Vacation reading :)

I finished four books during the 11 days I was visiting my parents (and started a fifth!).  Here are some thoughts about each of them, in the order that I read them.

I had been meaning to read "The Baby Matrix" by Laura Carroll for some time now. It's been highly recommended by, among others, Jody Day of Gateway Women & Sue Fagalde Lick of Childless by Marriage, who reviewed it here.

"The Baby Matrix" is all about pronatalism -- the pervasive belief that everyone should have children, and that parenthood is a necessary step on the road to becoming an adult, as well as the ultimate way to lead a fulfilling life. Carroll believes pronatalism is NOT a good thing, and the book explains why, taking some commonly held pronatalist assumptions, debunking them and offering alternative ways of thinking.

Like so many other forms of privilege, pronatalism is something that many (most?) people simply don't see because they are so thoroughly immersed in it.  Often, it's only when you find yourself outside the majority, or what's considered the "norm" ( = infertile, childless, grieving a lost pregnancy, or childfree by choice) that you see it and understand just how pervasive it is.  Carroll is childfree by choice and approaches the subject from this perspective, but there is plenty in her analysis that will be familiar to those of us who are involuntarily childless.

I'm not sure I agree with everything Carroll has to say here.  For example, she believes it should become the norm for couples to adopt as a first choice in family building, instead of having biological children.  As many of us who have tried to adopt or even just investigated the subject of adoption know, there aren't as many children out there available for adoption as some people would like to think...  Should parenting education be mandatory? -- I don't disagree that parenting education would be a good thing, but I think making it mandatory and trying to enforce that would be easier said than done...! 

Overall, though, I think Carroll's central argument -- that our thinking around parenthood & reproduction is outmoded and in dire need of an overhaul -- is valid and well presented. Whether or not you agree with some or all of what she has to say -- and whether or not you're a parent (or hoping to be one someday) -- this book deserves a read and some consideration.  It's thought-provoking and eye-opening, as well as thoroughly researched.

Four stars on Goodreads.

*** *** ***

My D.E. Stevenson online group recently began reading and discussing "Kate Hardy" together.  Unfortunately, "Kate Hardy" is one of many DES novels that are currently out of print, but I was able to find a used copy online at a semi-reasonable price.

First published in 1947, and set in that same post-war time period, the title character is a successful author from London, who impulsively purchases "the Dower House" in the village of Old Quinings from local landowner Richard Morven and moves in, hoping to find some peace and quiet to write in. Morven -- separated from his wife -- is an obvious potential love interest -- but then there's also local war hero Walter Stack, recently returned home and trying to readjust to his modest working-class life as a carpenter. Class, social mobility and post-war social upheaval are major themes here, and while some of the attitudes might seem horribly outdated to our modern way of thinking, these were very real issues being confronted in Britain at the time.

Like most of Stevenson's work, "Kate Hardy" is a fast & pleasant read. The one thing I didn't especially like about it was a subplot with a bit of a supernatural/occult element to it. It was kind of jarring and nasty and felt a bit out of place in the gentle world of DES. I think the story could have done without it.

Three stars on Goodreads.

*** *** ***

I first read "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 10 (!) years ago for Stirrup Queen Mel's Barren B*tches Book Tour. I picked it up again because it's the next selection for my upcoming library book club meeting (which will be the first meeting I've been able to attend since June!), and I'm looking forward to discussing it there.

It's hard to write about this one without giving away key plot points. (Be forewarned if you click over:  my BBBT post about the book -- which discusses it from an ALI viewpoint -- is full of spoilers.) Suffice to say it's about the students at a British boarding school called Hailsham -- in particular, our narrator, Kathy, and her friends Ruth and Tommy -- and what happens to them after they grow up and leave school. Hailsham seems like an ordinary place and the students like ordinary kids.

They're not.

I didn't break down in sobs at the end, as I did the first time I read it, but I did still get tears stinging my eyes. It's pretty powerful, and there's a lot here to chew on.

There's a movie version of the book (released in 2010), with Carey Mulligan as Kathy, Keira Knightley as Ruth and Andrew Garfield as Tommy, but I haven't seen it yet -- have you?

Four stars on Goodreads

*** *** ***

I picked up "Normal People" by Sally Rooney earlier this year, after reading rave reviews online and hearing lots of buzz about it. (Rooney is just 28!! years old!)  "Normal People" is both a romance and coming of age story that chronicles the on-again-off-again relationship between two bright Irish teenagers -- rich but social outcast Marianne and poor but popular Connell (whose mother cleans Marianne's mother's house). Their furtive romance begins when they're both students at the same high school, and continues over a period of several years when they both attend Trinity College in Dublin.

I'll admit this book wasn't quite as knock-my-socks off good as I expected it to be. I didn't feel like I could give it a five-star rating. It was difficult/frustrating for me to watch/read about Connell & Marianne hurting each other over & over again. They keep pushing each other apart, when they so obviously really do love each other. It gets a bit monotonous after a while, in that respect.

But it was still a very good read -- beautifully written, with exquisitely drawn characters that you care about. I could relate to the pair's desire to keep their relationship private, and I loved the ending. I understand the BBC is filming a 12-part television adaptation, due in 2020. It will also be shown on Hulu -- which we don't get here in Canada :( but hopefully it will be shown here too, eventually!

Four stars on Goodreads.

These were books #36, #37, #38 and #39 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 163% (!) of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I have completed my challenge for the year -- currently 15 books beyond my  goal -- and I have surpassed my reading total for 2018 by 12 books.  :)

Barren B*tches Book Brigade: "It Sucked and then I Cried" by Heather B. Armstrong (Dooce)

It's time once again for another session with the Barren B*tches Book Brigade, the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community's virtual book club, organized by Melissa at Stirrup Queens. Participants read the same book and each submit a question to Melissa, who compiles & circulates a list of all the questions. We then answer at least three of them in our blog, and post at or around the same time on the same day. Melissa will be (or already has, by the time you read this!) publishing a master list of the participants on her blog, so you can go there & tour around to see what other people thought of the same book. The selection this time around was "It Sucked and then I Cried," by Heather B. Armstrong, AKA the blogger known as Dooce. I think the first time I heard the name "Dooce" was around the time of the July 2008 BlogHer conference in San Francisco -- when Melissa, Pamela Jeanne, Lori and Monica appeared on a panel to discuss infertility blogging. I was continually searching Google Blog for "BlogHer infertility" that week to see what the lucky bloggers attending the conference had to say about the panel, & it seemed like every other person was writing about attending a session featuring Dooce, or meeting her -- & writing about it in the awestruck tones usually reserved for royalty. "Who the heck is Dooce?" I thought & so I Googled the name to find out. And found the blog. And cracked up. And added the blog to my reader. Those who have followed Heather's blog from the beginning, or at least longer than me, might already have known some of the story told in "It Sucked and then I Cried." The cast of characters was familiar to me -- Heather, the wildly funny lapsed Mormon, prone to CAPITALIZING FOR EMPHASIS; Jon, her handsome & patient husband; Leta, her gorgeous & precocious daughter (who was named after Heather's aunt, who died when she was 5 months old); and Chuck the goofy dog, whose daily photo post is among the highlights of my day.

But the book goes back a few years before I started following Heather's story, starting when she met Jon, got pregnant, and then gave birth to Leta. And what happened next -- namely, Heather's struggle with post-partum depression (PPD).

