Another one bites the dust...

Yep, another pregnancy announcement, this one at work. We had a team meeting this morning, and as things were breaking up, one of the girls asked our two bosses if she could speak with them. I took one look at the baggy cardigan she's been wearing frequently lately, remembered the apple juice she was drinking at break yesterday, & I immediately knew what the conversation would be about.

She emerged & told the rest of us -- yep, she's pregnant, due the first week of October. I guess she really did have fun on that Caribbean vacation in January. ; ) One of the new dads in the office kept saying to her, "It's the best thing ever." Ouch. Of the 10 or so people in my particular area, only two (my immediate boss & the next boss up the line) were around when I was pregnant 10 years ago, so nobody has a clue that I might be finding this a little painful (of course, even if they did know, they probably still wouldn't have a clue...!). And it's been almost that long since we've had a pregnant woman in our area of the department.

Of course, not only do I get to go through the whole pregnancy with her (almost in lockstep with the timing of my own pregnancy, 10 years ago -- I was due in November), I will get to pick up a lot of the slack when she heads off on her year's maternity leave... which will be right in time for all the fun (not) of year end. Hopefully they will get someone on contract to cover her leave and to help us, and not expect us to soldier on without her.

I really like this girl. I just get tired of always being the bridesmaid & never the bride, know what I mean?

TGIF...

Doppelgangers & the diverging road

Mel at Stirrup Queens was asking us on Friday about our Internet doppelgangers. I had a vague idea of what a doppelganger was, but wanted a precise definition. Interestingly, this is what Wikipedia had to say about doppelgangers:

A doppelgänger (pronunciation (help·info)) or fetch is the ghostly double of a living person, a sinister form of bilocation. In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person—most commonly an "evil twin". The literal translation of the German word is "doublewalker", meaning someone who is acting (e.g. walking) the same way as another person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.

I don't think Mel meant the term in the evil twin/bad luck sense, & that certainly wasn't my vision either... more of a person who is so like you, in looks, personality, pathway in life, etc., that it's eerie sometimes. I've met a few women on the Internet who have wound up living childless/free after infertility & loss, but none whose stories & personalities were so like mine that I felt like they were a long lost twin. 

However, I've known JuliaS of Life After Infertility & Loss in a previous Internet life (lol), & we have often joked that we must have been separated at birth, or cousins, or something, because so many of the same things have happened to us at the same time, and we share many of the same interests. I hadn't been in touch with her for quite awhile (my bad..!) & recently stumbled onto her blog while perusing someone else's blogroll. Turns out we both started blogs at roughly the same time, unbeknown to each other. And although we didn't "know" each other then, her Carena & my Katie share an angel date of August 7, 1998. 

In "real life," I've encountered two couples that I always sort of thought of as "doppelgangers" for dh & me. Our paths have diverged in recent years, but I found it immensely comforting for awhile, knowing we were not alone, and immensely happy for them when their dreams finally came true, even when ours did not. And, coincidentally, we saw both couples today. 

The first couple is one of dh's cousins & his wife (he has lots of cousins!). This cousin was an usher at our wedding, & is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. He reminds/ed me so much of dh in the way that he loves kids & they love him. He met a very nice girl & they were married in 1996. A few years went by and then more years and still there were no kids. For many years, she & I were the only two childless adult women at family gatherings, & while our mutual situation was never discussed, she & I would chat about work, about travel, about home projects, etc., while everyone else around us talked non-stop about their kids. It was a relief for me and I suspect for her as well. 

Several times over the years, dh's cousin would arrive at some of these family gatherings alone, saying his wife "wasn't feeling well." I can remember being at one of these events & some of the other women sniping, "Well, what's with her?? I guess she doesn't like us very much... she never comes to any of our parties any more." I didn't speak up (to my everlasting shame), but I wondered how they could be so clueless (not to mention unsympathetic). Perhaps she was legitimately ill (at least some of the time). But to me, it was so obvious that coming to these family gatherings, full of pregnant women and babies & women with kids, where the conversation revolved non-stop around kids, kids, kids, was likely very painful for someone who (like me) did not have children but wanted them, was likely trying desperately to have them, and not succeeding. 

