In memory of twins (one miscarried around 5-6 weeks, the second at 9 weeks) and a little one who grew in the wrong place.
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Bangs Head On Desk
(TW for pregnancy discussion – not mine)
A couple of my guilty pleasures include celebrity gossip and the British Royal Family (I actually took my pen name here from one of Henry VIII’s wives). Needless to say, I’ve spent some time reading about Eugenie’s wedding (loved the tiara) over the last few days, and of course, the in-the-news-constantly right now Meghan Markle.
Until this morning, when I saw the headline.
Yup. She’s pregnant.
OF COURSE.
It’s weird how trauma stuff comes out. Most of the time, I’m fairly at peace with the infertility, IVF, miscarriage and such. I just don’t react as strongly as when I was in the trenches.
Pregnancy is my kryptonite, though. Pregnancy announcements still feel like being socked in the gut. I generally don’t look at maternity photos. Ultrasound scan photos actually can get me closer than I’d like to panic attacks (for a very long time, I got a lot of bad news in ultrasound rooms). Seeing pregnant bellies still fills me with a sort of wistful, slightly jealous longing. I don’t go to baby showers. I don’t do pregnancy/labor/delivery stories because, let’s face it, no one wants to hear about infertility/miscarriage/severe pregnancy complications/premature birth.
It’s strange because I can hold newborns or look at baby/kid pictures without any issues the vast majority of the time. I’m okay once the child is born. But pregnancy stuff, for some reason, gets to me in a major way.
It’s weird coincidental timing, though, since today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day (in the US).
So I read about pregnancy.
And light the candles in memory of the ones I lost.
This post is part of Microblog Mondays. If you want to read more, head over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
A Different Mindset
One of my favorite morning activities involves reading book related topics on NPR. It’s fun to figure out what to look for at the library and discover new reads that might typically fall outside of my usual bailiwick.
The other morning, I clicked over to an author interview where the headline read “What It’s Like to be Held Hostage by Somali Pirates for 2 ½ Years” (I mean, how could I not click over with a headline like that?). As I was reading, I came across this statement by the author of the book, Michael Scott Moore:
“On his line ‘Hope is like heroin to a hostage, and it can be just as destructive’
Hope was a cycle, and after a while, it became a destructive cycle. People say, “Well, how did you hang onto hope for two years and eight months?” And the fact is: I didn’t. I learned to live without hope. So having your hopes raised and then dashed every two weeks, which is what the guards tried to do — they would say, “Michael, don’t worry, you’re going to be out in two weeks, or a month” or something — was devastating. It was actually no way to live. And so I had to find a different level of existing. And it turns out you can live without hope. … Any Hallmark-like quotes to the contrary are wrong.
Well, hope and despair are just two ways of approaching the future. I don’t know which philosopher I’m paraphrasing, I think maybe Sartre, but — those are just two mindsets toward an uncertain future. And if you would recognize that, and simply don’t think forward toward the future, and don’t insist on a rosy outlook for the next couple of weeks or months or years, then you can live in the moment. And that’s what I had to learn to do. I would have snapped if I had done it any other way.”
It really spoke to me. While infertility is, obviously, not the same thing as being kidnapped by pirates, what the author had to say there about hope made so much sense. That cycle of having hopes raised, then dashed, then raised is a huge part of what makes infertility so tough to deal with emotionally. I love the idea that, contrary to conventional ‘wisdom’, there’s another way to consider one’s circumstances.
This post is a part of Microblog Mondays. If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
Lucky Thirteen
“Well,” I told Arthur back in January. “It’s official. We’ve been us for 20 years. Can you believe we started dating that long ago?”
He nodded. We were thick in the midst of house things, redecorating, and moving. It felt like that statement should be more climactic somehow, but, well, we’d just bought a house.
So it goes. Another year, another mile marker. Thirteen years ago today, we held the official launch party formalizing our partnership and starting our family.
Arthur let me sleep in an hour and a half this morning and that’s the kind of gesture that feels somehow more romantic than the “traditional” sorts of gifts for a day like today. I’ll put away the dishes and then go a bit extra to do the laundry that is typically his responsibility and tonight we’ll go to dinner and despite our best efforts, wind up talking about the nuts and bolts of running a life together.
As far as creative and collaborative endeavors go, I think it’s a success so far, that we still wake up and wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.
This post is a part of Microblog Mondays. If you want to read more, head on over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
The Cat Came Back
“Ahh!” I yelled as a furry, black streak bolted through my legs and out the door.
We had just finished viewing a house with our realtor that had gone uneventfully – until now. Sh*t, I thought, we can’t lose someone’s pet! Fortunately, the cat, once out, had run to the neighbor’s yard but then stopped to sit under a bush. Arthur and the real estate agent successfully retrieved the cat and deposited it carefully back into the house.
We bought the house.
~*~
Friday morning, I was getting ready when E told me that there was a cat on the back porch. I didn’t think much of it. When I was growing up, it was common to see cats from around the neighborhood taking a stroll, probably after mice or birds. The cat mewed for a few moments at the back door. I wonder where he’s from, I thought. We left to run an errand, and when I came back, the cat was gone.
~*~
Sunday, we saw the cat again. This time, however, we were out in the yard, and the cat came up to us, rubbed against our legs, and purred. It was obvious he wasn’t feral. I thought about this for a moment and remembered the similar-looking cat that had escaped when we viewed the house. I knew the former owner hadn’t moved too far away. “I wonder if this is (former owner’s) cat,” I said to Arthur. The neighbor who I knew kept in touch with the former owner didn’t seem to be home, though. “I’ll call the real estate office on Monday. Hopefully they can put me in touch with the former owner and I can find out if he’s missing a cat,” I decided. We went indoors briefly, and when we came out again, the cat was gone.
