Yes, I have a mother of my own, and, yes, she’s lovely. But after just over two years of infertility and miscarriages, this is going to be my third dreadful Mother’s Day, and frankly I would just like to cut the day from the calendar. Add that to my custom order for the Infertile’s Page-a-Day. I want the one that notes the resumption of Standard Fertility Time but makes no mention whatsoever of Mother’s Day--or Father’s Day, for that matter.

Help me out here, People. We need to get creative here. The page-a-day people seem to have fallen under a glittery spell cast by baby dusters. Seriously, on offer at Amazon right now you can find:

∑ The Best of 14,000 Things to Be Happy About Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Cherish April 30th. You have no idea how long it will be until your next miscarriage.


∑ 365 Amazing Trivia Facts Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Percentage Likelihood of Miscarriage in Your Next Pregnancy after 3 Losses, No Live Births: 60%
* Percentage Likelihood of Miscarriage in Your Next Pregnancy after 4 Losses, No Live Births: 95%

∑ 365 Meditations, Reflections & Restoratives for Women Who Do Too Much Page-A-Day Calendar 2005
* Breath deeply. Visualize the baby dust. --Ack!--Cough-- Stop. Do NOT breath the baby dust!

∑ Believing In Ourselves : 2005 Day-to-Day Calendars
* The right attitude is everything. So you know it's your fault if you don't have a baby by now.

∑ Zen Page-A-Day Calendar 2005 (Page-A-Day Calendars)
* Sit straight, but comfortably, in the lotus position and chant "Waaanh!" over and over and over again.

∑ Make The Days Count : 2005 Day-to-Day Calendar
* Tick tock, tick tock. If you're over 14, you know, your fertility is declining every single day...

Thoughts about what we should include in the 365 Bitter Ironies About Infertility Page-A-Day Calendar, TM?

Venting Venti-Style

So, I wandered bleary-eyed into my local coffee place this morning, and the attractive looking European man in front of me leaned confidently over the counter said, “Uh’m gun to tek eh kep uf cuffee.” He didn’t ask, “Hi, could I have a cup of coffee?” He didn’t even say, “I’d like a cup of coffee.” No, he announced in clear and melodious tones that he was Going To Take a cup of coffee, apparently whether the counter girl liked it or not. The it was my turn and I said, “Hi, um, could I please, um, have a decaf coffee, um please?” It got me thinking.

Maybe I’m going about this wanting-a-baby thing all wrong. Maybe instead of asking the gods if I could please, pretty please have a baby, or wistfully nattering on about how much I’d like one, I need to stand up and say, “I’m going to have a baby. “ Do you hear that universe? I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I’m going to have a baby. Give me one good viable pregnancy, send me a surrogate, open an adoption application, whatever. I’m not picky about whether there’s cinnamon or coco or nutmeg sprinkled on my foam, but dammit, I’m going to take a latte.

Thinking-of-England Sex

Well, folks, it's cycle day 10 here, which means it is that time again already. To say that I am hopefulanxiousscaredapprehensiveexcitedoptimisticpessimistic does not begin to capture the psychological meltdown I'm heading towards as we get set to try. We had one last lovely carefree romp yesterday. Now the real work begins. Is there any drudgery more dispiriting, undignified, downright anxiety-producing, and all-out awful than conception sex after prolonged infertility and loss? From here on out, I’m going to be about as sensual as the brides told by Queen Victoria to "lie still and think of England." Except I'll be lying still and thinking of children. I will keep you posted…

Empty Lunchbox

I was six years old in 1978 when I was given my first metal lunchbox, a smart aluminum case with a red plastic handle, a silver latch, and colorful Peanuts cartoon characters painted on the sides.  While Linus tended his blanket and Charlie gripped his football, Lucy spent her enameled life marching in ceaseless circles around the box, picketing for something called "Women's LIB."

“Lib” was a confusing word for a first grader, so much shorter and easier to sound out than the counter-intuitive "wimin," yet so much less familiar in meaning.  Though proud to be the owner of a big-kid lunchbox, I spent the first week of school baffled about that word.  Shy in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub, I'd sit silently rolling it around my tongue. I'd scroll through my mental glossary, trying out “lib” next to “hop” and “spot” and “sam” and “ham,” without getting even a glimmer of recognition.

