Who knew?? Laura Bush is "one of us"

At the bookstore last week, I saw that former U.S. First Lady Laura Bush's memoir, Spoken From the Heart, was now on the shelves. I picked up a copy & started browsing through it. While I am no fan of her husband's, & especially his brand of politics, I have always rather liked her. She seemed to be a kinder, more common-sense counterweight to some of her husband's more radical words & actions, although it did seem like she held back a lot of her personal opinions, out of deference to her husband (& father-in-law's) position. (And we've been hearing some of those personal opinions on the talk show circuit over the past week or two.)

It seems like everyone is zeroing in on the details she has revealed about the car accident she had when she was 17, in which one of her schoolmates was killed. I was more interested in what, if anything, she would have to say about infertility.

I had read a long time ago about how she & George had started adoption proceedings when -- surprise!! -- she found herself pregnant with twins. It always seemed to me like there was more to that particular story than she was letting on.

And there was. She admits to "hormone treatments" prior to conceiving the twins, being on bedrest for much of her pregnancy, and having an emergency c-section when her blood pressure soared. She talks of her longing for more children.

Not only that, but Mrs. Bush is deeply familiar with the tragedy of pregnancy loss and the lingering impact it can have on the entire family: in the first few pages of the book, she writes in some detail about her mother's three lost pregnancies, which meant she grew up as an only child.

There are interviews & excerpts from the book in this month's Ladies Home Journal, as well as a lengthy book excerpt on Oprah.com (including sections about the twins' conception & birth).

Here's an excerpt that I've seen quoted on several blogs & message boards:

"The English language lacks the words 'to mourn an absence.' For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful, some not. Still, we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only 'I am sorry for your loss.' But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?"

I haven't actually bought the book yet. I hear that, once they get to the White House, it devolves into a boring recitation of dinner menus and dresses worn. I may just wait for the paperback.

But it's nice to know that, even though she's never put herself forward as a champion for pregnancy loss or infertility issues (and more's the pity...), there's a former First Lady who deeply understands what these issues mean to millions of women, in the United States and elsewhere.

Better late than never...

Mother's Day is over now for another year (thank goodness!!) but, in case you haven't seen them already, I wanted to share some links with you for some really great articles I've found over the past few days:

• Anne Lamott -- who is a mother -- expounds on "Why I hate Mother's Day" at Salon.com. Great subheading: "It celebrates the great lie about women: That those with children are more important than those without." (Thanks to Janis at Ferdinand's Gifts for pointing this one out!)
• From Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary at Huffington Post: "Worst Expectations: Motherhood Lost." Sample quote: "...the strength of a community rests as much in its capacity to grieve as it does in its capacity to celebrate."
• Actress, mother by adoption (& my fellow Manitoban) Nia Vardalos counsels (via Anderson Cooper's 360 blog on CNN.com): "If you don't have anything nice to say on Mother's Day..." Sample quote: "A small social guideline: don’t ask a woman if she is pregnant, unless her water breaks on your flip-flops, a baby arm dangles out of her vagina and she asks you to cut the cord. Then, and only then, may you ask if she is having a baby. Otherwise, shut up."
• And finally, a blog post responding to the comments on Pamela Tsigdinos's New York Times guest post, "A Non-Mother's Day." Next time someone asks why you don't "just adopt," have them read this -- I think it says it all.

Mother's Day 2010

That's me, my sister & my Mom, in our Sunday best, probably somewhere around 1964. Probably Easter. My sister & I are wearing coats made for us by a family friend, & our Barbie dolls had coats that matched ours.

My mom was in her early 20s then. I was born six days after her 20th birthday, & my sister was born 21 months later. When I was 2 & my sister was still a baby, my dad's employer transferred him to a small town in northern Saskatchewan, some 600 miles away from the area where both he & my mom had grown up. We lived in a tiny, rented two-bedroom house on the edge of town. We didn't have a lot of money, but not many people did in those days. Long distance was expensive, so people mostly wrote letters (which makes me laugh now -- my mother is a lousy letter writer). My mom said she did call her mother the night the mercury dipped to -50F to ask whether it was still possible to breathe when it was that cold outside.