~*~
This morning, I didn’t see the cat, but called and left a message with the real estate agent. A couple hours later, running late, not having received a return call, I opened the garage door and as I was getting the car loaded, the cat came running from across the street, mewing frantically. “Poor thing,” I said. It was just too much to be coincidence. I knew I needed to get in touch with the former owner as soon as possible.
Fortunately, the neighbor was home when I knocked and able to give me the former owner’s phone number. I called him. “Can you catch the cat?” he asked. “I’ll be straight over.”
I picked up the cat, made sure I had him secured in the garage, and within five minutes, the former owner was there. It turned out that the cat belonged to his adolescent daughter who had been worried and upset. He was very glad to see the cat and looking forward to reuniting girl with her pet.
~*~
What can I say, I’m always excited to get an animal story with a happy ending.
This post is a part of Microblog Mondays. If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
Flipping The Script: Solidarity, not Pressure
When I was actively going through infertility and treatment, I heard a lot of stories. I think everyone who goes through any sort of medical or social crisis hears stuff like this, you know, the “the doctors told them they’d never get pregnant/recover/etc., but they did!” Sometimes this was helpful, particularly when related firsthand by the person the story had happened to, and often, those storytellers (whether in person or on blogs) would point out that while it had worked for them, they knew it wasn’t necessarily going to work that way for others. It was solidarity, not inspiration.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the stories were told more prescriptively (often by people that they hadn’t happened to), in the “if you just hang on, it will happen!” or “if you do _______, you’ll have a baby!” Often, it occurred when I was already beating myself up and wondering what I could have done differently or when we were making painful decisions whether or not to continue treatment. Those stories made me feel guilty, my decisions unaccepted, and left me second-guessing whether or not I’d done “enough”.
I’ve lurked this year for National Infertility Awareness Week, mostly because reading everyone else’s blog posts proved interesting and the topic – “Flip the Script” – is one I’ve had to mull over a bit. Finally, though, I’ve realized the script I want to flip: be careful with stories.
A couple of years ago, I realized I’d become that cliché, walking urban legend of infertility stories: IVF works on the third embryo transfer after losses, rare, tragic complications, and out of that, a beautiful, healthy child. Getting spontaneously pregnant with my second with no interventions or treatments only added to it.
I’m grateful for how things worked out. But it is by the most bizarre circumstances and strange, against-the-odds events that I am where I am in life right now. There is absolutely nothing that is able to be generalized to someone else struggling with infertility.
It’s not because of my hard work. It’s not because of my persistence. It’s not because I’m somehow “special”. It’s not because of my good attitude or positive thinking (please, ask anyone in my life – I did not accept infertility/PCOS with any grace whatsoever, still dislike many pregnancy announcements/going to other people’s baby showers except under special circumstances, and hated pretty much every moment of treatment). It’s not because of “baby dust”. It’s not because I deserved it more than anyone else.
Truthfully, I have no idea why things worked out the way they did. I’m grateful, but I really don’t have an answer to the “why/how”. And I resent the idea that if things had not worked, I would have been any less worthy.
Basically, what I’m saying is this: I hope no one (including me) ever uses my story as a cudgel or as a prescription or as a “this could be you too if you just keep trying!” Because anyone who is struggling with infertility, needs to take a break, or needs to consider their options (including resolving without children), does not need that pressure or guilt. It’s great to tell our stories and truths. But there’s a way to do it without generalizing out-of-the-ordinary happenings to others or giving false hope.
Let’s flip that script, straight up.
This post is a part of Microblog Mondays. If you want to read more, please head over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
DIY
About two weeks ago, I looked into the living room and decided I didn’t like the brick fireplace very much. My room is starting to come together, first with a light, sky blue paint for the walls, then a salsa red couch, a painting that my maternal grandmother bought years ago and I inherited and re-framed, as well as the rugs and throw pillows. It’s a north-facing room and I love the way the colors pull the limited outdoor light into the space.
I knew we did not have the time or money to redo the masonry and I’m not a huge fan in most instances of opaque-painted brick (I’ve seen a few examples where it goes right but wasn’t comfortable with the high probability that it would go wrong). Enter whitewashing: it lightens the brick but leaves the variation and texture intact. I spent a lot of time browsing DIY and decor blogs and sites, figured out a general plan, and tried to figure out a time to complete the project.
Then, one day, I randomly decided to go ahead and prep the area with tape and tarps. I’d planned to just do a test strip, but about two hours later, sent Arthur a text message with this picture:
I may have gotten a wee bit carried away.
So that evening, I finished the brick and painted the first coats on the mantel. By the end, what had originally looked like this:
Instead looked like this:
I’m still figuring out how to arrange everything on the mantel and such, but it really does brighten the room considerably.
It’s weirdly therapeutic to create a space for myself after so many years living in apartments and rentals. It’s also a huge change to start and finish a project where I have a fair amount of control over the outcome. I hadn’t realized how much the randomness of infertility treatments and the NICU (and the corresponding lack of control) had messed with my mind over the years.
Taking joy in creation is a wonderful new feeling.
This post is a part of Microblog Mondays. To read more or participate yourself, head over to Stirrup Queens! Thanks to Mel for originating and hosting.