Finally, I asked my mother about it.  She explained that "lib" was short for liberation.  Women's lib meant that I could do anything.  Unlike unlucky little girls born before me, I could overcome the limits of my sex.  True, lunchbox Lucy wore a dress, but it was colored blue.  Together we were charged to stride forth freely, oblivious to the flapping of our skirts.

For over two decades, I clung to that promise. I balanced every frill and ruffle with a mortarboard and tassle.  Through prom nights and true love and a classic white wedding, I never wavered in my determination to buck the status I was born with.  Eventually I earned three degrees and found success in a man's profession.

I did not exactly live my life in drag.  I always knew that to pick up Lucy's picket meant managing to be a wife and mother while also pursuing a serious career.  I promised myself that I'd try for a baby as soon as I turned 30 and sure enough I did.  Still, deep down, I felt that I could have enjoyed life as a man and a father with far greater ease than I could as myself.

My first suspicions about that strange word lib faded completely from mind until about the time of my third miscarriage.  Only then, as my plans failed again and my body spewed out my dreams, did I start to grasp that I'd gotten things a bit mixed up.  I began to feel that the sum of my life made me less than, not more than, a woman.

As I clicked through the unabridged dictionary of my adult mind, women's lib began to take on new meaning.  I suddenly understood first hand that liberation from sexism need not and should not imply elimination of the female sex. There were crucial things I wanted to do because of, not in spite of, my female status.

My grief for those three spirits lost mingles now with another sadness. By some cruel accident of fate, the womanhood I so long sought to overcome has instead eluded me.

Somewhere, that lunchbox lies empty and dented, much like me.  Still, Lucy continues ceaselessly with her cheerful circumnavigations.  I think, now, as I gather my strength, and promise my husband that we'll try once more, that I'll link Lucy's arm again.  This time, though, I'll hum a lullaby as she chants.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde accidentally spread the idea that the earnest are far more ridiculous than the flippant. What he actually meant was something more along the lines that false piety is even worse than honest irreverence.

I have been thinking about this a lot today because two of our favorite bloggers (I think I’m safe in assuming they’re your favorites too) have just offered up highly apologetic posts, in which they confess that they still feel acute anxiety and/or engulfing depression even as they live the dreams of frustrated infertiles everywhere. Julie feels guilty for not being happy after enduring sleepless months in the wail of a small human fire alarm. She feels guilty for telling us she feels sad. But I want to thank her and Grrl too.*

Because no one ever told me what pregnancy was really like and I sure could have used some earnest information going in.

In my imagination, pregnancy went something like this: swelled with the secret of budding life, I would spend the first couple of months indulging in delicious and languorous late afternoon naps before waking up to indulge my wild attacks of the munchies with whatever strange delicacies my fancy commanded. I’d be a touch queasy on the occasional morning, but that’s when I’d exercise the excuse to ask the dear husband to deliver a light breakfast in bed. Out on the town, my husband and I would exchange secret winks and loving glances when we encountered new babies in strollers or in those cute little baby backpacks. Before long, I’d begin to show—my radiant skin and inner glow would be the real give away, along with my amazing spurt of second trimester energy. This would be the time for drooling over baby catalogs and planning one last romantic get away together, a vacation devoted to good sex and the excited contemplation of impending joy. Not long after that, just when things were becoming the teensiest bit crowded and uncomfortable chez moi, we’d start having marathon sex, eat lots of fabulous spicy Thai takeout, and, before you could say “coconut chicken curry,” I’d be delivered to the land of maternal bliss. The single funniest part of this fantasy, of course, was my naïve assumption that pregnancy would result in a baby.

