Follow Up

For a while I kept only remembering to post the Steve Wiens blog post about infertility either when I wasn't at Facebook or when it was late enough that no one would see it.  I just remembered at a decent hour (yes, so quarter of midnight is a decent hour in my book, 100 plus other people on my friends list agree, so there) and posted, so we'll see what reaction, if any, it gets.

Parenting and Guys and Infertility and the Media

There's a blog post floating around Facebook after HuffPost reprinted it, about the stress of being a parent of small children, even while appreciating it after infertility.  In the post, he says he's going to write a post soon about infertility, and if you follow the link to the original post, he links to his post about infertility.  I'm really happy to see a guy posting about infertility, there's not nearly enough of it.

At the same time, it made me cry, because I'm still struggling with a lot of this, especially the question of hope and despair.

And it also makes me a little mad, because the article on parenting is circulating far and wide, but you know the one about infertility won't.  It'll get more views than it otherwise would because of the reposting, but only from people who bother to go to his blog from HuffPost and from there to the infertility post.  HuffPost didn't bother to link to it, because really, who cares about infertility out there in the wider world?  Not enough people to be worth posting a link for, apparently.

Funny Way to Explain Infertility (or Unfilfilled Fertility)

Now you guys get to see the other post from someone else that's been open on my computer all month!  Joey at The Childless Mom posted a really cute set of videos that were created to explain infertility for people that have not been there.  I think the best one is the first one she had posted, so I'm going to repost that one here.  The bird and bee costumes just make them so much better!! 

 While I was finding the above video I came across another one I hadn't seen before and had to add that one because it's so true!

Giuliana Has Cancer

Giuliana Rancic just announced on Today that during the process of her third IVF, they found out that she has early stage breast cancer.  She's having surgery later this week and will try again for IVF #3 after the surgery. 

She had an interesting quote about the situation: "I still want this baby...because this baby has saved my life."  I would be interested to see what was in the ellipsis, but HuffPost didn't put that in the article.  For many of us, it's easy to feel like having a baby would save our lives figuratively, but most of us don't have the process save our lives literally like her.  Good luck, Giuliana!!

Guys and Infertility

As you may have noticed, there's not a whole lot out there on infertility from the guy's perspective.  As I come across any, I make sure to show them to DH in case he can get anything out of them.  So far, he hasn't found any of them to be much help, but he and I will both be interested to read a book we found out about (more on that later).  Even though DH didn't find them helpful for what he's experiencing, though, I wanted to share what I've found so far in case they can help anyone else's husbands.

The first article I came across was rather unexpected.  I was going through an old issue of Glamour that I hadn't read yet in order to throw it in the recycling, when I found this article written by Joe Conason about the experience he and his wife had with conceiving twins through IVF.  Joe wrote about trying to support his wife (and the mistakes he made in doing so), about the cost of IVF, and about the anxiety that he and his wife experienced through the failed attempts and then through her pregnancy.  I thought that Joe did an effective job of weaving together his own story with commentary on the state of infertility in America.

The second resource is one that I found on Melissa Ford's masterwork, Lost and Found and Connections Abound, or LFCA for short.  The LFCA is a sort of home base for the ALI (Adoption, Loss, and Infertility) blogging community.  It helps to connect bloggers with each other and share news and needs for support.  One of the sections of the LFCA is a listing of new ALI blogs, and on there I found Hope to be Daddy: A Guy's Infertility Voice.  It's an interesting blog both because of being from the guy's point of view and because this is a guy who really wants to be a father and is struggling with his own feelings about infertility rather than just struggling to deal with his wife's feelings.  Women are more likely than men to be the first one ready to start trying to conceive, the first one to become frustrated with conception does not happen, and the first one to want to seek treatment.  It would not surprise me if many men were to find the author of this blog hard to relate to because of how much he wants to be a father, but from my perspective, it's refreshing to see.

The other resource I've found so far is one that DH and I both heard about from different channels.  I saw a link on another infertility blog to this interview with comedian Marc Sedaka about his book What He Can Expect When She's Not Expecting.  I showed the article about the interview to DH, and he said that he had heard the same story on the news while he was driving.  I'm planning on picking up a copy of the book for us within the next few days, and I'll want to read it once DH is done.  I told him I was interested to see what Sedaka says to guys, similar to how I had snagged and read the copy he had been given of The Groom's Survival Guide.  I'll make sure to share my thoughts once I get a chance to read it, never fear!

Infertility in the Media

The way that infertility is treated in the media has been on my mind a lot lately.  Two of my favorite tv shows are Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill (yes, I have a strong tomboy streak, but I also have a strong girly-girl streak).  One Tree Hill has had a storyline about Brooke being infertile for several seasons now, involving her interest in adoption and the effects of her infertility on her relationship with Julian.  The infertility storyline involving Meredith and Derek on Grey's is a lot more recent but has been a lot more powerful for me.

