my library degree is useless to me here September 8, 2008

A co-worker stopped in today with her 3 week old baby.  She thought she’d be able to just stop in and see a few people and escape.  Hah.  No such luck, as she and her baby were immediately surrounded by a throng of adoring colleagues.  As we were talking, two different co-workers turned to me and said something to the effect of “doesn’t seeing the little baby make you want to just go out and have another?”  Unprepared for the question, and unprepared to give anything like a reasonable answer, I pleaded no comment both times.

This evening, Chris and Zoe and I were walking out in the park and I related the story to Chris.  “Well,” he said, “does it make you want to have another?”  I keep thinking this question will get easier and the answer will become clear, but that’s not the case.  On the one hand, newborns are sweet and cuddly and their poop doesn’t smell all that bad, but on the other hand, Zoe is so much more fun now, I wonder if I really want to go through the newborn stage again.  But it’s not like it lasts all that long.  Chris answered that he didn’t think he wanted another baby just right now and I agree.  But that’s part of my concern, if we wait until we think we’d like a baby, will we have waited too long, effectively making the decision for us? I feel a little silly dwelling on this so much, I fear it’s becoming tiresome, but it just keeps nagging at me, and then something like this afternoon happens and I’m face to face with the questions again.

If only the library subscribed to the Database of What the Future Holds, but I think that’s outside our budget.  Heck, I’d settle for a subscription to Journal of Should Chris and Ann Try to Reproduce Again.  Or maybe I don’t actually want to read any articles that they would publish.

why do you blog? July 30, 2008

Thank you everyone for all your good thoughts about Z’s upcoming surgery.  I’m feeling much better about it.  Not saying that I’m looking forward to it, but I’m feeling like I’ll survive (her surviving has never been in much question).

Sometimes I have an idea for a blog post, and I think it to death and it never gets posted. Sometimes the idea just seems to not let me leave it be - it keeps showing up everywhere I look.

This past weekend, I got together with some local parenting bloggers when the local paper’s parenting blog had a get together. It was fun, I’d never gone to a blog-related get together, but everyone was very friendly and we all had a great time. At some point, we discussed why we blogged. Some blog as a creative outlet, some as a way to keep family and friends updated, some are hoping to get a book published, some want a way to talk about issues that are near and dear to them. It got me thinking about the reasons I blog.

Then Alicia posted yesterday about some of her favorite blogs and ended by asking everyone why they blogged.  And then today I got a survey about the “state of the blogosphere” which made me laugh.  It had questions about how much money I make on my blog and whether I have ever been fired or lost friends because of my blogging.  Huh.

So now I’m curious, why do you all blog?  Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs?  Are there certain types of blogs that you gravitate towards or shy away from?

For me, I really started updating this blog once I was pregnant.  I had been reading infertility blogs and a few blogs of friends for a while, but hadn’t quite gotten up the courage to start really writing my own.  I ended up using the blog mostly as a way to keep friends and family updated, but slowly, it also became a way to be a little more open about our fertility struggles and journey.  I wanted other people to know they shouldn’t feel alone if they were going through something similar.  It’s a little strange, since infertility is not the topic of most of my posts nowadays.

I also blog because I hate writing.  I know that sounds stupid, but writing is hard for me.  I put it off, procrastinate, find excuses not to do it and generally feel like I’m pulling teeth trying to get words out of my head and in to print.  So I started to write more frequently with the idea that writing would become easier the more I do it.  I suppose that might be the case, though writing  still is certainly not my favorite activity, and it still does not come easily.

What has been so surprising to me is how much I’ve gained from blogging in other ways.  I really love the feedback on my thoughts and my writing, and I love hearing that something I wrote might have helped someone.  I’ve also learned so very much from posting about topics that I hadn’t known a lot about before.  With my little four eyes blog, I keep learning a ton, both from my own research, but in large part from the other posters and commenters, about children’s vision and visual development.

a month past breastfeeding June 7, 2008

(Sorry for the general blog silence here.  I’ve been spending a lot of time getting my Little Four Eyes blog to look good, and while I’m quite happy with it, it’s kind of sapped me of inspiration for this blog.  Apparently I only have so much blog attention to go around).

It took nearly three weeks for my breasts to stop aching, but they’re back to normal now. I’ve put away all the nursing bras and pulled out my old regular ones. Zoe hasn’t asked to nurse at all since she weaned, but every once in a while, she’ll reach down and kind of rest an arm protectively on one of my breasts, or give one a loving pat. Or if she’s with me when I’m getting dressed and sees me take my shirt off, she’ll get this sudden flash of happy recognition and point and smile. It’s flattering, I guess.