About a year & a half ago, we got the news that -- at age 42 -- she was pregnant! (Through IVF, we later found out through the family grapevine.) She & her husband were both 43 when she gave birth to their daughter. She did not want a baby shower (but eventually consented to having a small one with the family). Again, dh's cousins were incredulous: why on earth wouldn't she want a baby shower?? What was with this woman?? And again, to me, it was so obvious as to why she might be reluctant, particularly before the baby was safely here... What a divisive thing infertility can be. I can see so clearly what others cannot... and yet I don't wish this clarity of vision on anyone, knowing the price that one generally pays to gain it. 

The baby did arrive safely, and we attended her first birthday party this afternoon. I tried to keep busy taking photos whenever the mommy talk got a little too stifling. Apparently the daddy talk can sometimes be just as bad. Dh told me that a bunch of the guys were talking -- many of them with teenaged daughters, & teasing the birthday girl's proud dad about all the trouble she will be causing him in about 12 years. The cousin/neighbour that I've written about previously then piped up & said, "Yeah, [dh] is smart..." and you know what he was going to say next -- i.e., smart because we don't have any kids (!) -- & dh said it was like he suddenly remembered, & realized what he had said as soon as he said it, & his voice trailed off & he shut up. He's not sure anyone else noticed, but he sure did. 

The other couple we met through our pregnancy loss support group about five years ago. She is just a few years younger than me, he is just a few years younger than dh, & they have been together almost as long as we have. Her ethnic background is similar to mine, so we have similar cultural touchstones (we even look a little bit alike in some ways), & we share many similar interests (reading, scrapbooking). She's from the same town where I did my graduate degree, and in fact, we figured out that she, her dh & I were all attending school there at the same time. He works in the same industry as dh & me. Like us, they put off having a family for many years and when they finally decided it was time, she had two losses. They were exploring both adoption & childfree living before her third, final (successful) pregnancy when she was in her early 40s. She has always been very careful, especially when she's around me, not to talk too much about mommy stuff & to qualify many of her remarks by saying how very lucky she feels. I appreciated that enormously. And we both enjoyed their company tremendously. 

They are moving this week, in order to be closer to her extended family -- something they felt was important for their son, given that he is going to be an only child. En route from the birthday party, we dropped by with a small gift & to say how much we're going to miss them. And we will. :(

Late February/Early March 1998: Pregnant! & unaware

Looking back through my 1998 datebook, it's fun to see how many things I was doing at this same time of year then that I am still doing now (waiting on tax receipts, enrolling in the benefits program at work for the new year, watching figure skating, making calls to the plumber to deal with leaks in the bathroom, albeit in different spots these days...!), and things that have changed (the noon hour workplace Toastmasters club I no longer belong to, haircuts with a hairdresser who moved away, calls to friends I've lost touch with, free Thursday nights because we weren't involved in our support group yet). I didn't know anything about charting back then, but I did track my monthly cycles, including (ahem) possible dates of conception. I've since realized I tend to ovulate somewhere between day 19 & 23, & that month, days 19 & 21 are possible dates when the wee embryo that was to become our Katie sprang to life.

Day 21 was Saturday, Feb. 28th, & we attended a 65th birthday party for dh's aunt at her daughter's that night. He has several aunts, but this one is particularly special to us because she took special care of dh, his dad & brother after their mom died -- cleaned house & did laundry for them, had them over for dinner just about every night. Even though I wasn't Italian ; ) she welcomed me with open arms to the family, the soul of generosity.

I was looking at the photos from that party recently as we prepared to attend her 75th birthday party, which was last weekend. Dh's family are not big drinkers, but I remember her son-in-law pressing a glass of butterscotch schnapps on me & some of the other women. Of course, forever afterward I felt guilty, wondering if that one minuscule liqueur glass of schnapps at the point of conception somehow contributed to my daughter's subsequent stillbirth. When we first started ttc, of course, I was extra cautious about things like drinking & even taking asprin for a headache, especially if I felt I was ovulating or on the 2-week wait. But when you've been ttc 2.5 years without success, you tend to let some of these things slide after awhile.

The following week, the first week of March, my cousin & his wife (now ex), who were married the same year as dh & me, had their third & last child, a baby girl.

I noted on several dates in my book that I felt tired and crampy or had a headache. I went to bed early several times, & popped a few ibuprofen to alleviate the aches & pains. At work, I met with a vice-president -- I was working on something for her around the time of my loss, and was blown away when she sent me a note saying how very sorry she was to hear the sad news about my baby.