You would think the last thing a childless infertile deadbabymama would want to read would be a book about someone else's pregnancy and baby. And yes, there were a few moments in the book when I rolled my eyes & thought, "Oh, boo-frickin'-hoo" -- right at the start of the book, for example, when she writes:

"Without my pills I was wildly irrational, and when we did not get pregnant THE FIRST MONTH WE STARTED TRYING, I was convinced that it meant I was barren. I saw the single line on the pregnancy test and fell into a giant wad on the floor because all I could imagine was years and years of fertility treatments that would never work, and if they did work it wouldn't be until I was sixty. And then we'd have quadruplets. And they'd all have fourteen toes. Because I wasn't good enough." (pp. 4-5)

Yeah, right. Cry me a river, lady. (And welcome to my world.) But I forgave her and read on. Because (a) she's damned funny (even the above passage, I'll admit, had the corners of my mouth twitching, even as my eyes were rolling), & (b) I was interested in her story. Some questions & my answers: Dooce talks about her postpartum depression in the book and what it took for her to fight it, what are your thoughts on that and your experiences, if any, with postpartum depression? One of the main reasons why I was interested in this book was that she was going to address her issues of postpartum depression, which I struggled through with both my children. I found her frank style dealing with this issue very helpful and I could relate to her distress. Have you or some one you know dealt with PPD or depression? How did the author’s experience resonate with you? I did not have PPD. I just experienced the typical postpartum grief that one would expect of a stillbirth mother (if there is such a thing). (Although it's entirely possible for deadbabymamas to have PPD.) But a few years after Katie's stillbirth, at the end of my infertility journey, I was stricken with anxiety. Looking back, I can see that I've had anxious tendencies ever since I was a kid -- and the events of the past 11 years have only exacerbated them. Sometimes my mind will get stuck in a groove, like the stereo needle on a worn-out vinyl LP. I start to worry about something & it will gnaw at me for days & even weeks. Health issues, in particular. Over the past 10 years, with the help of Dr. Google, I have diagnosed myself with all sorts of maladies -- cancer in particular (colon, ovarian, brain, esophagal, melanoma...). It almost always turns out to be nothing, or something very common & treatable (skin tags, hemorrhoids, gallstones....!) But going back to my first full-blown anxiety attack: It was late May/early June 2001. I was 40 years old & had just gotten a Big Fat Negative on my third and final IUI with injectables. Dh & I had agonized ever step of the way along our infertility journey, about just how far we were going to go with this thing. Predictably, perhaps, I was more gung-ho than he was to push ahead & take advantage of all that science had to offer. We wound up seeing an infertility counsellor who suggested setting a limit & then stopping (or at least re-evaluating). We agreed to three. And this was it. Done. No more pregnancies for us. Ever. While wrapping my head around this, I started obsessing that I had OHSS. (Long story short: I did not.) A couple of weeks after AF crashed my party, I was having lunch with my college roommate who, conveniently, works in the office tower directly across the street from mine. It had been her birthday a few weeks earlier, & I was treating her at one of our favourite restaurants, in the concourse of the building where dh & I work. I felt funny that morning. My chest felt constricted. My breathing was shallow and rapid. I thought it might be allergies -- it was that time of year for me. Before I went for lunch, I went into the bathroom, took off my bra & stuffed it into my purse, hoping that would make me feel more comfortable. I tried to focus on the conversation, but it seemed to take a lot of effort. I was very aware of my back, straight against the upholstery in the booth. I started feeling like I was going to topple over onto the floor. When the bill came, I tried to reach for it & I couldn't move my hand. My girlfriend noticed. "Is something wrong? Are you OK?" she said. "I'm not feeling that well," I said shakily. Somehow, we managed to pay the bill & walk out into the concourse. We sat on a bench & she lent me her cellphone. I tried calling my RE's office. Could this have anything to do with the drugs I had been taking? Could it be OHSS? Nope, couldn't be, not their problem. If you're feeling bad, go to the hospital. Gee, thanks. I called dh, who worked in the same office building. He was downstairs in a flash. He loaded me into a taxi & told the driver to take us to my family doctor's office. The ride up Yonge Street seemed to take forever. I can remember breathing heavily & feeling terrified, hanging for dear life onto dh's hand. I was sure I was having a heart attack. We stumbled into the dr's office. Thankfully, there were no other patients in the waiting room, & the dr was in. "I'm sorry, I don't have an appointment," I sobbed, "But I don't feel so good." In about 10 seconds flat, the nurse and the receptionist had me laying down in an examination room & clapped a blood pressure cuff on my arm. I can remember the nurse reading off the numbers & while I don't remember what they were, the tone of her voice was urgent. I laid there & sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. The doctor came in, took one look at me and said, "You're having an anxiety attack." He spoke to the receptionst, she left & returned with a pill in her hand. It was an Ativan from her own prescription bottle. I popped it into my mouth under my tongue, as they told me to, & gradually started to feel a fuzziness enveloping me. Dh explained what we'd recently been through. "Well, no wonder," the doctor said. "That's a major life disappointment." Dh told him about the fertility drugs I had been taking. The doctor flipped open his drug encyclopedia, checked them out & asked us about dosages. "That's pretty powerful stuff," he said, shaking his head. As we talked, they kept taking my blood pressure, & it kept falling until it was back to normal levels. They ran an EKG and that was normal too. They even did a cardiac enzyme blood test to humour me. It eventually came back fine. I left with a prescription for Ativan, which we immediately filled at the drugstore across the street. I had to use it several times over the next week or two. It was almost like I was having aftershocks.

This episode helped to convince me that, yes, we truly were done. If I got this wound up over a mere IUI with injectables, how was I going to handle IVF, with its much larger drug dosages, higher costs and greater emotional pressures? Things settled down, until March 2002. There was a convergence of many stressors in my life, including several big projects at work. Perhaps worst of all, a woman I knew from work, whom I'd had lunch with and commiserated with over infertility and loss issues, lost her third consecutive pregnancy -- a little boy at 22 weeks. And my mother was coming. I was taking time off while she was here -- we had a trip planned to Montreal, just the two of us, on the train -- & felt like I was rushing to beat the clock, to get all my work projects finished and get my house into some sort of reasonable order. And, perhaps, I was thinking about her spring break visit four years earlier, when I had just learned I was pregnant. How happy we all were. How much had happened since then. The night before my mother's arrival, I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I was all wound up. I started to cry & to shake, violently, like I had the chills & couldn't warm up, even though dh heaped tons of blankets on me. He finally suggested I take an Ativan, & that helped me to calm down and, eventually, go to sleep. The next morning, he stayed home from work (I already had the day off) and we went to a walk in clinic, but they weren't very helpful, beyond suggesting I get my family doctor to prescribe me some Prozac. (When I asked him about it, he said I didn't need Prozac. I didn't really think I needed it either.) When my mother finally arrived on the train that night, I couldn't hide what had happened to me. I told her about as I sat in the back seat with her & sobbed while she hugged me & spoke to me in that soothing voice that mothers use to make everything better (no matter how old you are). To my amazement, my mother told me me that I probably came by my anxiety quite honestly. She told me there was a period when I was about 9 or 10 when she was having a rough time, emotionally, and took valium. She asked if I remembered how my grandparents had come to stay with us then. My grandparents came to visit at least two or three times a year then, so I honestly didn't remember this particular time. She told me they had given her some money & told her to order herself some new clothes from the Sears catalogue, trying to cheer her up. She told me my grandmother took Ativan from time to time. I could see that -- my grandmother did tend to fret about things. And she said one of my cousins, a kind-hearted and sensitive soul, struggled with anxiety too. Somehow I felt better knowing there might be a genetic component to this. (On my dad's side too, when I thought about it, my grandmother as well as my two aunts also tended to be worrywarts.) I still had a few "aftershocks" for the next few days while my mother was there, & we had to cancel our trip to Montreal -- I didn't want to be sick in a strange city. But after that, things slowly started to get better. I went to a therapist for awhile, and took up yoga. I rarely used my Ativan after that, but it was a comfort to me just knowing it was there in my purse if I needed it. I still struggle with anxiety from time to time, and I suspect that at least some if not all of the "food sensitivities/allergies" that gave me so many problems this past spring were anxiety attacks in a slightly different form. *** *** ***

So that's a long way of saying that yes, Heather's experiences with anxiety, depression and PPD resonated deeply with me. I recognized a lot of myself in her as she lay awake, night after night, waiting for her baby to start crying, unable to turn off the thoughts flooding her brain.

