NIAW - reflections on IF

Happy National Infertility Awareness Week.

I know what you're thinking. What part of infertility is happy?

I set that up like I was going to tell you all the redeeming things about IF. Like I was going to tell you that now that I have a baby, it's all good. Like I was going to tell you that IF taught me some valuable life lessons.

Nope. Sorry.

Infertility sucked a#%.

But it has been the dark forest through which I needed to walk to get to this.

I am still infertile.

And now I am also a mother.

5-day blastocyst photo and 3-week-old Gummy in the flesh, with her parents.

A Synthesizing Blockage

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/97

You may not have time for a TED talk right at the moment, but this one is worth it. So when you get home tonight, come back to this post and click on the link above. Sit down, maybe with a cup of deliciously bitter Chinese herb/mushroom tea (ok, I'm speaking for myself here), kick back and take it all in. It's glorious. Dan Gilbert pushes the limits of what we thought about happiness by explaining how we manufacture happiness in our brain cells, even when we think there is no happiness to be found. I viewed this talk 4 years ago and have come back to it many times since, because I find it so compelling.

The Cole's Notes: Dan Gilbert, a flamboyant Harvard social psychologist, describes how we're each built with a psychological immune system. What does that mean? He argues what the Buddhists have known for millennia, that the external conditions of our lives are not what creates happiness in humans. Well, not long term happiness anyway. He says we overestimate the importance of external events in their ability to make us happy, when in fact they don't matter that much. We can create happiness out of shitty circumstances no problem, Gilbert says. Watch the talk to see how he demonstrates this through a series of interesting experiments. He also peppers his talk with astounding anecdotal accounts.

The Kicker: In one of the experiments he discusses towards the end of his talk, Gilbert describes how two groups of students were compared on their ability to synthesize happiness. In both groups,  students took a photography course. After taking a number of pictures on campus, they were taught how to develop the pictures and were allowed to develop 2 large size pictures. Both groups of students were told that they would be allowed to pick one and relinquish the other as proof of participation. Students in one group (reversible group) were told that if they changed their minds over the next 4 days and wanted to switch pictures, that would be totally cool. Students in the other group (non-reversible group) were told that their decision was final. When contacted 3 days and 6 days later, those in the non-reversible group, those whose decision was final, liked their pictures a lot. Those who were still deliberating about exchanging their pictures (reversible group), really weren't happy with their picture.  Gilbert concludes that those in the reversible group were not able to properly synthesize happiness because they were left ruminating about changing their picture.

The IF-Link: I've been reading IF blogs for a while now and I'm always trying to draw patterns in the data I find there. Mea culpa: I can't help it, really. It's not that I see your blogs as data. It's more that I think about your blogs and your lives as those of individuals 80% of the time, and I think about broad trends in the data about 20% of the time. That's just my over-intellectualized defense, trying to make sense out of a world of chaos. Anyway, you can hate me now, but let me make my point. I was reading Jess' blog post today about how something in her just snapped and she no longer wants to be stuck on feeling miserable because she doesn't have a baby. It got me thinking about how much we put on this external event and how much we expect it to bring us happiness. Don't get me wrong: I'm 100% certain that having children will make us all happy. The part that I'm thinking about right now is the unhappiness in the meantime, as Jess so aptly describes.

I feel like the "unhappiness in the meantime" has largely to blame the sense of reversibility many experience in the way treatments are structured. The choice is always all on patients; there are always more complex (and expensive) treatments to solve the problem of infertility; it is rarely final unless: a) the woman achieves pregnancy or b) the couple gets off the ART ride. I mean, is there anyone reading this who have been told by their RE that there was nothing more they could do for you? I'm not bitching about having options here, I'm just making a point that all this choice of further treatments is actually, in Dan Gilbert's words, stopping us from synthesizing happiness. If treatments had finality somehow, we would be able to move on. Psychologically, this would be at our advantage. Yet, since many have gotten pregnant only after several grueling years of fertility treatments and quitting sooner would have obviated that success, it would also represent a disadvantage.

I am not suggesting that we quit trying and I am not putting down any of us for our persistence. I just want to highlight what I think makes women and couples miserable in this process (aside from the obvious lack of infant in their arms). If Infertility was like amputation, we would move on with the business of living our lives without our right arm. But IF is the land of question marks, of reversibility, of maybe one more time or with a different RE. It never lets the dust inside us settle, but instead keeps us actively focused on external outcomes for a chance at happiness.