I didn't realize until many years later, struggling with anxiety, that my mother too had struggled with anxiety & depression. In the first 25 years of her marriage, she lived in 11 different houses in 7 different towns, raising me & my sister while our dad worked long hours, giving up newly made friends & jobs and pulling up stakes to start all over again. My dad would often have to report to work in the new location on very short notice, leaving my mom to pack up the house and deal with the movers (& my sister & me, who found it harder and harder to move the older we got). She had what she called "an Irish temper," & would sometimes explode in frustration -- but we clashed no more or less than any other mother & daughter, I think. She still frustrates me at times, to this day. ; ) But the older I get, the more I appreciate how difficult it must have been for her, and how much she did for us.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. And thanks.

*** *** ***

I'm glad this day is almost over. It's not been fun (never is), but no worse than any other Mother's Day over the past 12 years. We went to see "Iron Man 2" at the movies which was fun (the theatre was far less busy than it usually is on Sunday afternoons), then went to the cemetery. There's a small Peter Rabbit-ish stuffed toy that's been hanging from Katie's niche since Easter, & as we solemnly approached the columbarium, I realized it was hanging backwards -- i.e., Peter Rabbit was mooning us. For some reason, this struck me as funny & I cracked up. And then the laughter turned to tears & I wound up fumbling for my Kleenex anyway. Dang.

And then we came home & I turned on the computer and didn't feel quite so alone anymore. Thank you.

Grandmother's Day

My paternal grandparents, one of the last photos we have of them together in March 1975. We were celebrating my grandfather's 83rd birthday, & added candles for my grandmother's 68th, even though her birthday was months earlier.

Besides being Mother's Day, today marks 35 years since my paternal grandmother -- my Baba (the Ukrainian term) -- died at the far-too-young age of 68. Her name was Katy, & yes, our Katie was named (in part) after her.

I was just 14 when my grandmother died. I'm still not entirely sure whether she was killed by a heart attack or a stroke, but she had high blood pressure & struggled to control it. The last time we saw her, a few weeks earlier, she caught a ride with us from the farm into the city to for a dr's appointment.

Very early on the morning on May 9, 1975, the phone rang. I could hear my mother answer it as I lay in bed, just down the hallway from the telephone (I think we only had one in those days, attached to the kitchen wall). She gasped my aunt's name as she recognized the voice on the other end of the line -- & then paused & told my father the news that no one ever wants to hear, much less get rudely awakened by.

My dad called my uncle, choked out the words, hung up & then I heard a strange sound. It took me a horrified, frozen moment to realize that it was my father. Crying. I had never witnessed my father crying before & it was awful. Awful.

It was the first time that death & loss had touched my life so closely.

Baba married my much-older grandfather (Dido) in the 1920s, when he was a widower with three small children to raise. She raised them, as well as six of her own, and helped him run a farm that, in my childhood, included cows to milk, chickens to collect eggs from each day, hogs to feed, fields of sugar beets to hoe, and an absolutely enormous garden to tend. The shelves of the basement cold cellar were lined with jars of fruits & vegetables she'd raised & then canned or made into jams or pickles, & we rarely left the house without a couple of jars ourselves.

She had seven children, actually. My uncle had a twin sister who died as an infant -- scarlet fever, I think? My uncle also became sick, & the illness rendered him deaf & mute. Doctors recommended they institutionalize him, but she wouldn't hear of it, & kept him at home on the farm with the family. Her last child, my aunt, is 8 years younger than my father, born when Baba was 40.

I can never think of my Baba without some measure of guilt. I was always closer to my maternal grandparents, who lived just 20 miles away, & preferred to stay with them whenever we visited the area. I was one of more than 30 (!) grandchildren on my dad's side, & on most of our visits, the house was bursting with people, including hordes of noisy, chaotic cousins. On my mother's side, I was one of just four grandchildren, & it was a much calmer atmosphere where each of us got more individual attention.