PPD is not something I will discount, even if I've never had it myself. Several years ago, there was an incident in my city that was front-page news for weeks. One morning in August 2000 -- just days after Katie's two-year "anniversary" and in the midst of getting ready for my first IUI with injectables -- a 37-year-old doctor, a first-time mother, left her home in an upscale midtown neighbourhood with her six-month-old baby boy, drove to a nearby subway station, went down to the track level &, cradling her baby, leaped in front of an oncoming train. The baby died instantly; the mother died after nine days in the hospital. It's believed she had stopped taking anti-depressants because she was breast-feeding her son & was afraid they would harm him. They believe she had post-partum psychosis, the most severe form of PPD. That story haunts me still. I can never hear a story about PPD without thinking of that mother & her baby. I am so glad that Heather sought, & got, the help she needed when she did. Heather obviously has a very distinctive writing style that comes across in both her blog and her book. What do you think has made Heather such a famous blogger? Her writing style, honesty, or something else? Do you write with the same passion and honesty that Heather does? I WISH I could write like Heather!! (And there, I used capitals -- so maybe that's a first step, lol.) I think it's a combination of things -- her writing style, her humour, her absolute honesty (especially about herself and her own shortcomings) & her willingness to share the ups and downs of her life with her readers. I keep reading the blog because I want to find out what happens next. She recently gave birth to her second daughter and was candid in talking about how she handled her PPD issues this time around. (And the Daily Chuck photos make my day. I am not much of a pet person, but that dog has personality.) I was not familiar with this blogger before I read this book. I did like her sense of humor. However, I did not feel like this made me know her or her blog any better. Reading this book, do you find that you want to read her blog, or if you have read her blog, is this is a good representation of her? Having read the blog before the book, I would say it is a good representation of her and how she writes. The book, obviously, tells more of a whole, coherent story, whereas the blog (like many of our blogs) talks about what's happening in her life from day to day. What 2-3 specific situations, quotes or stories did you most relate to throughout the book? (I found myself laughing or becoming quite reflective at times because something Heather had written about struck a chord for me and I’m curious if the other readers related to her book in this way). I think I was most touched by the part of the book set in the mental hospital where Heather had herself committed. I was particularly touched by her descriptions of, and gratitude towards, her doctor:

"He had read my chart -- imagine that! He had done some research! On me! His patient! And within five minutes of talking to me he determined why and how the meds I'd been taking weren't working... I could tell that he wanted to see me get better, and knowing that he cared, even just a little bit, made me feel SO MUCH BETTER." (p. 193)

And a little later:

"At one point in our conversation he set down his pen and paper, paused, and then looked at me and said, "You poor woman. I am so sorry for what you have been through." And I cried. I cried hard. My God, what I had been through." (p. 196)

In my pregnancy loss support group, on blogs & message boards, I hear so many horror stories about doctors and nurses, whose attitudes toward their vulnerable patients seem to range from clueless to indifferent to brusque to criminal. Doctors who have clearly not read the chart before walking into the examining room. Emergency room nurses who have handed buckets to miscarrying women & pointed them toward the bathroom. Who wouldn't want to have a doctor like Heather's?? Competence combined with empathy -- someone who knows what we've been through and tells us that, no, we're not imagining things, it really does suck that much. That's quite a lethal combination.

Another part of the book that struck a chord in me was the saga of the kitchen renovation. We did a bathroom renovation last fall that was far less uneventful than Heather & Jon's kitchen reno. We had dh's stepbrother do the work for us -- and I wasn't eight months pregnant. But it was a big disruption in our lives nevertheless.

Our kitchen could stand a makeover too -- if not a full-scale renovation, then certainly a refresh (restain the cupboards, change the hardware, do a backsplash, etc.). But after the bathroom reno, I wasn't sure I was up to even that. I'm still not sure I am. Just reading about Heather's reno made me exhausted. If you are in a relationship right now, do you relate to how Heather talks about her husband, Jon, and what a great father and life partner he is? From what she described about Jon, what qualities do you have or want in your life partner?

I do relate -- because I have a pretty great husband myself. : ) He has his faults, of course, & he has own struggles with anxiety, and sometimes we feed off each other, which is not a good situation. I like to think that I am a pretty strong person and that I can handle a lot of stuff on my own. But whenever I have needed him to take care of me, as in the case of my first major anxiety attack, he has always been there. I knew that childless/free living was an option I could live with, because we already had a pretty good life together before we ever started ttc, and we could still have a wonderful life together with just the two of us. He would have been (he is!) a wonderful father, and I sometimes get sad seeing him having fun with other people's children, knowing that. But we have each other, and that is a lot more than many people have already. Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.com). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

Summer reading & movie: "The Time Traveler's Wife"

"The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger has been in my "to read" pile for some time now, & I wanted to read it before the movie came out last weekend, so I took it on vacation with me & devoured it in about two days flat. The book encompasses many of my favourite themes -- romance, time travel, infertility/loss. In fact, it was a previous Barren B*tches Book Tour selection -- unfortunately, before I started blogging.

I loved this book. I LOVE a good time travel story. I loved the idea of a love that endures, despite all sorts of obstacles. I love the "he said/she said" structure, although all the jumping around in time took some getting used to.

I love the way infertility & loss were addressed in the book -- how Claire sees babies everywhere, how Henry tries but just can't summon up the same level of determination to pursue this goal at all costs (so true to form in my own experience, not to mention so many other couples I know). I felt badly for Claire when Henry makes a unilateral decision to have a vasectomy. When she still wound up pregnant, despite the odds, I had two reactions: glee, and eye-rolling ("well, of course..."). And while I've never had a subsequent pregnancy (or multiple losses), the tentative way the couple approached each new subsequent pregnancy rang true.

Beyond the infertility & loss aspect of the book, I could relate very well to the whole idea of waiting, the idea of making the most of the time you have with the people you love while they're with you.

That's because dh & I carried on a long-distance romance for three of the four years we knew each other before we got married. We met at the University of Manitoba in the fall of 1981, when I was in my third year of a four-year honours arts program. Having completed a science degree at university closer to home, he came to my school to begin a pre-master's degree in immunlogy. That year, though, he got the idea to do his MBA instead. He took his GMAT & began applying to several schools -- he had to return home in the summer of 1982 -- but of course, he'd be coming back to Manitoba, where I was!

Unfortunately, he didn't get accepted at our school. It was either Dalhousie, in Nova Scotia on the east coast-- about as far away from me as he could go in Canada -- or Windsor, across the river from Detroit, which was slightly closer to home for him. He chose Windsor, and thus began our long-distance romance, while I spent the next year (1982-83) finishing off my degree in Manitoba.

That spring, I applied to journalism programs at several schools, & got into the University of Western Ontario in London (Ontario). So from May 1983 to April 1984, we were just a two-hour train ride apart -- heavenly!! We spent most weekends together, sometimes travelling another two hours in the other direction to visit his family in Toronto. By then, we knew we were going to get married, but the logistics of it all took some figuring out. Neither of us was rebel enough to buck our families' conventions & move in together (especially with no money, no jobs...), so at the end of the school year, I returned to my family in Manitoba & he to his in Toronto. We both found jobs and began working, saving our money and planning our wedding for July 1985.

In some ways, it seems like just yesterday, but in other respects, it was a different world then. Neither of us had money -- & what we did have we were saving for the wedding -- so aside from my year in Ontario (when I spent a small fortune on train tickets), our visits were far & few between. Long distance was more expensive then (& there were no cellphones), so we limited our calls to once, maybe twice a week. (One month, my bill was well over $100 -- a small fortune to me at that time. I didn't want to ask my parents for more money, and I was working a couple of nights a week as a waitress, so I hustled for tips like crazy to get enough money to pay it off.) There was no Internet, no e-mail, no instant messaging. In between phone calls, we wrote letters -- handwrote, on paper -- & sent them by snail mail.

I guess we learned patience -- and just how strong our relationship really was -- which stood us in good stead some 10 years later, when we began ttc.

*** *** ***


Dh & I went to see "The Time Traveler's Wife" The Movie on Sunday afternoon. It was beautifully filmed (on location in & around Toronto) and both Rachel McAdam & Eric Bana are gorgeous to look at. (And yes, true to the book, Henry leaves his clothes behind when he time travels.)

I cried in all the places you might expect -- Claire's miscarriages, Alba's birth, New Year's Eve. And I cried when Henry meets a 10-year-old Alba at the zoo, especially when she hugs him & says, "I love you, Daddy." (When she told him she's 10, dh murmured, "Of COURSE you're 10!" -- Katie would be 10 right now.)

And I cried at the very end, even thought it's different from the way the book ended. It was a reminder that love never dies, and the people we love stay with us always, even when we can't see them anymore (but it didn't pack quite as powerful a punch as the final scene of the book, I thought)(which also had me bawling). Overall, I haven't cried that much at a movie in a long time.

And yet -- I didn't walk out of the theatre feeling I had just seen a really great movie. It was good, but it didn't knock my socks off. Also, unlike the book, they don't indicate what the dates & ages are in each scene, so it's a little harder to follow what's happening. Dh (who has not read the book) was clearly lost in a few places & I had to explain to him what was happening.