In some ways, it’s felt like I’m needing to learn how to parent all over again.  I used to joke with Chris that when you have a milk-giving breast, every cry sounds like hunger.  Which isn’t quite right, but it’s true that nursing is fantastic for calming down a fussy baby, and can really make things easier.  Kid’s hungry? Nurse. Bumped her head? Nurse. Upset at leaving the playground? Here you go - nurse. Tired, but won’t sleep? Just nurse her to sleep.  Got shots at the doctors?  You guessed it.  So I was a little apprehensive of dealing with Zoe without the advantage of a boob, and, as I mentioned before, a little worried that maybe she just wouldn’t like me anymore without my milk.  But we’ve been very lucky, and she’s a very easy-going kid, though I’ve had to quickly study Chris’s techniques for distracting her and comforting her.

I like bedtime a lot more now.  It used to be that she was so ready for the nursing that she wouldn’t let Chris or me read her a bedtime story.  But now, we snuggle in the rocking chair for 20 minutes or so of reading - usually the same book over and over and over.  But it’s sweet, and I look forward to it.

And, it means that my period is back.  After 28 months, I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing it again, but there it was, back to normal.  Back during those first few months of trying, my period was a sign of failure, and I long for it’s absence to signal a pregnancy.  But then I stopped ovulating, it’s absence was an even bigger sign of failure.  Then, much more happily, a sign of pregnancy, and then a sign of my body providing nourishment for Zoe.  And now we’re here, back to normal.  Not an omen, or portent or signal of anything weighty or significant.  Just the normal passage of time.  I welcome the normal right now.

The fertility diet April 25, 2008

I heard a radio program recently with Dr. Walter Willett, one of the authors of the book, “The Fertility Diet.”  It was an interesting discussion, he took a few questions from listeners.  I even submitted two questions online, but they never got to them (they weren’t particularly profound).

Quick disclaimer: I have not read this book.  I hate when people go off (positively or negatively) on a book that they haven’t read, yet here I am writing my own post about something I haven’t read.  But I did listen to the author talk for an hour, so I don’t feel too bad.  I will try to keep my thoughts to what was discussed on the radio show.

At the beginning, and in fact throughout the interview, Dr. Willett emphasized that this “fertility diet” was really intended for those women who have ovulatory problems, specifically PCOS.  Now that’s a significant percentage of women experiencing infertility, but by no means all, in fact, not even half.  So while I appreciate the Dr. Willett was specific in who he was targeting with this book, the title, and a lot of the marketing around the book (read the product description at Amazon.com if you’re interested) don’t make that clear, and that bugs me.

The diet itself seems to be a pretty common sense sort of diet.  Stay away from trans fats.  Eat more polyunsaturated fats.  Make sure you get exercise.  Drink mostly water, though moderate caffeine is probably ok.  Stay away from soda and sugary beverages.  Oh, but one of the different things was to drink full fat rather than low fat dairy.  In fact, he recommended a full serving of full-fat milk, or other dairy such as ice cream, each day.

So on the one hand, I think, great!  As I have PCOS, I’m one of the ones that this diet is targeted at, and if exercise and eating well - and eating ice cream - can get my cycles back (haven’t had a period in over 2 years) without drugs, then I’m all for it.

On the other hand, well, I’m a skeptic.  Particularly of things that claim to be the answer, to be better than other medical treatment, to get you pregnant when other things don’t seem to work.  Especially when it seems so simple and obvious - though not having read the specifics of the diet, it may in fact be neither obvious nor simple.

But back to the first hand, the diet is based on research - the Nurse’s Health study is a study that looked at 18,000 nurses over eight years.  And it is true that being at a healthy weight can help with PCOS.  So maybe there is something to this.

Which takes us to the second hand again, I’m afraid of letting something like this give me false hope.  Especially when I was at a healthy weight when we were having the fertility problems.  And I’m at a healthy weight now and generally do eat a healthy diet that’s heavy on the vegetables and extremely light on the meat, and yet I have ovulatory problems.  So again I’m back to being skeptical that this would make any difference at all for me.

But then one that first hand (which is getting tired of holding so much up), would it really hurt to try this?  The dietary advice is sound.  I like ice cream.  And since I do have PCOS, that increases my chances for type II diabetes, so I should be careful of what I eat.  Plus, I like ice cream.

Ok, last trip to that second hand.  Will this book increase people’s tendency to give unhelpful, and even hurtful advice to infertiles?  Do we need people telling us, in addition to relaxing, that we should just lose a little weight and eat some ice cream?

I think I will probably check the book out of the library and look it over.  And depending on what it says, I’ll probably try to be more mindful of the food I eat.  But no I’m not getting my hopes up.  At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.  And yes, I’d love that bowl of ice cream.