There was also a language barrier that made communicating with my paternal grandparents difficult -- & they lived on a farm. It was a great place to explore & run around all day -- but staying there overnight without my parents -- as I did only a very few times -- was kind of scary. It was dark & eerily silent. Who knew what was lurking out there? -- or who? There was a native reservation nearby, & my cousins fed me (gullible me) tales of "wild Indians." Supplemented by Hollywood movies & TV shows, it was easy to let my imagination run wild. (I know, I know -- in my defense, it was the 1960s/early 1970s -- far less politically correct times -- & we were just kids.) The food she cooked -- borscht, perogies, holubtsi (cabbage rolls) -- smelled funny & I wouldn't eat it (and believe me, I could kick myself now, having come at last to appreciate all these dishes as an adult). (My dad now makes a mean borscht himself, using vegetables & dill that he grows in his own garden.)

But she was my grandmother, & I loved her. Even though she had many grandchildren -- & the house was rarely empty whenever we came to visit -- she had a knack of making me feel special. When I think of Baba, I see her first in the kitchen, cooking & washing dishes, the windows of the tiny little house running with steam. She gave us kids Tang to drink, Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies, another kind of cookie called "ice cream wafers," and Neapolitan ice cream.

I see her watering her many houseplants. I remember helping her do it on one of the few nights I stayed there by myself with her & Dido, & counting almost 60 (!). And I see her tending to her garden. Whenever I actually manage to keep a plant alive or coax roses from the bush in my backyard, I find myself saying, "I guess I inherited some of Baba's genes after all."

There aren't a lot of photos of Baba, & this is the only one that I have here with me. I've always been told, & thought, that I looked like my mother's brother. But the older I get, the more I think I look like my Dad's older sister -- & a little like Baba too. I only have two things that were hers (& both are back at my parents' house) -- one being a statue of the Virgin Mary that I found on a shelf in the cold cellar & asked her if I could have it; the other being a brooch from her pink jewelry box. After her death, my aunts went through her pink jewelry box & picked out a piece for each of the girl cousins as a keepsake. Costume jewelry, all of it, but precious because it was hers. My youngest aunt has the actual box -- I recognized it in an instant when I stayed at her house one time as a teenager.

I had never been to a funeral before. I didn't want to go to this one. It was held at a little country Ukrainian church and it was packed to overflowing. My other grandparents agreed to stay outside with my sister & me. As the pallbearers carried my grandmother's casket from the church, my other grandmother wrapped her arms around me & held me tight, and we both sobbed together. "She was such a nice lady," I remember Grandma saying.

At 83, my grandfather had never expected to outlive my grandmother. For the second time in his long life, he buried his wife. And for at least two years afterward, every time we visited the curiously empty & silent house, he would be sitting in his easy chair, crying, his eyes red & puffy. It was a lesson in grief for me. My aunts tried to get him to buy a new suit for a cousin's wedding. "I'll be buried in this suit," he said.

Gradually, he started to perk up & even to smile again. As he got older, he didn't get around as well as he once did, but he got up & cooked himself porridge for breakfast every morning. He rolled his own cigarettes & always had a glass of rye whiskey with his dinner. He loved watching "General Hospital."

In his 90s, my aunts arranged for him to be brought to the local retirement home for activities (sort of a daycare program for seniors), thinking he might be persuaded to move there. "They're all OLD people there," he grumbled.

Eventually, he did get a new suit. He needed it, because he had lots of grandchildren's weddings to attend (including mine). He lived another 13 years, & died shortly after his 96th birthday.

I've written about my maternal grandparents before. Last week would have been Grandpa's 98th birthday; this week, Grandma would have been 96.

I miss them all.

Article: "A Non-Mother's Day"

As some of you probably know, I enjoy the discussion of parenting issues in Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog on the New York Times website. She's also covered topics related to infertility, pregnancy loss & adoption.