May we all take utter delight in a small joy today and remember that it's in us to feel, this happiness I speak of. May we all get our babies home, and may we remember to find joy in the meantime.  

love in the time of cholera, or infertility

Mr. August and I are not having a good run of it. Not at all. This infertility business keeps driving a wedge between us and it just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Sometimes, it is more manageable, sometimes it is unbearable. This week, we're in the unbearable stage.

I feel really heartened to read the accounts of other women blogers who have talked about feeling very much in tune and supported by their partners. I know what the studies say about the stress of infertility and its impact on couples. I find it astounding that some of you have gone through hell and back, with years of IF procedures, and still feel very much a team with your partner. I know you are grateful for that. I can read it in each of your sentences, and in-between all your words.

Mr. August is VERY supportive, wonderful, loving and warm. It is actually mostly my fault that it is driving a wedge between us. We've struggled with the disparity in our feelings over the last year. When our fertility treatments failed in October, I was crushed beyond words. For Mr. August, he was sad to see my reaction, but not really sad about not having biological children. For him, he had always dreamed of adopting children.

How perfect is that! The man who dreams of adopting marries the woman with no eggs.

It sounds so simple when I write it like that. It sounds like it could work out so well. But it's not, at least for now. And maybe it's just a matter of me coming to a different place with my grief. But in the mean time, I'm having a hard time feeling like we are on the same team, even if I *know* we are.

If any of you also feel the dividing effects of infertility between you and your beloved, please comment. I'd love to hear from you.

death anxiety

I've been having these dreams...yes, about death. I used to teach the Death & Dying course at the University where I'm studying and part of the course involved discussing death anxiety. Most of the time, death anxiety is much below the surface for people. Since what maintains anxiety is avoidance, we all do a very good job of avoiding death in our lives. In fact, there is a whole death system set up so we don't come into contact with the reality of death on a day to day basis. Think about it: Have you ever seen a corpse in a hospital? Me neither. That's because they carefully hide the bodies once they are bodies and no longer living people. I also think about it when I see roadkill. Just the word: roadkill. It's kind of awful because what it is actually, is a little being that was alive very recently and now is dead. The little raccoon or squirrel or dear was walking around minding his or her business and got hit by a car and died. When do we actually think about that when we see it on the road? It's hit and miss for me.

Anyway, I've been finding that my death anxiety has really gone north (can I say that?) since the failure of the infertility treatments. My anxiety has gone up in general, but the death anxiety just kills me (sorry, I couldn't help it). And it's been in my dreams lately. I'm having dreams where my friends are getting cancer, or I'm getting cancer. Last week I had the most vivid and terrifying dream about my beloved friend Abigail who is traveling the world at the moment. In the dream, she fell from a great height and died. Her husband and I were left to figure out what to do with her body and I was so paralyzed by my grief that I couldn't do a thing. Just an awful dream (and I emailed her to implore her to be extra careful, since my dreams are sometimes premonitory).

Aside from the obvious connection between grief, an emotion that has been close to my heart lately, and death, I think there is also another piece to look at here. I think I've been struggling lately with the fact that my genes won't be passed on, that there won't be a little girl or little boy who looks like me, that when I die, I will not leave a (first degree) biological relative behind (unless I die before my parents). It's really sharp when it hits me. I'll be at a coffee shop and see this little girl with her mommy, and the little girl has beautiful red curls and the cutest nose and her mommy looks like an adult version of her. And I won't ever have that.

In a way, this is a death, except that there is an absence of an actual person to mourn. There was never a baby, never a miscarriage, never even an egg. Just my hopes and dreams; may they rest in peace.

I feel like one of the cancer dreams had something to offer. In the dream, a friend form school who did in reality have cancer as a teenager had found out that her cancer was back. It was devastating news. I couldn't bear it, I was so devastated for her. And in the dream, it somehow became more important to find the right word to say that the cancer was back. And the word that came up was Resurgence, which wouldn't be applied to a return of cancer after remission. I've looked up the definition of resurgence and here is what I found: "A continuing after interruption; a renewal." and "A restoration to use, acceptance, activity or vigor; a revival"

I've written down the definitions and pasted them on the wall in front of my computer. Maybe it's not death that awaits, but a resurgence instead.

the wedding/baby shower

Like many women with IF, I have made it my personal rule NOT to attend baby showers. I'm sorry, but I just can't do that. Baby showers are like this: Open wound. Pour salt. Repeat. That's what they feel like. So, why do it. I sometimes get unpleasant reactions when I state that I won't be attending, but I can deal with that. I've pissed people off a number of time, and never has death ensued.