The week of March 16th that year was spring break (this year, it's this coming week). Then as now, I was not affected, except in the sense that parking spots & seats on the commuter train were easier to find, and people I called at work were harder to get hold of. I had lunch with my college roommate that week (who had recently loaned me a book on "how to get pregnant" that she said had helped her conceive her only son at age 37).

Saturday the 21st, there was a a big snowstorm. We hunkered down at home and I did some laundry.

Our lives were about to change forever.

Barren B*tches Book Brigade: "Embryo Culture"

It's time for another selection from the Barren B*tches Book Brigade, brought to you by Stirrup Queens & Sperm Palace Jesters. The way the this online book club works is people sign up, read the book (usually, but not always, related to infertility and pregnancy loss), & submit a question. Lists of questions are distributed among the participants, and we pick at least three to answer in our blog, then visit each other's blogs to comment.

This month's selection was "Embryo Culture" by Beth Kohl, which intertwines the author's own infertility journey with an investigation of various aspects of infertility, ARTs and the ethical dilemmas she encountered along the way. This book had been in my "to read" pile for awhile, so I was happy to be prodded into digging it out & finally reading it! There was a lot that Beth & her husband encountered that was familiar to me, and a lot that was thought-provoking.

On to some of the questions...

The author describes her journey through infertility both in terms of a faith journey and a process of scientific discovery. How has infertility impacted your faith journey and your views of science/technology?

Re: my faith journey... my dh & I had already started attending church again, in anticipation of starting a family, when I finally got pregnant. Although we were & are not overly "religious," we wanted our children to be baptized, go to Sunday school, and learn something about God and the Bible. Our faith, our church and especially the assistant curate at our parish, who handled the funeral service for us, were of great comfort to us in the days after our daughter's stillbirth.

Gradually, however, it became harder & harder for us to attend services. Our church has a large number of young families attending, and the children often participate in the services. Singing the hymns I remembered singing from my own childhood, while watching other people's children filing up the aisle from Sunday school, often had me choking back tears. Baptism days never seemed to be announced in advance, & we actually left by the back door one day when it seemed just too hard to stay. Seeing women who had been pregnant at the same time I was bring their new babies to church -- and then get pregnant again, and again, while my arms remained empty -- was particularly painful, as were the many references to "barren" women in the Bible (Elizabeth, Hannah, etc.) who were eventually "blessed" with children. Mother's Day services, when the minister would ask all the mothers & grandmothers to stand up, were excruciating. Should I stand (even though we had no children that anyone could see)? Should I sit (and deny my daughter's brief existence)? One year, I was surprised when the prayers included a request for healing for mothers who had lost children, and women who wanted children but were unable to have them. It was a nice gesture, but overall, it was still a hard day, and we gradually stopped attending services regularly. My faith in God remains, but my faith in organized religion has diminished considerably.

Re: science... it's true, science can do amazing things these days. At the same time, my own journey through loss & infertility has left me realizing that science has its limits. I naively believed that science could resolve the problems that emerged during my pregnancy. As we progressed further and further along, I came to realize just how little doctors really know about how women get & stay pregnant, and how much is really just a guessing game. It was a real wake up call for both my husband & me.

From early in the book, it is clear that the author ends up with a take-home baby. How do you think this affects her perspective on infertility and how did affect your perception of the book?

I'm not sure about her perspective, but I can tell you about mine. First of all, I acknowledge the total futility of what Melissa at Stirrup Queens calls "the Pain Olympics." It's something we stress at our support group meetings: "everyone's loss is significant, regardless of gestation or circumstances." Whether you had a 7-week miscarriage or lost a baby in the NICU, it hurts, and your pain deserves to be acknowledged. Likewise, everyone who's lived with infertility has been through the wringer, whether you did a couple rounds of Clomid or seven IVFs, whether you had losses along the way or not, whether you brought home a real live baby or not, whether you chose to adopt or not... no matter how you slice it, we've all been dealt crappy hands to play with.