Two of her posts today were of special interest to me & likely to others in the ALI community -- one on micropreemies, & another -- by Pamela Tsigdinos, aka Pamela Jeanne, about being a non-mother on Mother's Day (while wishing that you were).

Happy reading!

"Yummy Mummies" need to get a clue

Did you know last Sunday was International Babylost Mother's Day? (Me either -- I found out after the fact.) It's a project started by Carly, who is well known among bereaved parents for her blog To Write Their Names in the Sand.

Of course, that "other" holiday is fast approaching. The drumbeat of advertising & media hype is growing louder. It's inescapable, it seems.

You can imagine my feelings, then, when reading the paper this morning on the commuter train, I came across this article: Top 10 Reasons Why Mother's Day Sucks . And no, I didn't write it (lol), nor did anyone in the ALI community.

Believe it or not, it's a list compiled from a survey of 300 MOTHERS by the Yummy Mummy Club (which is run by Erica Ehm, a former MuchMusic VJ renowned for her ditziness). And no, it makes no reference to the sucky-ness of infertility or pregnancy/infant loss (although, to be fair, #3 does nod to the fact that "Many mothers are missing special women in their life").

No, according to these MOMS, Mother's Day sucks because moms still have to do all the work, husbands use the line "You're not my mother" to get out of buying them a gift, the gifts they do get suck, and so on.

Yes, I get that mothers are unheard & underappreciated. But YOU STILL GET TO BE A MOTHER. (And a Yummy Mummy, at that, or so it seems...) Your CHILDREN are your gift.

Do you know how many of us would give anything to spend even just one more day with the children we have lost?

Do you know how many thousands & thousands of dollars some of us have spent, how much financial and physical and mental and emotional stress some of us have been through, trying to have families of our own, through medical treatments &/or adoption?

Do you know how much it hurts for us to read a list like this?

Let me tell you, chickies: you have NO FRIGGIN' IDEA just HOW MUCH Mother's Day CAN suck...

(Boy, that felt good to write out, lol...)

Project If: What if....

This week, April 24-May 1, is National Infertility Awareness Week in the U.S. (In Canada, it's May 16-22, sponsored by the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada, IAAC), and Melissa (AKA the Stirrup Queen) has teamed up with Resolve to bring Project If to the blogosphere. An original, powerful list of almost 400 infertility "what ifs" on Melissa's blog has been narrowed down, & bloggers in the ALI community have been asked to choose a topic & write about one of their personal "what ifs." While I still find it difficult to talk about loss & infertility to my family & friends, I am more than happy to use my blog as a vehicle for enlightenment & change!!

As someone who is pushing 50, 12 years past her one & only (unsuccessful) pregnancy & 9 years past her last treatment cycle/into childless/free living, I found it hard to pick one of the "what ifs" from the list to write about. I'm still trying to deal with some of these "what ifs," to some extent -- but the raw pain has faded. I rarely cry over my infertility & loss these days, except perhaps on special "anniversaries" & days like Mother's Day, or when something comes out of left field to catch me off guard. A certain amount of bone-weariness has set in when it comes to certain situations & topics.

But yes, 9 years later, I still carry some resentment toward women who assume -- usually correctly -- that they will have no problem getting pregnant & for whom positive pee stick = living, healthy baby. Pregnant women still remind me of my own lost pregnancy, especially at this time of year, and I do sometimes feel "less than" (or "invisible," as per my last post) because I am not the mother of a living child.

One of the "what ifs" on the list reads, "What if… I have to learn to live childfree with a smile…forever?" For me, that's not a "what if," that's my reality.

For some reason, I think the "what ifs" that resonate the most for me at this point in my life have less to do with what lies ahead down the road (my journey has had enough twists & turns that I think I have trouble believing I have much control over what will happen anyway…) & more to do with second-guessing the past. I don't dwell on the past obsessively, but there are a few parts of my journey that I sometimes revisit & wonder... what if...