Oh well, it was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon (especially since it's sweltering hot & humid outside again). Having attended two chick flicks of my choice in a row ("Julie & Julia" & this one), though, dh says he's picking the next one, lol.

Barren B*tches Book Tour: "Moose" by Stephanie Klein

Gather round the campfire, everyone (& let's sing a round of Kumbaya while we're at it for Melissa, lol). It's time for another meeting of the Barren B*tches Book Brigade, the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community's virtual book club, organized by Melissa at Stirrup Queens. Participants read the same book and each submit a question to Melissa, who compiles & circulates a list of all the questions. We then answer at least three of them in our blog, and post at or around the same time on the same day. Melissa maintains the master list of participants on her blog.

I asked everyone to gather round the campfire because our selection this time is Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein, who blogs at Stephanie Klein's Greek Tragedy. The very thought of reading a book about summer camp while on my summer vacation seemed perfect, and while I must confess I never went to camp (let alone fat camp), I enjoyed this book a lot. I could practically smell the damp towels & bathing suits hanging up to dry and feel grains of sand between my toes as I read.

I always wanted to go to camp... but somehow it never materialized. Cost was probably a factor for my parents (and of course, if they sent me, they'd have to send my sister too), and we often spent several weeks during the summer at my grandmother's in Minnesota. Plus, where I grew up on the Canadian Prairies, very few people I knew went away to camp, let alone for the whole summer. Those who did go usually went to a camp sponsored by their church, or the 4-H Club, and rarely for more than week. When they got home, they'd tell us about all the cool kids they met (especially the boys) & teach us all the new campfire songs they'd learned.

Nevertheless, I got my camp fix through books (I particularly remember "Donna Parker: Mystery at Arawak") & movies -- like "Meatballs," "Little Darlings," and, most of all, the original version of "The Parent Trap" with Hayley Mills playing twins, separated as babies by their divorcing parents (Brian Keith & Maureen O'Hara), who meet by accident at summer camp and hatch a plot to switch places and then reunite their parents. I have seen that movie umpteen times -- first at the Saturday matinee when I was a kid in the late 1960s, and many times since then on TV & video. And I never get tired of it. (The remake, with a young Lindsay Lohan in the role of twins, and Dennis Quaid & the late Natasha Richardson as the parents, came out the same summer (1998) that I lost Katie. I went to see it with my mother, post-stillbirth, and while it was a pleasant diversion, I still prefer the original.)

Enough about my own camp experiences (or lack thereof). On to some of the questions.

What from your childhood led to a positive body image? And what, if anything, caused you to struggle with your own body image?

Weight was never an issue for me when I was growing up -- although I know I would have told you differently back then. No special pressures, just the normal pressures to be thin that any teenaged girl feels -- although I think the pressures have gotten far, far worse in recent years than they were when I was growing up in the 1970s. I haven't read my old diaries in years, but I well remember writing agonized comments to the effect of, "I am now 108 pounds!!! EEEEKKKK!!! I MUST LOSE SOME WEIGHT!!!" I look at pictures of myself now (or at the tiny pair of patched up cutoff denim shorts I wore in high school that still occupy the bottom drawer of the my old dresser at my parents) & I want to weep. I want to shake that girl by the shoulders & say, "Idiot, don't you realize how many girls would kill to have your body??" (Including your older self??)

(My younger sister was always the chubby one when we were children. Around the time we went into junior high, she suddenly grew taller and slimmed down, & has stayed thin ever since then. Until just a few years ago, she could still wear a pair of jeans she'd had in high school. B*tch.) (lol)

Wearing pretty clothes was an ego boost for me, as was getting to wear makeup, when I got older. Bodywise, my hair was always a source of pride for me (still is, I will admit) -- I have yet to encounter a hairdresser who doesn't comment in amazement over how thick it is.

If anything was an issue for me as a child, appearance-wise, it was my glasses. I had to get them when I was 7 years old, in Grade 2. At first, I thought getting glasses was kind of cool. I even wore sunglasses around the house as "practice" until my new glasses arrived. The novelty very quickly wore off, however. I can remember showing up at my maternal grandmother's house that summer wearing my new glasses, & sitting in the kitchen with my mother & aunts, fighting back tears while, outside, my cousins gathered at the screen door, giggling and pointing at me (led by the boy cousin closest in age to me, whose main pleasure in life always seemed to be teasing me).

(Funny, but for all that he tormented me while we were growing up, I'm very fond of my cousin. Of all my cousins on that side of my family, he's the one I wish I could see more often. He has three kids now, and both he & his mom have often said how much his oldest daughter, now a teenager, reminds them of me at the same age -- quiet, moody, a complete bookworm. I consider it poetic justice/karmic revenge against him, lol.)

I wore glasses for 10 years until I was 17, the summer before I went into Grade 12, and my optometrist (and my parents) finally yielded to my pleadings & let me get contact lenses (I still needed a pair of glasses as backup, though). I wrote a bit about my history with contacts, and what they did for me, here. Reading about Stephanie's first day back at school from fat camp reminded me a little of my first day of Grade 12 in September 1978, wearing my contacts and the "Annie Hall" style outfit I'd acquired with the money I'd earned working that summer -- an ankle-length pleated skirt, a grey flannel blazer over a white pinstriped blouse, salmon-coloured sweater vest and black skinny men's tie. And high-heeled, high-top boots. I didn't get quite the reaction Stephanie did, but I knew people were looking at me, and that I looked good. It gave me confidence.

*** *** ***

But somewhere after high school, as I went to university, got married and began to work, the pounds gradually began to creep on. For many people, seeing a picture of themselves is the wake-up call they need. For me, that picture was taken on my 30th birthday. I realized, looking at it, that there was nothing I could do about turning 30, but I could do something about how I looked. I promptly enrolled in the next session of Weight Watchers at Work held in my office building. That was February 1991, and by October, I had reached my goal weight (and even lost a few more pounds after that). At my lowest point, I was down 35 pounds from the previous winter. Yay me!!

I continued to attend the meetings for quite awhile afterward, as a Lifetime Member. At some point, though, I stopped tracking my food intake and stopped attending meetings. I started getting careless. The pounds began to creep on again. By the time I got pregnant in 1998, I was 15-20 pounds above goal weight; when I got pregnant, I gained another 15-20. After my daughter was stillborn, the weight never came off, it just sort of eventually rearranged itself. ; ) And I added a few more pounds on top of that. I tried going back to Weight Watchers a year or so after my pregnancy, while we were going through infertility treatments, but my heart just wasn't in it.

January 2007, I decided to try again. When I stepped on the scale (which is always a good 5 lbs heavier than the one I have at home), I was horrified: I was more than 50 pounds above my goal weight. I've continued to stick with WW (& shell out more & more money), as I think it's the most medically healthy/sensible & realistic plan that's out there. I've lost about 14 lbs since then, and I do look & feel better than I did. But it's been a constant battle -- one step forward, two steps back. It seems like I keep gaining & relosing the same three or four pounds, over and over again.

Losing weight at 30 was one thing, losing it at 48 is quite another. When I lost the weight at 30, I barely exercised at all. I did many the things they tell you to do, like drinking water, using low or non-fat dairy products and salad dressing, etc. And it worked.

These days, I'm still drinking my water & using low-fat products. (I even managed to avoid chocolate for NINE WHOLE WEEKS this spring when I was having problems with food reactions/hot flashes/anxiety/whatever the heck it was.) I don't deprive myself, but I try to eat healthy foods in reasonable quantities & minimize the treats (although I'm not always successful). I'm still not big on exercising, but I've taken yogalates classes, bought a pedometer, and tried conscientiously to walk more.

But it just hasn't had the same impact. I've had to come to the realization that I am never going to be the goal weight I was when I was 30, ever again. The size 8 Gap denim mini-skirt that I fit into for about five minutes back then, and then hung in my closet for the day when I could fit into it again, has long since gone to Goodwill. And that's OK.

But I'd still like to reach the top of my goal range. I think that's a more realistic goal weight for me these days, and still a healthy one. It would mean losing at least 25 more pounds, though, and I know it's much easier said than done. But I'm trying...

How did it make you feel when Stephanie's dad laughed at her being called a 'Moose'? Were you parents/guardians supportive of you during hard times/bullying/weight issues or did they just laugh at you like Stephanie’s father?