And yet... looking at the photo on the book jacket of a blond woman with three beautiful, smiling little girls, I didn't even have to read a word before I knew the author had succeeded in her quest to start a family. The green-eyed monster within me stirred. And when I started reading, I'll admit, the breezy tone put me off a little. She spent so much time describing her first IVF, and seemed so sure it was going to work, she had me convinced too. And when it didn't, I was surprised and a little ashamed of myself. And then when I read the parts about her daughter's illness, and about being on hospital bedrest with her twins, I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. The woman did earn her infertility stripes. (Beth, if you are reading this, my apologies.) But is it really rotten of me to say that knowing that she struggled beyond her initial diagnosis, and experienced failure along the way, made her a more credible and sympathetic narrator in my eyes?

The author talks about whether there should be an age limit on who should be able to go through IVF. Should there be an age limit?

On the one hand, I get POd when I hear about clinics that impose age limits of 42 or 40 (or even younger). Some say it's because the chances of success when you're older are so rare anyway -- but I'm more inclined to think it's so as not to mess with their precious success statistics.

But when I hear about women in their 50s and 60s getting pregnant, it does give me pause. My mother had me when she was barely 20 (my younger sister & I had both left home for university before she even turned 40) -- and while I'm not sure that's an ideal situation either, there has to be a happy medium. My great-grandmother was the same age I am now -- 47 -- when she had her sixth and last child (six years after #5). (This was in the 1920s -- obviously, no fertility treatments then!) My grandmother was the same age I am now when I was born.

While I don't feel old enough to be a grandmother (!), I'm not sure I'm young enough to be a mother anymore either. I don't necessarily feel ancient, but I realize I am not young anymore either (especially after a day at the office where I seem to be surrounded by 20-somethings). I can't imagine being up nights with a crying baby or chasing after a toddler at this stage of my life -- which is one reason why we called it quits when I was 40 & dh was 44. I also can't imagine that even the most healthy 60 year old would be in the same shape to withstand a pregnancy that an equally healthy 30 year old would be. I hate to say I am "for" limits, but I do think there's a reason why our bodies are designed with a natural time limit for pregnancy -- and while there is some flexibility & room for pushing the boundaries with ARTs, we do need to use a little common sense.

We also have to think about the children of older parents. How long will their parents be around for them? Will they be helping pick out nursing homes at the same time they're finishing college? I remember my schoolmates always loved my mother, because she was so much younger & "hipper" than their own parents. On the flip side, my great-aunt -- the baby born to my great-grandmother when she was 47 (and my great-grandfather was 56) -- was always a little embarrassed about her birth story. Being a small town, she once said she always felt like that's all anyone ever remembered about her. Her father died when he was 71 and she was only 14.

The author also talks about how many embryos should be transferred at any given cycle. Should there be a limit?

I can remember, at one of my IUIs, the doctor said there were four good follicles in there. He had mentioned the possibility of multiples when we first started seeing him, but not in any great detail. Driving away from his office after the IUI, it hit me that I could quite possibly become pregnant with QUADRUPLETS if all four eggs fertilized. And I started to cry, because it scared the crap out of me. I always thought I could cope with twins, & that they might even be kind of fun (my sister & I, although 21 months apart, were often mistaken for twins when we were growing up, and they've always fascinated me) -- but triplets or more? eeek

Of course, we wound up with nothing out of that cycle, but it was a possibility, and I was a nervous wreck during the 2ww. Dh's cousin's pregnancy (rumoured to be from IVF, or perhaps IUI) actually started out with four sacs. One sac disappeared, and then she lost one of the babies at Christmastime before delivering two boys in mid-February, slightly premature, who spent two weeks in the NICU before coming home. (They are now healthy six-year-olds.)

I understand people want to maximize their chances of success, particularly as they get older and the clock is ticking. And, as Beth said in the book, when you are spending so much money and going through so much rigamorole to get pregnant, the idea of multiples -- "instant family" -- is tempting.

But I have also read enough about the risks of being pregnant with multiples -- for both mom & babies -- and heard enough stories from clients of our pregnancy loss support group -- that I do support limits. Maybe not one egg only, but two or maybe three, tops. You might think you could cope (mentally, physically, emotionally) with a triplet or quadruplet pregnancy or more (not to mention three or more real live babies to take care of afterwards, assuming the pregnancy is a success) -- and perhaps you could -- but it's an awful thing to find out otherwise.