Today, a friend in my community is having a wedding shower. Three other women friends and I are throwing her a shower because she is getting married next week. Wedding showers are technically ok. Correct? Well, maybe not. This bride is pregnant with her first child and naturally very excited by these wonderful changes in her life. In addition, her sister and another woman are bringing their babies. And finally, another friend in our community was due yesterday but hasn't delivered yet so she may also come.

Yes, I know that I got myself into it. And I know that I can do it. I'm just realizing in this moment that it will be difficult and I am trying to buttress myself to stand tall in the face of this difficult task. I can't even be in the company of pregnant women at the moment without feeling a ton of pain. That's such a hardship because many of those pregnant women are my friends.

The woman whose shower is today called last night and wanted to check in with me about how I suddenly left a gathering last week without saying goodbye. I just told her I was having a hard time and needed to be alone, which was the truth. She then moved on to tell me they had their ultrasound and that they are expecting a girl. And then I needed to be happy with her. Later, when I found myself ruminating about it, I noticed I was mad at her; but then I stopped myself. "Be mad at infertility" I thought to myself, "not at her joy". This helped me get through the moment.

I'm signing off to go bake cupcakes for the shower. Beet/chocolate cupcakes, no less. I have more to write about, so I'll be signing in again.

infertility sucks

And for so many reasons (and yes, I do hope this blog reaches the season of not talking about what sucks all the time).

I just found out that a dear friend is pregnant through reading her husband's facebook status update.

Infertility really sucks. It's the reason she hasn't told me herself.

wishing things were different than they are

I think the owl post was my apex of hope and joy. This post is going back to doom and gloom. My apologies for the hope-filled out there.

This was another weekend of confronting my infertility. It seems to be the case with many of my weekends and I don't believe the Universe is after me and wants me to suffer more or anything like that. God does not hate me. Infertility and loss is simply what's relevant inside me at the moment and so it gets reflected in what I see on the outside. Neutral stimuli become loaded, get ascribed a specific meaning because of my loss. I live in my loss these days. And kinds of wishing I wasn't will not get me out of this uncomfortable place.

My honey and I were having supper on Saturday night, rushing to get to a choral concert for which he had gotten us tickets. That's when it dawned on me. This was the Pleasantville* Youth singers giving the concert. Pleasantville YOUTH singers. Children. Parents. LOTS of parents. And us, a childless couple. At dinner, I thought about how this woman in our community had chastised us for showing up at the Waldorf School Winter Fair a few years ago. She said in an almost snide voice "What are you doing here?". I joked with my honey that she would be at the choral concert and ask us again what we were doing there. He didn't find it funny, but instead noted that I was holding a grudge. Yes, I most certainly am holding a grudge against this woman, and again, no amount of wishing I wasn't seems to help that.

So we went to the concert, with the lovely children, the multitude of proud parents, and our awkward selves tucked away in a back pew. What are we doing here, I wondered?

Today, I went out Christmas shopping with friends, one of which I had not seen in a long time. She put it out that it had been a rough year because of fertility problems. My stomach turned. Not her too, I thought. Why does she have to go through that pain? It was difficult to gauge what I should share or not. In a way I wanted to connect with her, since infertility is so dreadfully isolating. But then I thought about how she is still going through treatments and the last thing she would want to hear is that another woman's treatments have failed. Unequivocally failed. Who wants to hear that? Certainly not someone in her shoes.

And sharing it with her would have meant to say it. Out loud. Once more. To reify it, yet again.

I did tell her and I regret it, even though I wish I didn't.

My honey and I were lying in bed silently after returning home from lovely and excruciating experience at the children's choral concert. There wasn't much to say on my end, I was just hoping sleep would come fast. But he is wiser than me sometimes and wanted us to talk. He said he is not grieving from the failure of our infertility treatments, that he had never felt he needed to have his biological children but instead always thought he would adopt. I mustered a few words on the many levels at which this affects me. I will never look at a child and say he or she looks like me or like my dad or my mom. I will never be pregnant. Infertility isolates me from other women.

He said he was about to tell me that those things did not mean I was broken. But he thought better. Instead, he said he loved me with my brokenness. And I don't believe I wished that part to be different.


*The name has been changed to protect the anonymity of the people mentioned in my blog, including me