For example, I know some people might think we were foolish to postpone ttc as long as we did, & sometimes "what if we had started ttc earlier?" does pop up in my head. We were married for 10 years & I was almost 35 when I tossed out my birth control pills (after being on them some 13 years) in the summer of 1995. While I never thought I wouldn't be a mother, motherhood was not the only goal I had set for myself. I grew up in the 1970s and absorbed the message that anything was possible for the girls of my generation. I took it for granted that I would go to university and get a good job doing something I loved, and I did. I grew up surrounded by too many cautionary tales of girls who got pregnant before marriage, or right after, & had to abandon their educations for low-paying jobs or rely on their husbands, who struggled to make ends meet & maintain their marriages. I was determined not to be one of them. Children, most definitely, but not until I was good & ready for them, emotionally as well as financially.

I was unemployed for almost a year after we got married (having left my job to move to a new city to be with my dh), & we had absolutely no money. There were months when we struggled to pay the rent on our apartment. We didn't feel we could afford to buy a house until we'd been married five years (& were only able to do so thanks to the generosity of my FIL, who gave us some money for a down payment) -- & then once you have the house, of course, there's that thing called a mortgage hanging over your head. We did talk about "when should we?" after our second nephew was born in 1992, but got cold feet & decided to wait just a little longer.

My answer to myself for that particular "what if?" is that we did what we thought was right for us and for our future family at the time. I'm not sure some additional time would have changed the ultimate outcome. Perhaps it might have given us a little more time to explore our options. We might have felt differently about adoption, for example, if we had exhausted our other family-building options when I was 37 instead of 40.

I do keep thinking about one of the "what ifs" that I added to the original what-if list. I'm not sure which category it falls into. It was My "what if" was comment #124:

What if, instead of staying silent when my family dr reassured me (at 35 & 36) “don’t worry, it will happen,” I had listened to my gut & pressed him for a referral to a fertility specialist for testing then? Would having that extra time to explore options have made a difference in the eventual outcome?

I actually went to my family dr when we decided it was time to start ttc, for what I've since learned is called a "pre-conception appointment." I asked him whether we needed to wait a few months after I stopped taking the pill to let it "clear my system" (he recommended waiting three months, which we did), whether I should be taking any prenatal vitamins (he talked to me about folic acid), etc. He's an older father himself (& I suppose he didn't see any reason why we couldn't become parents at our ages as a result) -- a pretty laconic sort of guy, doesn't show a lot of emotion -- but when I told him why I was there, he gave me a big smile, & as I left, said he hoped I'd be pregnant soon.

When the three months was up, & we finally took the plunge, I expected I would be pregnant, maybe not right away, but certainly within four to six months. I knew I was 35, but -- having obtained just about every other goal I had set for myself -- I really didn't think this was going to be THAT hard. Everyone I knew or read about in my women's magazines who had had problems getting pregnant either had wonky menstrual cycles (not a problem for me, pre-pill) or some kind of sexually transmitted disease or had used an IUD (also not problems).

The first month I went off the pill, my cycle was 53 days long (!). The next three months, it settled into a 35-day pattern (my pre-pill cycles had usually ranged from 32 to 35 days), but the first month we actually started trying, I was late again. I was thrilled. Was I actually going to be one of those people who got pregnant on the very first try??

Nope, AF finally arrived after 49 days. The next cycle was 42 days long & the next was 40. I figured my body might still be adjusting, post-pill, & for many months, my cycles were all over the place. I took several hpts on my own, & whenever my cycle went over 40 days, I'd head to my dr for a blood test, which inevitably turned out negative. At each of these visits, & at my regular checkups, my dr would say to me, "Don't worry, it will happen." As time went on, though, & I passed my 36th & 37th birthdays, it got harder & harder to believe him.

It did eventually happen, in the spring of 1998, when I was 37, and had been trying for 26 cycles, or almost 2 & 1/2 years. Sadly, my pregnancy ended in a stillbirth at 26 weeks.