Kindness April 17, 2008

Fighting Windmills posted yesterday about kindness and the ways she practices kindness in her life. One of the things she posted really caught me - in her list of ways she is kind to herself is this: “I tell myself my life story in a positive way.” An idea so simple and lovely, yet so hard in practice. I think that for the most part, I am positive about my life’s story. But I still struggle to tell our infertility story positively with out dismissing the pain and frustration of those who are still battling with infertility. Compared to others, our struggle was not so long, or so difficult, and did end well, and yet, to say it was easy would be a lie. And even to say that it was all worth it in the end feels wrong, though I have said just that on occasion. Of course Zoe was worth the struggle, but almost implies that some children are worth more than others based solely on what their parents did to conceive them, which is utterly ridiculous. Zoe would be just as loved and cherished if we had gotten pregnant that first month. The story will come one day.

But I did want to write my own lists of ways that I practice kindness. And then as I tried to write them out, I found the task surprisingly difficult. I’ve always thought of myself as a kind person, but for every idea I came up with that describes how I am kind, I would come up with at least a half a dozen examples of times that I’d done just the opposite and been unkind. So instead, my lists are ways that I want to be kind to myself and others. I think being explicit about the ways that I want to act can go a long way in reminding me to act that way until it becomes a habit.

Ways I want to be kind to myself:

• Let myself dream and hope
• Eat good, tasty, and (usually) healthy food and  enjoy it
• When I make a mistake, do not dwell on it, but think about how I would like to act differently next time.
• Let myself delight in small pleasures
• Give myself time to myself

Ways I want to be kind to others (particularly those I don’t know)

• Give people the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are acting out of goodness
• Remember when I worked in customer service, and so when working with others in the field, whether I called them, or they called me, treat them kindly and thank that person at the end of the conversation, even if it didn’t go as I hoped.
• Look at and smile at people when I pass them
• Compliment people when they do, say, wear, etc, something that I like
• Do not play the pain olympics game. If something is hurtful for someone, then it is hurtful to them, regardless of what anyone else has been through, and I try to keep that in mind and not compare pain.

Ways want to be kind to my family and close friends

• Give plenty of hugs and kisses and affectionate touches. I guess that could be a way I’m kind to myself, too.
• Tell them how much I love them
• Tell them how much I appreciate them, and thank them for their help
• Try not to complain about the little things
• Give them my full attention when we’re talking
• Be silly when they want silliness, sympathetic when they want a listening ear, and angry for them when they’ve been mistreated

fertile thoughts March 13, 2008

The snow is finally starting to melt, after light rains yesterday and today.  I dislike this time of year, it’s too early for any green here, but what snow is left is dirty and grey, and everything just looks grungy and ugly.  But on our drive home from work I noticed the snow on the farm fields was mostly gone and underneath was the black, black Minnesota soil.  That soil is the first thing I remember noticing when I came to visit Minnesota for the first time, and it still catches me by surprise.  I’ve never seen such rich, dark soil.  Such lovely, fertile soil.

Later this evening, I was talking with a friend about houses.  She asked me if more kids were in our future.  Why is this such a hard question?  Why can’t I simply give the (correct) three little answer, “I don’t know”?  Instead, I always ramble on about how we’re thinking about it, but we haven’t decided, we’re still a little overwhelmed with this parenting thing, and we’d probably want to space our kids out by about 3 years, and oh yeah, ittookalongtimetogetpregnantthefirsttimeandIdon’tknowifIwanttofacethatagain.  Breath.  I wonder sometimes if we’d have the same uncertainty of whether or not to have more kids if we hadn’t had the fertility problems.  I’m sure that if there wasn’t the infertility, I wouldn’t have this looming sense of needing to decide soon, even though I don’t want to be pregnant or even start trying again right away.  I know that there are women who had trouble conceiving their first and then go on to conceive a second easily.  But I haven’t gotten my period again since getting pregnant.  I have no idea whether my body will decide to cooperate or not.  I feel pretty out of touch with how my reproductive bits are doing right now.

This has added to my decision to try to wean Zoe next month.  That will be 18 months of nursing - when Zoe was first born, I had planned on nursing a year and had no context for what it might mean to continue nursing past that point.  I’m glad we’ve continued, though we’re down to just nighttime and morning nursings now.  I’m proud of our nursing relationship, and that we’ve gone so far, but I’ve never felt the love for breastfeeding that some women talk about.  Still, I already know that I’ll miss our nursing sessions a lot and I’m not really looking forward to the weaning.  (But getting to wear normal bras again?  That will rock).

6 word memoir meme February 22, 2008

Got tagged with another meme by FightingWindmills, back a few days ago, and am finally getting around to posting this. In this one you’re supposed to write a 6 word memoir, and illustrate it with pictures, if you’d like.  Here’s the original post about it, with back story, and rules and such.