I felt badly for Stephanie, reading that. My parents weren't as uber-involved in the minute details of my life as today's "helicopter parents" seem to be. And if anyone got involved, it would most likely be my mother, who handled the minutae of our day to day lives, while my father worked.

But I did have some issues with bullies/mean girls, especially in my middle school years, & I can remember overhearing my mother saying to my father that she might have to have a talk with my chief tormentor's mother. Part of me thought, "No, no!" because I was afraid the bullying would only get worse. But it also felt good to know my mom believed there was a problem & didn't just dismiss my concerns -- and that she'd go to bat for me if she felt I needed the help. My sister & I were generally good students, but there were a few points during our school careers when my mother went to the school to talk to one of our teachers about concerns -- hers, ours or both.

In the author's note that precedes the rest of the book, Stephanie Klein writes: "I always hear that you have to let the past go, have to live in the moment, focus on your now. I'm able to move forward because I keep my past so close." I loved this statement -- not only because I, like Klein, am a packrat (who just finished going through a stack of boxes from my mother's crawl space that hadn't been opened in almost 30 years) -- but also because, so often, those of us in the ALI community are encouraged by well-meaning outsiders to "move on" with our lives. Thoughts? How does this statement apply to your own life, particularly regarding ALI? Do you find yourself wanting to keep your past close, or to let it go?

This was my question, and you can read about my crawl space exploits, here and here. ; ) As you can tell, I quite agree with Stephanie.

With regard to infertility & stillbirth -- as you can also tell, this is true for me in this part of my life as well. It's been 11 years since we lost Katie, 8 years since we made the decision to live childfree. But I still think about infertility & pregnancy loss issues every day, generally, as well as my own situation. I'm still hanging out on message boards for childless-not-by-choice women. I started this blog not quite two years ago. We're still facilitating the support group we attended after Katie's stillbirth, although we will be stepping down at the end of this year.

I wouldn't say that we haven't "moved on," because I think we have both come a long way since those dark days of 1998-2001. But I also think -- I know -- what happened to us changed us both forever. It is part of who we are now. It's impossible, for me, anyway, to completely "let go."

In the first chapter, Klein talks about her reluctance to gain weight during her twin pregnancy as a result of her childhood obesity. How have body image issues affected you during infertility? Pregnancy? Post-pregnancy?

Body image wasn't a problem for me during pregnancy (not that I remember anyway). I was so thrilled to be pregnant, after 2 & 1/2 years of trying to conceive. I took pride in my growing belly, and loved shopping for maternity clothes. I did find it a little disconcerting the day I needed my husband's help to put on a pair of socks, though, lol. ; ) And I did develop acne on my back. When my mother was here after we lost Katie, she used to dab the zits with peroxide for me to help dry them up, & then with vitamin E oil to heal the scars.

I know that many women have postpartum weight issues. I'm sorry. But you have a real live baby to show for it.

Try being postpartum after losing a baby. You're already feeling rotten enough about your body letting you down. You feel like cr@p, and you feel like you LOOK like cr@p. Not to mention that you may still look pregnant. If there's anything worse than being asked if you're pregnant when you're not, it's being asked if you're pregnant when not only are you not, you just lost a baby. And if there's anything worse than THAT, it's being asked if you're pregnant when you're not, you've lost a baby, you desperately want another one and you're finding you can't get pregnant again. (Been there, done that. Unfortunately.)

I've talked about postpartum weight issues with other babyloss mothers, in real life and online, who are also struggling to lose their pregnancy weight. One theory put forward was this: part of the reason it's so difficult for us to lose weight is that, somewhere in our subconscious, we may not really want to. Keeping the weight is a way of keeping our pregnancies, and our precious babies, with us. Letting go of the weight means letting go of our bodies the way they were when we had our babies with us. I dont' think that's the whole answer, but I think there may be a grain of truth in there somewhere.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: It Sucked, And Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce).

Barren B*tches Book Brigade: "Navigating the Land of If" by Melissa Ford

It's time for a Very Special Session of the Barren B*tches Book Brigade, the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community's virtual book club, organized by Melissa at Stirrup Queens. Participants read the same book and each submit a question to Melissa, who compiles & circulates the question list. We then answer at least three of them in our blog, and post at or around the same time on the same day. Melissa maintains the master list of participants on her blog.

The selection this time around was "Navigating the Land of IF: Understanding Infertility and Exploring Your Options" by the Stirrup Queen herself, Melissa Ford.

I probably brought a slightly different perspective to reading this book than most if not all of the other tour participants. My infertility journey ended eight years ago this month, when my third and final IUI with injectable drugs failed, and I found myself staring at childless/free living in the face. It's been a long time since I cracked open a guide to infertility, and in fact, I have given away most of the ones I had in my collection.

However -- infertility & loss continue to hover over my life, Banquo's ghost-like, which is why, even after all these years, I continue to blog about it & read infertility blogs. Mel encouraged me to start my blog, and is a fabulous "den mother" for the ALI community. I love reading her blog and so naturally wanted to read her book, not to mention support her in return for all that she has given to me, and to all of us. Also, she "interviewed" me via e-mail about childfree living as part of her research for this book, so naturally I was curious to see how the book (and that chapter in particular) turned out.

Even though I found some sections more interesting than others (as I'm sure most readers did, or will), I loved this book, and I wish it had been around when I was going through treatment. Most infertility guides tend to be a tad impersonal and on the clinical side. Not this one. If Vicki Iovine didn't have the market cornered on the "Girlfriend's Guide" moniker, I would say a good alternate title for this book would be "The Girlfriend's Guide to Infertility," because that's how I view this book -- as though it's written by a slightly older/wiser girlfriend who'd already been there/done that and is filling you in on what to expect when you're NOT expecting and trying to do something about it.

It's a book I would definitely recommend to anyone going through infertility. It would also be a fabulous book to read if you're a fertile person hoping to gain some insight into what a friend or family member is going through and how you can best support them.

On to some of the questions. Some of the questions were similar and I've answered them together. (I wish I had had more time to spend with this post, as I was away for part of the weekend, but here goes...!)

As part of a couple with male factor infertility, I was hoping for a clearer view into some of the procedures associated with it. What is something you wish was covered in the book or what knocked your socks off on how it was explained?

Navigating the Land of If covered many different aspects of infertility. What topic do you wish had been added or expanded on?

I'm not sure whether I found anything in particular lacking... I loved the whole chapter on the 8 factors to consider and the decision tree & choice web processes. Some really brilliant, practical advice in there.

Also, Mel's description of living childfree as "the only path that is entirely within your control" gave me some pause. It's hard to think of it that way, because infertility is all about loss of control, and so many of us who are now living childfree don't always feel that we really "chose" this path -- particularly as compared to someone who never wanted children in the first place -- but it is essentially true.

Chapters four and five cover the issues of telling others about your IF struggles and handling the comments if you do. What approach (proactive, reactive, evasive, or lying) have you used with your close friends and family? If you have told, have you gotten any surprising reactions, and how have you handled those? If you haven't told, has this omission created any friction as people make assumptions or comments about your lack of pregnancy?

I actually wrote a long post last year -- in response to a discussion on Melissa's blog, while she was writing this book -- on the whole subject of "telling," here.

Did you read the book from front to back, or did you turn immediately to a certain chapter? If so, which chapter? Are there any chapters that you purposely avoided?

Did you read the whole book, or skip the parts that you feel don’t apply to your situation? For example, if you are not entertaining adoption or living child-free as options right now, did you skip those parts? If you read them, did you discover anything about those options that you hadn’t understood prior to reading the book?

It was enlightening to tour the neighborhoods that WEREN'T mine. How was it for you to walk through neighborhoods, guided by Melissa, where you suspected you would never take up residence?

I'll confess -- I went straight for the chapter on childfree living. So very few books on infertility say much about the childless/free option beyond a few paragraphs -- so I'm always interested to see how the subject is covered in any new IF book that I come across. (Read further if you want to know what I thought of that particular chapter!)

I didn't skip or purposely avoid any chapters -- but obviously the chapters about the routes we did not take or consider were of lesser interest to me. I think that's a natural response for any reader to a book of this sort. That said, yes, I did learn a lot about options that we had either dismissed as not being right for us, or not really considered. Even just 8 years ago, options like donor eggs and surrogacy were not as well known or understood, and I learned a lot on these topics in particular.