With both shows, the infertility was initially handled as a cut and dried matter.  Brooke was told that she was not pregnant and that in fact she never would be able to become pregnant.  After having a miscarriage, Meredith was told that she has a "hostile uterus."  Treatments were recommended for Meredith, but not for Brooke; in both cases, a real diagnosis was never given.  All in all, the two shows addressed both the mechanics and the reactions related to an infertility diagnosis in a very superficial way.

As the current season progressed, the Grey's writers began handling the topic of Meredith's infertility more deftly.  Both Meredith and Brooke had to cope with having pregnant friends, but Meredith's reactions have seemed a lot more real and likely from what I've experienced and others that I know have experienced.  I was crying during the following clip because it covered so well how I've felt in many situations: jealous, frustrated, not understanding why others can end up by mistake with what we work so hard for, but still caring about the person and not wanting anything to happen to the person.

The part where Meredith attended Callie's baby shower also felt very real and well-done.  I haven't had to do onesie decorating at any showers, but I'm really glad that at work it was the shower I could stay the whole time for that had no games and the one I had clients to see in the middle of that had cutesy games. 

Another thing that rang true for me with Grey's this season was Meredith's reaction to having to stop the cycle of injectible medications because of a side effect of blurred vision.  Most of us aren't likely to be in quite that situation, but almost all of us have had to stop treatments or stop trying for a cycle, whether because of problems with the treatment, inability to afford treatment, or other life factors making it impossible to try for a month.  Having to stop a cycle for any reason is extremely hard, and it's even worse when it's a cycle where you went through a lot to try.  The acupuncture I was doing last summer is nowhere near as bad as getting shots, I'm sure, but I'm bad enough with needles that it was still very hard both physically and emotionally for me.  Having to stop in the middle of a cycle felt like a waste of everything DH and I had put ourselves through to make it happen.

At this point, Grey's is hard to watch, but it's not as hard when they treat the subject as seriously as it deserves to be treated.  I just hope the thing between Christina and Owen on whether or not to have kids doesn't come back up.  Given the content of some of my posts from January, that storyline had me wondering whether I would be able to watch the rest of the season or not.

A friend recommended this article on Facebook, and it's a really powerful account of pregnancy loss by a father.  http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/11/o.father.mourning.baby/index.html

A lot's been happening and I'll post more later, but this is all I've got in me right now.

Ah, the joys of trying to pay attention to tv or anything entertainment-related while dealing with infertility.  I don't care at ALL about those Kardashian sisters, but I was at 7-11 today with my best guy friend, and I caught a glimpse of a magazine cover with whichever one's preggo again on it.  So, yeah, I was wiping away tears while J and I were walking to breakfast.  He was telling me about a couple of friends of his who had adopted babies from Vietnam and China.  DH and I had talked about adoption before, as DH was wanting to find a way to make things better for me and us sooner rather than later.  One thing we didn't talk about, though, was whether we'd want a domestic or foreign adoption if it comes to that.  J was telling me it's too early to think about that.  Thoughts from the great beyond of blog-land?

I was watching the season premiere of One Tree Hill tonight, and it was interesting in relation to this because of how Brooke is trying to be happy for Haley as she announces her second pregnancy, as well as how Julian tries to help Brooke though this stressor. DH was watching the show with me, and he was sweet about putting his arm around me or holding my hand as the baby issue kept coming up.  On the show, Julian was trying to distract Brooke with sex, saying, "Let's keep trying to have a baby."  I don't know how that would make me feel if I was in Brooke's shoes of having been told that there was no hope for her to conceive, but I give Julian's character writers credit for having him be sensitive to her needs and emotions related to Haley's pregnancy.  One thing I appreciate about DH is him recognizing when the infertility issue is bothering me more and him noticing situations that are likely to stress me out and putting his hand on my arm or something like that.  He and I both have physical touch as one of our primary love languages, and so him just making a move to touch me helps me to feel comforted and loved even if it doesn't do anything to fix the problem.

Speaking of fixing the problem, we tried something new on Thursday.  I'm not going to go into exactly what on here, because I still haven't decided what level of TMI to put in this blog.  If people want to know, comment and I'll tell you privately.  Next month at this time we won't be going out of town for the weekend, which will make it easier to try that something new at exactly the right time.  This month we had to try it a couple of days ahead of time and hope, since we were both doing things in different places this weekend.

And so it goes.  I have an appointment to meet with a counselor tomorrow to talk about my feelings about all this.