INFERTILITY SUCKS! Keeping it all together ...

 

 

Have you had enough? Mother’s Day is nigh. And I am sick of hearing about it. Not that I would reject a few flowers, some perfume and lots of love. It’s just that every year around this time, I’m reminded of the dark days before I had a daughter. My daughter. The most remarkable girl in the world. The daughter of dreams. This year, National Infertility Survival Day is tomorrow, Cinco De Mayo – May 5, 2013. For those who seek support and sisterhood. For those who don’t know how to comfort a significant other. The sky, as they say, is the limit. Show a little love and a lot of sensitivity. Boost her spirits and spend a few duckets. Sunday the 12^th might be nigh, but it ain’t the end of the world or the last word. And don’t forget Cinco De Mayo. See, we don’t need an excuse to celebrate. Only hope and happiness. Cheers. Salud! To you cheries.

 

 

 

“So, next time you see a pregnant woman, kick back and have a martini. With extra olives. Sashay by with the best body you can muster in the highest heels you can navigate. Wax buff with a Brazilian bikini wax. Let’s see her get into that position…”

Infertility Sucks! Keeping it all together when sperm and egg stubbornly remain apart, page 20.

I wrote that more than 10 years ago. It still helps. It’s a state of mind that says, things are broken. But I am not.

Alas, shoes and martinis and bikinis can be bought. Not so for the kind of body that one wants to sashay and display.  

It’s not just about looking good. A healthy, supple body can also be a more fertile body.

This weighty matter has been another struggle for me and many others, one that I now realize has gone on way too long — since I was a teen, always fighting to be teeny-tiny.

I have always thought that there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friend. And yet I’ve been fighting myself for years. It’s asinine and it’s over. I’m over it.

I’m having fun with it now. I find it interesting and even amusing how our environment tries to lure us into eating and drinking stuff. The way restaurants show pictures of food — pictures taken with the care of a wedding photographer; the way certain ice cream shops create a scent so pleasing as to cause passersby to salivate like Pavlov’s dog. (It’s not always only about The Beatles. Just usually.)

I have taken it upon myself to turn these ploys upside down and inside out. So, here’s an erstwhile eight-inch pizza that at one time, only briefly, had the snake-like power to tempt:

 

No more.

Here’s a recipe that will enable you to have your ‘za and eat it too. No guilt. Just yummy.

½ piece of Flatout Flatbread (I like the Light Italian Herb.)

Coat lightly with Walden Farms Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce

Sprinkle with one stick or one slice of 2% cheese

Cover with six pieces of turkey sausage

Heat in microwave oven for about a minute.

Season to your liking.

Fend off the rest of the family or make enough for all.

Now, for that maritini… those olives. Oh, yeah, and the shoes. Always the shoes. 
 

So much change. And most all of it good. A big move has us back in our chosen home, South Florida, for the first time in eight years. Back to friends, family, food and the beach.

And for me, back to the bike. For many reasons, none of them interesting to anyone who’s not an avid biker, I was not able to ride (happily, at least) in Orlando or in Tampa.

What a huge loss. I now realize how much I’ve missed it. Sometimes, we’re so busy making do that we neglect to record our sacrifices.

Now I see, though. Biking is life for me. I love it. I love that my body can be moving me over the road while my mind is moving me where it will go. Fixing holes. Wandering. Writing.

The highlight of this morning’s ride was the dragonfly that hovered over the sidewalk in front of me as I wondered how to avoid riding into it. I slowed, slowly. And when we were close enough to touch, the dragonfly glided left, hovered higher, a show of mutual respect, insect and Homo sapien, woman and machine, the silky morning air our shared delight.

It’s moments like these that can keep me riding for 20 miles at a time, when time permits. Fourteen years ago, I was on just such a ride when my third (and last — I can take a hint) miscarriage brought me face to face with a reality that, unlike that kind and wise dragonfly, would not yield.

Pregnancy and me, childbirth and me, were not meant to be. It was a few years in the making, but I finally figured it all out, went to China and emerged beyond victorious.

It was about a decade later that I heard a doctor at a National Infertility Survival Day® event deliver a presentation on multiple miscarriages, in which she cited too much exercise as a contributing factor. Aha. 20 miles, indeed. Would have been nice to know.

If you didn’t, now you do. Dragonflies are great. Miscarriages suck. Stay active and healthy and balanced. Follow those dragonflies, but if you’re pregnant, especially if you’re considered high risk, maybe one pretty butterfly, one cute kid on a trike, should suffice. Just for a few months.