What part of the Land of IF are you currently residing in, & do you think Melissa paints an accurate picture of the situation there?

This was my question. I am currently (and 99.9% likely permanently) living childfree after loss & infertility. On p. 252, early in this chapter, Melissa writes "No other path out of the Land of If is less understood, more feared or harder to step onto than child-free living after infertility." She had me there at hello, lol -- absolutely nailed it there, and throughout the rest of this section.

The book "Sweet Grapes" -- one of the first and probably still the best-known book on living childfree after infertility -- irked me in its insistence that one must simply "choose" to be "childFREE" (as opposed to childLESS) and all will be well. Melissa actually makes the same point but in a much less irritating way (or maybe I've just mellowed in the years since I read "Sweet Grapes"...) -- that in order to make it a real choice, as opposed to a "default," you have to take an active role in carving out your future.

Melissa covered so many aspects of living childfree. She makes a point of distinguishing between living childfree by choice and childfree after infertility, and also between taking a break and actually choosing to live childfree. She suggests a trial period (something the infertility counsellor we saw suggested to us). She talks about how the childfree are frequently made to justify their choice, and what happens when one partner wants to live childfree and the other doesn't (a situation I have witnessed in several online forums over the past 8 years).

The only point Melissa made in the childfree chapter that I disagreed with was the very last tip on p. 261, about the necessity of getting rid of (preferably giving away to charity) all hopeful pregnancy & baby-related paraphernalia. I bristled at the very idea -- perhaps you can tell that I still have all my maternity clothes hanging in my closet?? (Not to mention that I am a pack rat who has a very hard time parting with anything, lol.)

But reading this passage again, I realized my situation -- as someone who was pregnant and had begun preparations, albeit very preliminary ones, for an actual, specific baby -- is again somewhat different from someone who went through infertility treatment & never got pregnant. What I have in my closet are keepsakes, mementos of my baby's brief existence, not things purchased in the hopes of a "someday" pregnancy or baby. I'm not sure whether Melissa would think my situation would fall into a different category (oh, Mel...??). Even so, I'm still not convinced that an infertile turning to childfree living needs to give away absolutely every reminder of what she had once hoped for. The infertility will remain with you always, even if you rid yourself of these physical evidence of this period in your life.

I did actually (after several years of living childfree) shred all of my BBT charts (although I still have my notebooks from the three IUIs I went through with notes on my follicle counts, dosages, etc., as well as my thoughts & feelings on the whole process) and donated most (although not all) of my pregnancy, child care and infertility-related books to charity. I can't say I regret it. But I think I'll be keeping this one for quite awhile, lol.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Moose by Stephanie Klein.

Book club post, coming up...

Just as an FYI, I'm going to be busy for the next few days over the weekend, & may not have much computer time... so I may or may not be able to post my contribution to the Barren B*tches Book Tour on Monday as scheduled. If you're here looking for a book club post from me and this post is what you find, check back again shortly! Thanks!

Barren B*tches Book Brigade: "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant

Gather around, book lovers, for another session of the Barren B*tches Book Brigade, the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community's virtual book club, organized by Melissa at Stirrup Queens. Participants read the same book and each submit a question to Melissa, who compiles & circulates the question list. We then answer at least three of them in our blog, and post at or around the same time on the same day. Melissa maintains the master list of participants on her blog.

Our selection this time was "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant -- based (somewhat loosely) on the Biblical story of Dinah in Genesis 34. I was not quite sure what to expect from this novel. But with its stories of mothers and daughters, sisters and grandmothers, aunts and cousins, grief and loss (including the losses of many, many babies), infertility and conception, friendship and rivalry, vengeance and forgiveness, this was definitely a novel worthy of the BB Book Brigade.

While I am not a Biblical scholar by any means, I'm probably more familiar with the Bible & its stories than a lot of younger people today. When I was in elementary school, we had Bible stories read to us every morning after singing O Canada & reciting the Lord's Prayer -- and this was in PUBLIC school, in 1960s & 70s westen Canada. (Definitely not done today, of course... not even O Canada in some schools, apparently.) And of course I attended Sunday school on Sundays, & Anglican Junior Auxiliary -- or, if there wasn't an Anglican church where we lived, United Church Explorers once a week after school.

Anyway, I remembered the stories of brothers/rivals Jacob & Esau (the twin sons of Isaac & Rebecca, grandsons of Abraham & Sarah), and Jacob's wives, the sisters Leah & Rachel, and, of course, Jacob's son Joseph & his many bretheren (as made famous in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat") -- but I drew a blank when it came to Dinah.

Dinah -- pronounced Dee-nah, not Dye-nah (as in "someone's in the kitchen with...") -- was Jacob's only daughter and a sister to Joseph (by different mothers). "The Red Tent" is Dinah's story -- as imagined/interpreted by the author. (If you read the scant few paragraphs in the Bible about Dinah in Genesis 34, you'll find quite a different tale.) Dinah grows up in rural Canaan, living in a tent community with her extended family, working the fields and tending the livestock.

The Red Tent is where the women of the community spend their menstrual period, their childbirth labours and a month or two after giving birth, bonding with the other women. (Diamant admits there is no historical evidence that women of the Bible used a menstrual tent, although they were common in the pre-modern world.) There is rivalry among Jacob's four sister-wives, but also support, and Dinah learns the craft of midwifery from her aunt Rachel, becoming a skilled midwife in her own right as an adult. While Jacob has vowed to follow the one God of his father and grandfather, the women of his tribe still carry out pagan rituals based on the lunar cycles. It's hard to know sometimes exactly what is fact & what is fiction, but it's a fascinating and richly drawn portrait of early Biblical-era life.

Shortly after Dinah's coming of age, she falls in love with a prince of the city -- unleashing a horrific chain of events that dramatically changes her life, and those of her family members, forever. Ultimately, however, despite the terrible losses she endures, Dinah eventually finds happiness and carves out a new life for herself in Egypt.

Here are the questions I've chosen to answer:

"The sight of the baby in Bilpah's arms, day after day, shattered Rachel's confidence again. She was only the aunt, the bystander, the barren one." Did you find the author sympathetic or disparaging of Rachel's barren state? Did she convincingly relate the experience of being barren?

There were a number of questions related to Rachel's infertility/recurrent pregnancy losses, & how it affected her relationships with her sisters. Perhaps someone who has never experienced infertility or loss might find Rachel's reactions somewhat hard to understand. But:

"Rachel could not smile at her sister while her own body remained fruitless... Rachel tried every remedy, every potion, every rumored cure... Rachel grew quiet. She stopped attending Inna and did not rise from her blanket until Leah shook her and insisted she help the rest of the women in their work. Only then would Rachel spin or weave or work the garden, but wordlessly and without a smile."

Sounds pretty accurate to me!

Which character did you relate to most in the story -- Rachel, Leah or Dinah? Why?

Hmmm. Truthfully, I could relate to all three of them, in different ways. I'm the oldest of two sisters, & I recognized myself in Leah, the responsible oldest sister. (I always felt sorry for the Biblical Leah, being passed off as her younger, prettier sister -- the one Jacob really wanted -- at the altar by her conniving father, knowing her husband was expecting to find someone else under the veil.)

While I hope I'm not quite as flighty as young Rachel sometimes seemed, I most certainly identified with her struggles with infertility and loss, and her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy and rivalry with her more fertile sisters.

But I think I probably identified with Dinah most, especially in the Egypt part of the book, toward the end. Dinah was not childless -- she had a son, but he was mostly raised by others, so she was virtually childless. Estranged from her birth family after the violent death of her husband, an onlooker in her son's life, she nevertheless (eventually) manages to create a new life for herself in Egypt, with new friends, a thriving career as a midwife and, eventually, finding new love and happiness with a master carpenter in the Valley of the Kings. When she dies, she is not alone, but with her husband and friends, people who love her.

I've written several times about my struggle with the fact that I won't have any children to remember me or leave my possessions to -- but Dinah's son tells his wife about his birth mother, and the niece she met only once, anonymously, names her own daughter Dinah after the aunt she had heard about. It's a message of hope that resonated deeply with me -- that one can rise above loss and tragedy and still lead a happy, meaningful life -- that people will remember you and that you will remain a part of them (even if they are not your own children).