Ever the optimist, I figured that we had gotten pregnant on our own after trying 2.5 years of doing very little outside of what most people do to get pregnant. Surely we could cut that time considerably with a little more targeted effort on our part. We got our first computer (& Internet access) in 1996, but it hadn't even occurred to me to turn there for help while we were ttc. Looking for answers after our loss, however, I found a whole new world of message boards & information sites. I joined a private e-mail list for women trying again after a loss, bought a copy of Toni Weschler's "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and a basal thermometer, & began charting.

When another year had passed, & still no baby, I sat my dh down for a talk. I would soon be 39. I could hear the clock ticking. Loudly. Surely we owed it to ourselves to at least have some tests run, find out if there was a simple reason why I wasn't getting pregnant?

And so we started down the slippery slope of infertility testing and treatment. I called up the ob-gyn I saw during my pregnancy & over the next several months, through the fall of 1999, he agreed to run some tests for us, the results of which were inconclusive. When he offered us the choice of a prescription for Clomid or a referral to an RE, I knew the RE was the way to go. Fortunately, he was able to get us an appointment within six weeks with a new RE who was just setting up practice in the spring of 2000. By late spring, I was doing monitored cycles with clomid; by fall, I was injecting myself with Gonal-F & heading for the first of three IUIs I'd cajoled my dh into agreeing to (negotiated after a session with an infertility counsellor).

By the time our journey ended, in the summer of 2001, I was 40, a mental & physical wreck prone to anxiety attacks & popping ativan, & about $10,000 poorer. We took a break for the summer, took stock of the situation & reluctantly came to the decision that we would remain a family of two.

I think we made the right decision in the end, and I try not to dwell on the "what ifs?" But sometimes I wonder: what if, instead of offering platitudes, my dr had offered me a referral to an RE for some tests, given our ages & the amount of time we'd been ttc?

What if, instead of taking my dr's word for it ("it will happen"), I had been more vocal about my concerns, asked earlier for help, for a referral, for some tests to be run?

What if I had asked for help right away after our loss, instead of muddling through another precious year on our own, only starting working with an RE after my 39th birthday?

What if I had not wasted so much precious time? Would the outcome of my ttc story have been any different?

*** *** ***

One other "what if," somewhat related:

When I was a little girl, I remember being sick, & hearing my mother referring to my "kidney problems." When I was about 6 or 7, I spent several days in a big city hospital having various tests run. I was X-rayed, probed. I had a catheter put inside my bladder, had liquid pumped inside & then had drs watch my bladder on screen as it spilled out. I took medication for several years (a lot longer than was probably necessary, I later learned).

I had several hospital stays of several days each over the years, which later evolved into a series of outpatient visits. (Since we lived several hours away from the city, this involved me & my mother staying at my aunt's & navigating the city bus system.) These hospital visits were highly traumatic for a child, as you might imagine. This was in the late 1960s/early 1970s, & my mother was not allowed to stay overnight with me, as parents are today in most children's hospitals. I can remember sobbing myself to sleep as I schemed ways to run away from the hospital. It was years & years before I could go to a hospital, even just to visit someone, without turning green. My best friend's mother, who had just had a complete hysterectomy, once remarked that I looked worse than she did.

Anyway -- I didn't completely understand what was wrong with me then, & I'm still not sure I have a complete or entirely accurate picture -- but my understanding is that one of my ureters -- the tubes which carry urine away from the bladder -- was not properly attached to my bladder. There was a slight "bulge" in it which created a "backwash" and made me susceptible to bladder and kidney infections. We were told this was a very common problem. Surgery was discussed, but they settled on a "watch & wait" approach. My mother was told that many children simply outgrow the problem, & that's apparently what happened with me.

I also did not realize, until I was actually pregnant for the first & only time, that one of my kidneys is smaller than the other. My mother told me to mention this to my ob-gyn, as the drs had told her when I was younger that I might have a "hard time" in pregnancy because of it.

I thought she meant that it would be taxing on my kidneys (as pregnancy is, even with normal kidney function), & that was part of it, of course. But it turned out there was more to it than that, although I didn't realize so until after my daughter's stillbirth.