So here goes my attempt:

____-tinted lenses: nerd, geologist, infertile, parent

I toyed between using a hat analogy (wearing my geologist hat) and the lens analogy (viewing the world through my nerd lenses) and settled on the lenses. I like the idea of my experiences being something that colors my views of the world , rather than just something I wear. Plus, wearing two hats looks silly and three, well, if you can pull that off, I guess that’d be pretty cool, but looking through two lenses still makes sense - you’d see things in tinted with a third color.

When I see through my nerd lenses, I laugh at the nerdy jokes, I see my job at the library as being possibly the coolest job ever, and I see the kids at the cool table and tell myself that I wouldn’t want to be there, while secretly wishing I was. With my geologist lenses, the outcrops along the highway become dangerous distractions, and I pick up rocks and lick them to better see their layers. They also color my views on the environment, giving me a strong love for this world, but also disdain for those who say we need to save the earth. (Earth doesn’t need our saving. Earth’s been here for more than 4 billion years. It’s the ecosystem that supports our lives that we should be worried about.) My infertile lenses tinge pregnancy and new baby announcements with a touch of sadness, but then they have also colored how I view issues as diverse as gay marriage, reproductive rights, family planning and stem cell research. And finally the parent lenses, which I seem to wear all the time now, are giving me glimpses of how the world might look through 16-month eyes (that happen to wear glasses). Little hills are all of a sudden huge mountains that will be great for rolling down. A balloon is the best. toy. ever. A tea cozy is a great hat.

Anyone who wants to give this a try should consider themselves tagged. It’s a lot harder than it originally sounded, 6 words is not very many.  I’d also love to hear what lenses you view the world through.

Eating my words February 5, 2008

After going through my old blog posts for that last post, I decided to go even further back. This is something I wrote back in September, 2000 on a message board about parenting. This was just before Chris and I got married - we knew that we would probably want kids, but not for a few years:

“Chris and I had this discussion recently. We both want children, but neither of us can justify fertility treatments if that was an issue. We’d both rather adopt.

. . .

When we decide to try to have kids, I think I’ll go off the pill and give it a couple of years. I don’t want to be one of those women taking a fertility test and then demanding we have sex right then and there if conditions turn out right to try to get pregnant. I mean, its a good excuse to get some, but I’d rather not need an excuse.”

Ah, how certain I sounded back then. And how very, very wrong. I started charting my temperature the first month we started trying, and started having some testing done 6 months after I started.

It really gives me pause, and reminds me that I cannot be certain of how I’d react in a situation until I’ve actually faced it. That’s worth keeping in mind.

Last thoughts on that bitterness post January 24, 2008

I wanted to clarify on the story in my post about the bitterness seeping back in. The friend who called her midwife before conceiving is a dear friend, and one of the most down-to-earth people I know. I hope that it didn’t come across as bitterness towards her so much as it is envy towards her and bitterness towards the stupidity that is IF and the fact that even when I’m not actively trying IF can still rear its ugly head and dampen my excitement for my friends. I’m well aware that the envy is a funny thing and I know that there are many parts of my life that someone else may find themselves envying. I don’t want to come across as someone who thinks her particular problem is so much worse than everyone else’s.

One of the comments mentioned that people like telling conception / birth stories, and I think it’s the conception stories that really bring up the green-eyed monster. I know they’re generally offered as being part of our story and not (usually) as bragging, but I’m still envious. I want to have a conception story that I can tell with a bit of a wink: that it was a result of making up from a big fight, or happened between church services on Christmas Eve, or even that it was just from good old reliable missionary position sex. When people say “I know what you were doing 9 months before your daughter was born” I want them to be right. But Zoe’s conception happened when Chris went in to the clinic one morning and then I followed about an hour and a half later, and laid down on the doctor’s table, and the nice nurse used a catheter to work the magic. The result of that magic? Wonderful, beautiful, sweet, and recently, pretty silly. I wouldn’t trade her for the best conception story in the world. I just wish I was more at peace with our story. It’s funny too, in some ways I’m very proud of Zoe’s conception - proud that we persevered and that IF didn’t break me. Because sometimes it felt like it would. But that pride hasn’t lent me comfort with the story yet - I haven’t found the right way to tell the story.

The glasses are back January 23, 2008

Zoe got her glasses back yesterday. I was worried that she would resist after a week and a half of freedom from the specs, but she was fine, and her daycare teacher said that she kept laughing big belly laughs throughout the day today. Sad I missed that, but glad she’s good with the glasses.

Thanks to everyone for indulging me with that last post of mine. I feel a little silly - it is true that since we haven’t yet started trying - or even decided if we want to try - that I have no idea if we’ll face IF again. It’s just that after facing it the first time, I’m afraid of getting my hopes up. And I don’t really want to debate primary vs. secondary infertility here and now (again, because I have only as of yet faced primary IF), but I think a difference for me will be not having the overarching fear that I may never be a mom. But that really is getting ahead of myself.