The family trees shown at the beginning of the book don't include miscarriages, stillbirths, or children who died before weaning. Given the rate of infant mortality at the time, this was a logical method for "counting" children. Now that it's much more rare (but still too common) to lose children both before and after birth, at what point do you think children should be added to the official family tree? At what point should they be added to the parents' personal tally of children?

At whatever point they want to add them. : ) Of course, my personal belief is that all children should be included, whether they live or die -- although I will admit that when people ask me if I have children, my answer is almost always, "No." And I know my mother tells other people she has no grandchildren (which always hurts to hear, although I understand why she would say it -- for the same reason I do). But I would be terribly hurt if Katie were left out of any "official" family trees/counts.

I have seen many subsequent birth announcements in the newspaper, from previous clients of our support group. Some will mention the child they lost, among the relatives welcoming the new baby, which makes me smile. A few times, though, I've read "Husband and wife welcome their first child..." -- hmmmm. (Didn't they learn anything in group??) But it's really none of my business, is it?

In the book, women's relationships to higher power(s) are complicated. Jacob brings with him the one God, but that is not any of the gods of their childhoods. And it is to the gods of her family that Rachel calls with her simple and desperate ultimatum: "Give me children or I will die." In the context of your own relationship (or lack thereof) to a higher power, do you feel entitled to the same kind of an ultimatum?

I've never been one to issue ultimatums to God. I've never thought of him as an Old Testament type of wrathful God, mind you, but I've always been of the opinion that you catch more flies with sugar than vinegar. ; ) When it comes to conversations with God, I've always been more of the on-your-knees "please-please-please-please" beggar sort. And when my prayers weren't answered: "You & I are going to have a REALLY good talk about this someday...."

I've never believed that "everything happens for a reason" or that "God needed an angel," or any of the other religious platitudes that many bereaved mothers learn to love to hate. I do believe there is a God, and that he hears our prayers -- but sometimes, the answer is no.

After Katie's stillbirth, someone recommended "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner (a Jewish rabbi who lost his teenaged son to progeria) to me. I found it enormously comforting.

Dinah is awaited and welcomed by all of Jacob's wives. The one daughter, the one to carry all their stories, all their voices. In the context of the book it is a literary device that allows the author to tell us stories of Jacob's wives from their own perspectives. But what does it speak of to you? In your own life, have you felt, as Dinah does, a carrier of living memory? Do you feel your own voice to be better protected in the age of the blog, or do you see an enduring need for connection across generations?

Have you felt yourself to be a carrier of living memory? Oh, absolutely. Maybe because I am into genealogy & history (not to mention scrapbooking), but I have always loved hearing & preserving personal stories from the past. This story reminded me of how history has so often been told from the male perspective, and how many women's voices are missing throughout the ages. I feel so very fortunate to have copies of letters written by my great-great grandmother and her daughters, and I feel an obligation to ensure those stories are preserved and passed down to future generations -- if not for my own children, then my cousins' children and their descendants (someone is bound to find it of interest). It makes ancestors more real as a people to be able to read about their day to day lives in their own words.

Certainly, there is more awareness today that women's voices need to be heard and their stories told. As a childless woman, I feel a particular need to record aspects of my own story, since I won't have any sons or daughters to tell it for me when I'm gone. Blogging helps, but I have also kept my old paper journals & letters, etc. I just hope my nephews & my cousins' children will find my life, & what I had to say about the people & world around me, of some interest. Dinah's story gives me hope in that respect.

"The Red Tent" vividly describes the ritual Dinah's mother & aunts perform to celebrate her coming of age. Lately, I've been hearing about young girls being presented with cakes & gifts when they get their first periods. This was definitely NOT done when I was growing up! Describe your first period & your family's reaction (if any) -- how old were you, & how was the occasion marked (if at all)?

This was my question. I got my first period when I was 11. I can remember being excited, since this was a sign that I was growing up & soon to be a teenager (yahoo!)(if only I'd known, right??). But there were certainly no celebrations, or rituals, or cakes. I did mail away for a booklet from Kotex, & along with the booklet, they sent along some samples, as well as a free napkin belt. Back then, kiddies, (showing my age here), sanitary napkins had these long ends, & you had to hook them through the fasteners of an elastic belt -- kind of like a garter belt -- that you wore around your abdomen, to keep them secure. Thankfully, it wasn't too terribly long before adhesive pads were invented, & I was able to say goodbye (& good riddance) to belts.

The booklet I got had a calendar at the back where you could track your periods. I've being keeping track ever since then. 37 years. Yikes!!

*** *** ***

If you're curious to learn more about the book, visit Anita Diamant's website. She has a list of FAQs for The Red Tent that add further perspective to the story.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Navigating the Land of If by the Stirrup Queen herself, Melissa Ford. Starts on May 27. Questions due June 24th. Posts go up on June 29th/30th.

Barren B*tches Book Tour: "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

(**Be forewarned: if you haven't read the book yet, this post is bound to contain a lot of spoilers.**)

This book is going to haunt me for a long time.

I read the entire book dry-eyed, but when I got to the long final paragraph that ends the book, I started to sob. I was at the dinner table (reading -- which my mother didn't like us doing -- another perq of childless living...!) & dh looked up from his magazine & at me like I was nuts.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "It's the book..." and my voice trailed off into sobs again. He shrugged & said, "As long as it's not about me!" lol

This book reminded me of every English boarding school novel I had ever read, & some Holocaust memoirs too. It also reminded me of a previous BBBT pick, "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. (Interestingly, I found a review of the book by Atwood on Slate.com.) It's got tinges of science fiction and horror about it.

One thing I found amusing in the book that nobody seems to have picked up on for a question is the emphasis on creating and creativity at Hailsham. We find out why much later in the book. But I thought it was funny, reading the book from an infertile perspective. One review I read noted that in most schools, the emphasis is on sports -- it's the athletes who are worshipped and popular. The artists/creative types are the ones on the margins. But I thought that in a larger sense, it's true that our world is all about creating -- creating life -- i.e., pregnancy & parenthood --and those of us who are infertile are somehow judged as "less than" because we can't create, or at least not in the same way that most people can. We have to exercise our creativity in other ways -- more creatively, lol.

I also found it interesting how the clones were so fascinated with their origins -- just as adopted children and those conceived through donor gametes often want to meet their biological parents. They know the basic facts, of course -- that they are clones -- but they keep a watchful eye out for their "possibles" -- the people they were modelled from. I love the use of the word "possible" here. Not only are the children fascinated by the possibility of a genetic match (a "possible"), they are infinitely curious about what kind of lives their doubles lead -- the possibility of another kind of life. Even though they accept (for the most part) their own lives and fates, they still get a vicarious, peeking-through-the-windows thrill from looking into the office where Ruth's "possible" works, taking note of all the details -- a world so unlike the one they come from.

Just as I was finishing the novel last week, I saw an online news item that filming will start next month in England on a movie adaptation starring Keira Knightley as Kathy, & two other British actors whose names I don't recognize as Ruth & Tommy. Should be interesting...

Each of us participating in this edition of the Barren B*tches Book Tour (organized by Mel at Stirrup Queens) has read the book, submitted a question, & received a list of everyone's questions from Mel. We then answer at least three of them in our blog, and post at or around the same time.

Here my picks (I can never limit myself to just three questions...!):

On page 197 Kazuo Ishiguro writes, "It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that." Have any of your relationships unravelled because of IF and were they relationships that you thought would be strong enough weather the struggles of IF?

I've written before about dh's cousin/our neighbour, & how we've drifted apart in the years since the stillbirth of our daughter. We went from having his wife plan my baby shower & promising me that she'd be over every day to help with the baby to the point where we only see them two or three times a year now, at the same family barbecues, weddings, funerals, etc., where we see everyone else. And we live a five-minute walk away from them. :( I'm not sure exactly why we've drifted apart in this way -- it's not like we had a big falling out with them. It was more of a gradual erosion of the relationship. I just think that (a) they got busier as their kids got older, & they got more involved with other parents in the neighbourhood, & (b) people are naturally uncomfortable with loss & infertility. But it's very sad.