No regrets, ultimately, here. But it’s better to know. The second best part of the ride this morning? Coming home to a still-sleeping family, my daughter a cocooned, sweet and blessed being. We make room for each other on the path all the time. It is sublime.

Sarah Lawrence College’s outstanding faculty tops The Princeton Review’s 2013 College Ranking among all colleges and universities on the esteemed list.

Cheers to some of the best, most inspiring years of my life. 

Yes, school is in session and my now-seventh-grader is settling in amidst new surroundings, new friends and new challenges. This time of year is all about change for my family. Lots of birthdays and anniversaries. And, above all, my daughter’s birthday (tomorrow) and Gotcha Day (10 days prior, August 12, 2001).

The end of August is rife with beginnings. Here’s hoping that yours are sweet. And hoping never to forget the magic moment when I first held her in my arms, mother and daughter, mom and dad, family. Finally and forever.

Today is Mick’s birthday. Jagger, of course. “You can’t always get what you want,” he consoled me years ago, as I nursed my infertile soul after a trip to the mall with a friend and her 4 year old son, a story immortalized a decade ago on page 23 of Infertility Sucks! Keeping it all together when sperm and egg stubbornly remain apart. Mick, “singing, it seemed, directly to me.”

What I didn’t know then but have subsequently read is that Mick kind of was singing directly to me. And, perhaps, to you. It seems he wrote the song for Marianne Faithful, who had recently miscarried.
Thank you, Mick on behalf of all of us who have experienced that loss.

Happy birthday. Hope you get what you need. 

Infertility is more like the common cold than the exotic disease it’s still so often perceived as. Not that it’s contagious, of course. Just a lot more pervasive than many realize.

In one day this past weekend, I met one woman who has a close relative who has been struggling for nearly a decade to have a baby. The same day, I reconnected with an old friend who has a close relative just entering the same ring.

May they both find peace and happiness soon. May they find their way, have their way and have their say. May they have the courage to share their stories some day, so the next generation of girls and women don’t take for granted what their lives and their bodies and their relationships will deliver and how.

May Gens X and Y soon be rid of their struggles and meet up at last with chromosomes X and Y in all their glory. 

Back to Boyd briefly. Finished her memoir earlier and recognized the deep interconnections between infertility, self-image and self-esteem.

In some cases, this expands (no pun intended) to include body image and weight management challenges, from a few pounds of dumpy, doughy, dumpling-like thigh to serious disordered eating.

I believe I’ve wrested control of my physical well being, achieving an elusive balance that enables me to eat well for the long term.   

Currently experiencing a condensed term of condensed living as an apartment dweller with 95% of my life stuffed away in storage, I’m compelled to find quick easy ways to “cook” without so much as turning on a stove, oven, dishwasher or fat cell.

Here’s one of my concoctions. You’ll need:

Paper plate

Pam

Egg whites (I use 6 Tbs.)

2 pieces of turkey bacon (optional)1 piece of 2% cheese (optional)

Spoonful of Walden Farms syrup (optional)

Zap the plate with Pam.

Pour in the egg whites.

Place turkey bacon across the center of the plate.

Place cheese where desired (somewhere on the plate, please).

Zip it into the microwave and cook for about 1:45 – 1:50 seconds.

Pour syrup over turkey bacon and enjoy!

This has the added allure of enabling us to mess with our own eggs for a change. It’s all about taking charge.

 

Today’s post is for those who heard the news today, oh boy. That they will be having neither a girl nor a boy — at least not yet.

I’m reading Pattie Boyd’s memoir, “Wonderful Tonight, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and me,” and just got to the part where she’s going through IVF in the early ‘80s.

She notes the “indignities” of IVF and the pain of being the party at whom “the finger of inadequacy” points. Perhaps most evocatively, she shares:

“Each time I got as far as having an embryo implanted, I would be full of excitement and optimism, convinced that a new life was growing inside me. Then I had to face up to the fact that it had failed.” 

Well, at least she said, “it had failed.” I know that in my case, it always felt like I had failed. Not my husband, not the doctors or nurses, certainly not the embryo. Me. I had failed.

Over and over again.

And then like magic, I triumphed. Adoption adoption adoption. Salvation salvation salvation.

That was my answer. I’m not so presumptuous as to insist it’s yours. Just know that there will be an answer. The indignities are relatively fleeting, enduring them evidence of courage and determination.

The inadequacies are artificial and temporal. Our mistake is not in trying. There is no failure. Only disappointment.

Disappointment is nothing but a well we can fill with hope. Fill your well. Be well. Move forward with dignity and strength. Trust your worthiness.

All will be well. With hope.