In reality, my three unsuccessful experiences of pregnancy have gone a lot more like the “recreational” acid trip that Anne Lamott’s character Elizabeth (in her fab novel Rosie) takes with her boyfriend shortly before they both go into rehab and sober up. First Elizabeth takes the tab and sits on the porch swing thinking (I’m paraphrasing here), “La, la, la, nothing happening. Bet this thing didn’t really work.” That is, the pregnancy test is positive, but you don’t believe it cause you really don’t feel anything much different, apart from the slight increase in urinary urgency, and heck you’ve had many more emphatic UTIs. Then all of a sudden, “Whoosh, wham,” the trip begins. At first you’re delirious with excitement. The world is in Technicolor. You did it! You’re going to be a family. You are the embodiment of love, of life. But then, not very long after, the paranoia part of the trip back down begins. You realize that you are absolutely positively literally and figuratively f-cked, that you’re pregnant and there’s no turning back. Life will never be the same. Elizabeth vomits the morning after the acid trip--and so ends the pregnancy, only the sickness lasts and lasts. Your body is flooded by wave after wave of nausea tsunamis. We’re talking 24/7 misery that has you loosing bladder and bowel control while you’re throwing up into the toilet and seriously considering suicide as a practical alternative to pregnancy. The physical suffering ends only after the heartbeat does—and that’s when the emotional misery really begins.

I’ve been a little less scared of parenthood, a little more desperate to become a mother, and a little more anxious about the probability of miscarriage with each successive pregnancy. But other than that, the pattern of physical torture followed by emotional devastation has been more or less the same every time. No one tells you pregnancy itself will be so utterly awful. (And of course for a few women we hate, it’s not, it’s everything my fantasies said pregnancy should be.) You’re not supposed to be so selfish as to hate vomiting your guts out. And, especially if the pregnancy didn’t come easily, you’re not supposed to be so ungrateful as to resent living through hell. Well, that’s nonsense.

I, for one, really wish I’d realized what I was getting into. The elemental all-encompassing desire to be the loving mother of a living child does not mean one can’t be honest about the fact that pregnancy and parenthood may bring some of life’s worst moments. Obviously I’d do it anyway (here I am about to embark on my 4th try). But I’d have appreciated the chance to get my affairs in order first, before dying the little death of pregnancy.

As Oscar Wilde himself put it, “the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!” So here’s to honest, earnest blogging, allowing the most modern form of literature to tell complicated truths.

*http://www.alittlepregnant.com/alittlepregnant/2005/04/cry_robot.html

http://chezmiscarriage.blogs.com/

Fertility Savings Time

So, daylight savings time began yesterday. I’ve never quite understood the whole strange system of moving the clocks backwards and forwards. Every spring I lose an hour. Where does it go? Does it take a relaxing vacation somewhere? Is it just too much stress for that hour to have to work every day of the year? Sure they give it back to you in the fall, but what do you get in exchange? You get an extra hour of darkness, that’s what. I know, I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work. But unless you’re the proud owner of the cutest little pig farm in Iowa, you’re probably not up by dawn most days. No, it feels like a loss coming and going to me.

I feel just about the same way when it comes to the biological clock. They start off stressing family planning. Planned parenthood. You must not have a child till the time is right. Finish school, get married, achieve emotional stability, financial solvency, and oh spiritual enlightenment wouldn’t be a bad tool to have in the kit. Almost gives you the impression you can time the creation of your family. But don’t you wait too long, oh no. That biological clock, it’s more reliable than the atomic clock. Those ovaries, they are set to Greenwich Mean Time and they mean business. Tick tock, tick, tock. Don’t forget to wind your watch girls. So, just when exactly is that perfect moment between too soon and too late? It seems as elusive as this hour I seem to have just misplaced…

Could it be that the biological clock somehow gets set on fertility savings time? Is Perfect Timing off on the beach somewhere, lying beside Extra Hour of Daylight, perfecting a tan? If that's the case, I'd like to see that hour get back on the job. I've waited long enough and I'd like to put my biological clock back to standard fertility time.

I just need to find the right calendar, you know the one that comes marked with moon phases tied to ovulation and marks the day when standard fertility time resumes? Because it feels like I’ve somehow lost years of my life to these multiple miscarriage losses. And I want that time back.