The author mentions that going through infertility and IVF made her think differently with abortion? Has this changed anyone's position on abortion or did IVF change the way you thought about it?

I was, and am still, very much pro-choice. I would never presume to tell another woman what she should do with her body, and I wouldn't want anyone trying to control mine either. I believe abortion will always be with us, and so it should be legal and safe. I don't like the idea of using abortion as the solution to an "inconvenient" pregnancy, but at the same time, I have met many couples (online & in real life) who terminated pregnancies where the babies had problems that were incompatible with life, or at least life of any sort of quality. I know the struggle they went through to reach that decision, and the guilt they carry afterward. I can't imagine telling a woman in this situation that she must carry that child to term or until it dies in-utero.

At the same time, pregnancy, loss and infertility have given me a new perspective on these matters. I can completely understand someone being possessive about their frozen embryos, as Beth was in the book. I can understand feeling attached to an embryo in a petri dish. Too many people will dismiss pregnancy loss as "just a miscarriage" or "just a blob of tissue." Some women can dust themselves off after a miscarriage & continue on without it affecting them too deeply (at least, to look at them on the surface). But if you feel that you lost a baby, even if you just peed on the stick two days ago and your period started today, people should respect your feelings, even if that's not what they themselves believe.

Our pregnancy loss group has another saying -- it's not the gestation, or length of time you carried the baby, it's the attachment you feel to it that counts. Little girls have always dreamed of being mothers -- but these days, thanks to science, we don't have to wait nine months to "meet" our babies, or to have the baby placed in our arms before we begin to "bond" with him or her. We can look at follicles or a fetus in an ultrasound, embryos in a petri dish, find out if it's a boy or girl in advance and give the baby a name. Add to that the huge investment -- financial, emotional, physical, timewise -- that people with infertility have made in each attempt at pregnancy. All these things play a part in the "bonding" process, long before a child is actually born. Assuming he or she IS born. Which is why I believe there is no such thing as "just" a miscarriage.

I know many people think of abortion in black and white terms -- but if anything, infertility & pregnancy loss, our work with our pregnancy loss support group, and all the reading I've done over the past 10 years, in books and online, has only reinforced to me that every situation is different, and there are many, many shades of grey.

Beth Kohl discusses her fears about how IVF may lead to increased health problems for her children, and she thinks about this in the context of her daughter's surgeries for cysts on her bladder. Do you ever worry that IVF or other ART could compromise the health of your children created through the process? How has that affected your decision to pursue treatment?

This was not something that I knew or thought much about while we were in treatment -- but I have read a little about it since then, and it is something that I wonder about. These are still relatively new technologies, and there is still so much we do not know about them and how they are going to affect our children, 10, 20, 50 years down the road.

At one point, Beth fixates on a typo on a RE clinic's website and decides, "one picayune omission but enough to confirm I'll have to seek my progeny elsewhere. When dealing with things microscopic - egg nuclei and isolated sperm - there can be no margin for error." Has there ever been something "picayune" that has swayed your decision or direction on your path to parenthood? What was it that made that something seem significant?

I can't think of a "picayune" example from my own story at the moment. However, I remember reading that sentence & laughing out loud. As an English major with a subsequent journalism degree who works with words for a living, typos drive me up the wall. I'm willing to overlook the odd one in blogs & online posts, since you're pounding things out on a keyboard quickly & not really paying attention to proofreading (there are probably half a dozen in this post alone), but I think they're inexcusable in advertisements and the like, from writers who are paid to be professionals. I have often seen an ad with a glaring typo and said, "Well, I'm never shopping there!" (The thing that REALLY drives me up the wall is that most of these are not really "typos" -- inadvertent errors made in haste as you stumble over the keyboard -- it's that too many people these days don't even realize they've made an error -- mixing up "their" and "there," for example. But that's another rant for another day...!)

Throughout the book, Beth references different ways of how religion plays into her thoughts and some people's beliefs on infertility. I, for one, did not think of religion and God too much as far as my decisions of how far to take ART but I know people understandable do. However, as I do believe in God though not very religious, I often thought my infertility was a punishment handed to me by the higher powers. Even though the issue is MFIF, I felt as though I was the one being punished because of some things I had done in my earlier years. Beth talks of the possibly of this punishment in the last paragraph on page 49: "Or is He a puritanical smiter, my infertility a pox upon me . . ." My question is: have you thought in terms of your infertility as a punishment, some divine destiny that you should maybe not try to change, or not? And why or why not? And how did/does it affect your decisions? As I would probably not give specifics, I am not meaning for you to, but I felt much comfort knowing I was not the only one who questioned if it was a punishment and am curious as to how other people have related religion and punishment to their IF journey.