I spotted all through my first trimester, culminating in a visit to the hospital emergency room when I was about 10 weeks along. An ultrasound was performed, & we heard the baby's heartbeat. All was well, or so we thought. The radiologist asked, "Did you you know you have a bicornuate uterus?" A what? No, I did not know. He explained what it was & drew a diagram. I asked, "Is this going to be a problem?" He assured me not, & told me a story about a woman who hadn't known she had a bicornuate uterus, got pregnant with twins, had a C-section, & one twin was found in one horn and one in the other.

I asked again & again as my pregnancy progressed and my daughter showed signs of IUGR. One u/s tech told me the baby appared to be growing in one horn and the placenta in the other, with the umbilical cord running between the two. There was something on the placenta, which turned out to be a small calcified clot. Did this have anything to do with my uterus? I asked. I kept being reassured, no.

I did some Internet research. Later, after my daughter was stillborn, I found information that indicated there very well could have been a link -- that women with uterine abnormalities experience a higher proportion of miscarriages & stillbirths. Moreover, women who have uterine abnormalities also tend to have a higher incidence of kidney problems.

After our daughter's stillbirth, when we turned to infertility treatments, I asked my ob-gyn & then my RE about my uterus. I had read that the problem could be corrected surgically, although there was some debate about just how effective the procedure could be. My ob-gyn was lukewarm on the subject. My RE didn't seem too concerned about it either. In fact, he finally asked to see the video of my HSG (done more than year earlier by my ob-gyn), & offered to do surgery (without promising too much in the way of results) only AFTER we'd already been through three injectable/IUI cycles & were on the verge of calling it quits. I weighed the prospect of surgery along with all the other factors -- & decided we were done.

So I wonder sometimes: were drs back then (in the late 1960s/early 1970s) aware of the co-relation between uterine abnomalities & kidney problems? Is this something they could have seen in my X-rays and other tests that were run at the time? Are uterine abnormalities detectable in a child? And if they did see something, why wasn't my mother told? Or is this what they meant by telling her that I might have a "hard time" during pregnancy? Did they tell her, & she just didn't understand what the implications were?

I will probably never know, but what if I had known about this problem & its potential implications for my fertility when I was younger? Might I have made different decisions about ttc?

Julie at A Little Pregnant recent posted about one drug company's innovative new campaign to encourage couples to "Increase your chances" & talk to an RE sooner rather than later. Sure, if they consult an RE they will be more likely to wind up using the company's fertility drugs... but the message is still a valuable one.

In its August 2009 report, the Ontario Expert Panel on Infertility and Adoption recommended that not only should the government ensure that all primary care practitioners are educated about fertility and related issues, but also that all primary care practitioners – including naturopathic doctors and doctors of traditional Chinese medicine – should make fertility education/counselling a routine part of care for all patients, beginning in their 20s, including males and females, those in a relationship or single (including those who are not trying to start a family), regardless of sexual orientation.

The panel also set recommended that doctors should offer fertility testing/monitoring to women age 28 and over who have been unable to conceive naturally after one year without using contraception, women age 30 and older, when they want to start a family or have been unable to conceive naturally after six months, and to the male partners of women who are undergoing testing. (Unfortunately, none of the panel's recommendations have been adopted to date.)

It's too late for me. I have moved on with my life (I'm trying to, anyway -- although I suspect that the grief I feel over my infertility & the stillbirth of my daughter will always be with me in some way).

But what if more couples listened to that nagging voice within, & asked for help at an earlier stage? What if doctors took their concerns seriously? What if certain medical problems were red-flagged at an earlier stage, so that young women were made aware that they might have difficulty conceiving?

*** *** ***

To read more bloggers' Project If posts, visit here. All blogs on the list will be considered for Resolve’s Hope Award for Best Blog, presented at the 2010 Night of Hope. Resolve will also be featuring a link to the blog on Resolve.org.

To read the original "what if" list, visit : http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2010/04/bloggers-unite-project-if/.

To gain a basic understanding of infertility, visit www.resolve.org/infertility101 .

To learn more about National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW): www.resolve.org/takecharge.