R.M. (Reproductive Musings)

Come on, admit it, you want the medical details. Just how hopeless is this case? It ain’t good. Here’s the thing. Somewhere between one and two percent of women will be diagnosed with recurrent miscarriage. Of those so diagnosed, about half will eventually be found to have some underlying medical issue (a clotting problem or autoimmune disorder, a hormonal imbalance, an anatomic abnormality, or lesions, adhesions or damage from anything from endometriosis to a botched D&C.) But another half will be “idiopathic,” meaning that the idiots making the diagnosis can’t figure out what the idiot patient did to get the Idiot in charge so pissed off. That’s my case folks, the ugly angry half of the last percent: idiopathic recurrent miscarriage.

Allow me one more longer aside on terminology. I vastly prefer the term recurrent miscarriage to HSA. Take the politically-charged A-word. I support a woman’s right to choose without reservation; I’d just like keep it crystal clear that, when it comes to miscarriage, no choice is offered. “Spontaneous” is accurate as far as it goes, but come on. My idea of spontaneous is a quick skinny dip on a hot day in a sparkling secluded lake. Miscarriage, on the other hand, is a plunge into despair. And habitual? Please. Just because something happens over and over doesn’t make it a habit. Surfing blogs? Now there’s a habit. Drumming your fingers? Yeah, OK. Chocolate? More please, my favorite addictive habit! But miscarriage? I promise you, I am not addicted to losing my dreams. Quite the opposite, in fact. So let’s all play nice and agree we’re going to call it RM and leave it at that.

Right. So. My husband and I are ready to try again and we’ve consulted with a slew of doctors. There’s Dr. Smart-Cookie Sweetie-Pie, my personal favorite, one we’ve been seeing for a while. She couldn’t stop my last miscarriage, but then again neither could God. I think I’d like to keep working with her, even though she doesn’t take my insurance. (Here in Manhattan, where M.D. stands for Material Development and R.E. stands for Really Enriching, it seems that no one does take my insurance.)

Then there was Dr. Awards-All-Over-the-Walls, a bad combination of insecure and arrogant in my opinion. Plus I didn’t like his advice. Among other dumb ideas, he recommended I do a Clomid-challenge test. As another doc put it, 3 genetically normal fetuses are all the proof you need that you ovulate. After him came Dr.Well-Connected, who knows everyone and everything, but still couldn’t come up with anything very new in the way of treatment suggestions. Also he thought the ultrasound wand was a light saber. He was so aggressive with the wand that when I finally screwed up my courage for a hysterosalpingogram or HSG (that’s the Hot Searing Green dye test for anyone lucky enough to remain among the unitiated) it actually wasn’t half as bad.

Finally I went to see Dr. Eminence Gris, bringing my complete fat file of negative results from all of the tests the first few doctors had ordered and hoping to get some definitive recommendations. He turned out to be a graying old guy who instructed me to strip completely for my exam (my husband wasn’t there for this one) then opened my paper gown to the waist, pulled it down off my shoulders in a fetching “oh my, this crinkly lingerie just keeps slipping off on its own” pose and left me hanging there in the open air for several minutes while he checked my pulse, listened to my breathing, etc. Amazingly, that routine did not lead him to any stunning new insights about the causes of my miscarriages. Instead he, like the others, said “well, since we have no clues it must be autoimmune. So let’s give you heparin.”

That is where the treatment plan stands, pending another consultation with Dr. Cookie Pie. I’m around day 21 of this cycle (we’ve taken enough precautions that there will be no anxious testing this month, I promise) and am already starting to feel incredibly keyed up about the next one. Day 14 (or 16 or 18, my body will not be rushed) is D-Day as in do the deed day. This is where you come in. Please, if you wander by and read this blog any time in the next few weeks, leave me a comment and tell me your story. I’m especially interested in hearing the one about your aunt’s friend’s sister, who had a great and wholly unexpected success with delivering a live baby in the fourth attempt. Cause from what I hear, and yes I've become a statistics junkie, my chance of another miscarriage now hovers somewhere around 60%.