Unrelated to infertility, I also find myself thinking of how my dad's three half-siblings (two in particular) fell out with my dad & his five other siblings after the death of their father, over the terms of his will. As my mother said, even she knew the terms of the will before my grandfather died -- if someone had any objections, they should have spoken up while my grandfather was alive. (Not that he would have changed his mind, being an extremely stubborn man...!) It's not like my grandparents were rich either -- we're not talking about huge sums of money or property. The pettiness of it all just astonished me. Family meant everything to my grandparents, & I'm sure they have both turned over in their graves repeatedly over what has happened in the last 20 years. :(

P.S. I must have a different edition, because I can't find that line on that page of my copy. Oh well...!

One thing that struck me while reading the book is that the characters seem very passive. Although certain knowledge is withheld from them along the way, and they do have questions, they do not really rebel or protest their fate, or try to escape. They seem quite accepting of the future that has been laid out for them. Why do you think this is so?

This was my question, & I've been thinking a lot about it as I read the novel & even since I finished it. I think part of the answer is in the way the children were brought up. As Miss Lucy said, they knew, but they didn't know. Information was fed to them in pieces, at certain times. The system was structured in such a way that "the rules" were never entirely revealed to them. Although I don't recall that they were explicitly forbidden to leave the grounds, tales about horrible things happening in the woods were enough to feed their imaginations & keep them in line.

As Kathy & Tommy discovered when they began investigating the possibility of a deferral (the most they seem to hope for -- not escaping their fate, just delaying it), they had no idea whether a deferral was actually possible (or just a rumour among the donors). They had no idea the conditions or grounds on which a deferral might be granted. They had no idea where they could go or who they could consult to learn whether such a thing was even possible. Although they seem to have a certain amount of freedom to interact with the "outside world" as adults, they don't seem to exercise it very much. After they leave their guardians at Hailsham, they seem to have very little contact with those who know who they are and what it going to happen to them (e.g., Keffers at the Cottages). They talk about going on courses and getting notices of their next donations, but we don't know who issues these.

Once Hailsham closed, that source of information and support was closed to them forever (if it hadn't been already). Even when Hailsham was still open, they had no idea where it was, should they want to go back there. And even if they had run away -- where would they go? How would they survive? There's no information in the novel about what might happen should such a thing be attempted, but I'm sure they would be hunted down & brought back to their donations centre, and whatever freedom they had to interact with the "outside world" would surely be taken away or severely curtailed. And with their strange upbringing, even if they did manage to escape, their naivete about the "outside world" would surely trip them up before long. They seemed like normal kids in so many ways... and yet they weren't.

All of us grow up with certain assumptions and are moulded to some extent by our surroundings, by what our parents & teachers tell us, and by pressure from our peers. When you don't know anything else, it's sometimes difficult to envision other possibilities for yourself & your life. It takes strength & courage to break the mould & push at those boundaries (some might call them limitations) -- to buck the system. If you grow up in a poor neighbourhood with high unemployment and a high drop-out rate, it's hard to envision yourself at university. If your parents and teachers expect you to go to the same Ivy League universities your friends will be attending, it takes guts to go to a third-world country to work with a human rights organization instead.

There is so much that we accept passively because "that's the way it is, or always has been" or "what can little old me do about it?" It could be argued that many people (only in the fertile world, of course...!) drift into parenthood this way -- because having kids is just what you do when you grow up & get married -- without really considering whether they are truly willing or ready to do the hard work that's involved. It's also why it takes so many of us so long to act on that nagging feeling that something is not quite right, when we've been trying to get pregnant for a year, or two, or three, and it's just not happening.

I know that I drifted along for several years after we began ttc, thinking, "Well, maybe we're just not meant to be parents." Who knows what might have happened (or not happened), had I not finally, suddenly, gotten pregnant when I did, 2 & 1/2 years into the quest? That changed everything -- jolted my complacency. After I lost the baby, I pursued pregnancy with a new vigour. I had come so tantalizingly close to holding a real live baby in my arms. Surely if I just put a little more conscious effort into ttc, I could cut that 2 & 1/2 years by half, or more. Surely that stillbirth was a fluke. And so we began our trip down the long & slippery slope...

There is so much that happens in our world that is outrageous -- yet people don't get outraged. There is an inertia in our culture sometimes. (As detailed above -- I am as guilty as anyone else.) We see things on the TV news -- children starving in Africa, soldiers being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, people in those countries and others living in horrible situations. We think, "Oh, how awful!" and then go back to eating our dinner. Even on things that would appear to affect us more directly, we drag our feet. We know that our planet is in bad shape, and yet we still continue to pollute it, and our politicians continue to drag their feet -- even resist -- on taking action. Sometimes, we're just too busy surviving, trying to keep our heads above water, to take on the task of change.

Some people do get outraged, of course, and work tirelessly to change the system -- a little, if not a lot. There are anti-war protesters and poverty activists. In the novel, there are people like Madame & Miss Emily who try to raise public awareness of the issues surrounding the "donors." But it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort to effect long-lasting, meaningful change. On cloning, or any other subject.

At what point did you realize what the book was about and did it change the way you viewed the main characters?

(Sorry, Mel.) I confess: I was barely two pages into the book before I Googled it to try to figure out what the heck was going on. (And yes, I will often jump to the end of mystery novels to find out exactly whodunnit.) Having that information, though, did not detract from the ultimate power of the story for me. Despite their sci-fi-like origins, the characters seemed fully human to me. Which added to the tragedy of the story.

I was reminded when I was watching the documentary Bio-Dad recently that children conceived through donor sperm were once regarded with some suspicion, as not quite "natural." Similarly, Louise Brown, the first baby born through IVF, has been scrutinized all her life, her growth and progress constantly compared to that of "normally" conceived children. There was great relief, it seemed, when she recently had a healthy baby herself -- "the old-fashioned way."

I also thought of Nazi Germany and the attitudes of the time toward Jewish people (among other groups).

At the end of Never Let Me Go, they mentioned “designer babies” had turned people against the whole clone issue. Now, ABC news featured a story tonight (3/3/09) about parents being able to build their baby http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6998135&page=1 (a bit of reality reflecting art). How does this make you feel? Do you think PGD should only be used to avoid health issues and genetic defects? Is it ok to use it to have a baby who can save your current child’s life through marrow transplant? Is it ok to pick hair type and eye color?

Conceiving a sibling as a donor is an understandable move by desperate parents (and I know it has been done)... but it still give me pause. The same with avoiding health issues and genetic defects. I suppose pre-selection is preferable to having a mother carry a baby who isn't going to live, for however long the parents & dr determine the pregnancy should continue once an anomaly has been detected --it would save parents a lot of uncertainty, anguish & pain. But using PGD just to pick hair and eye colour & other such "traits" -- I find that unnerving.

If you were a student a Hailsham, would you have wanted to know your ultimate destiny as a Donor? Why or why not? How do you think knowing at that point in your life would have affected you? Does this desire to know your outcome apply to your own real life? In what situations do you find knowledge helpful? At what times can it be detrimental?

I suppose it can be compared to learning that you have a terminal illness and nothing more can be done for you. We all know we are going to die someday, and some of us know that we are going to die sooner than others. The donors, of course, unlike us, know the exact date they will reach "completion."

Some people respond to a death sentence by attacking what's left of their life with gusto -- making their "bucket lists" & crossing items off it one by one -- travelling, spending time with their loved ones, writing their memoirs, disposing of their property, ensuring their final wishes are understood, planning their funerals -- doing all the things they've ever wanted to do & saying all the things that need to be said, before time runs out & it's too late.

Others, of course, may think, "I'm dying, it's over. What's the point?" and withdraw from the world. (Or even take it upon themselves to make an even earlier exit.)

This was one of the more disturbing aspects of this novel for me. If the entire purpose of your existence is to grow up, donate your organs & then quietly die... what's the point of everything that goes before it? (Tommy asks some of these questions, late in the book.) Why the art, the essays?

We may not know the date of our "completion," but it's going to happen, sooner or later. So what then is the purpose of our existence?

I think for us, as for the characters in the novel, it's the relationships we form that give our lives colour and meaning and purpose. Caring for others, as Kathy does as a friend, lover and"carer" before becoming a donor herself. Most people will automatically tell you that it's their children who give their lives meaning and purpose. Those of us who are childless have to find meaning in other places. Sometimes, that can be tough.

If you think too much about it -- even if you have children or other people or things that give your life some purpose -- it can be a pretty bleak scenario -- and in that sense, this was a somewhat depressing book to read. But still very thought-provoking. I'm glad I read it.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.