I think it's very common to feel this way, and I know I certainly had some of the same feelings and questions. One book that I found hugely helpful in resolving my feelings on this issue (which I have recommended to a lot of people) is "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner. After reading it, I decided that the God I believed in was a loving God who wept along with me & embraced me when our baby girl was stillborn -- not one who was "punishing" me through my innocent child for some undetermined "sin" in my past.

Beth makes certain that she tracks how she and her husband respond to infertility in different ways - through diagnosis, debates about treatment, and how infertility is perceived in the "normal" world. Do you find such differences between yourself and your significant other(s)? Was it difficult to determine upon a course of treatment due to those differences?

I was always the one pushing forward with treatment, which I don't think is unusual, from what I've heard and read. I was the one who thought we should look into some testing (in case the problem was something simple that could be easily "fixed"). I was the one who wanted to see the RE our ob-gyn referred us to. I was the one who wanted to proceed with injectable drugs when it became apparent the clomid wasn't doing anything for me. I was the one who suggested counselling & booked our appointments, when we couldn't seem to get on the same page as to how far we were going to pursue this thing and, later, whether it was time to call it quits. For most of the time, my dh took the stance that I was the one who was going to have to go through this, physically, so it was mostly up to me. But he certainly had a stake in it too -- financially, emotionally, plus he accompanied me to the clinic just about every morning.

With the infertility counsellor's help, we agreed to try three IUI cycles with injectable drugs, and then re-evaluate. In his mind, that would be the end of it. In my mind, perhaps we would move on to try IVF... because it was the next logical step and -- as George Mallory famously said, when asked why he wanted to try climbing Mount Everest in the 1920s -- "because it is there."

In the end, we never did try IVF (and Mallory disappeared into the mists of Everest -- his body was discovered years later). All factors considered, we knew the odds were good it would not work. The financial considerations, while not a deal-breaker, were nevertheless a factor. Most of all, dh could see the physical, emotional and mental toll it was taking on me. And so, this time, his opinion prevailed, and we have remained a family of two.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes (with author participation!)

TGIF...

There are so many things I want to blog about... another 1998 memories post (coming up later, no doubt), the last crappy few days I've had at work (two intense workdays, including staying late both days -- while coming down with a horrible head cold), the winter storm that came out of nowhere tonight, Mel's request for a "Letter to My Body," Calliope's "Day to Remember," plus I need to get cracking on another book tour post... not to mention catching up on so many other people's blogs that I enjoy reading!! It's funny how little things will happen during the day that make me want to immediately open up my blog & post -- a careless comment from a mommy friend that had me wincing, the almost daily sight of a mother trying to shepherd her two pre-schoolers (including a feisty little blond toddler with mittens dangling on strings from her jacket, who insists on doing everything herself) to the daycare centre in our office tower (the woman has the patience of a saint!). Even tonight's storm had me thinking, "Thank goodness I don't have to worry about how we're going to get home in time to pick up the kids."

Which is a long roundabout way of saying it's been a busy week here & I haven't had a lot of time to spend in cyberspace, but I hope to do so this weekend. TGIF!

Did Juno I love the Oscars?

Dh & I went to see "Juno" today. I was a little apprehensive, given the subject matter, but I was reassured by the positive reviews I've read from other infertility bloggers. I know there's been controversy over the way adoption & abortion are presented in the movie. That didn't really bother me. I think what bothered me most was the fact that a smart, savvy girl like Juno got pregnant in the first place... not the fact that she had sex, but that they obviously didn't use birth control. But then I guess there wouldn't have been a movie, right?

Jennifer Garner had me in tears in just about every scene she was in. I could so relate. I also like how they started out with Jason Bateman as this cool guy, & gradually you (along with Juno) realize he really needs to grow up.

One reason we wanted to see this movie today is tonight is Oscar night, & we've only seen one of the nominated movies so far -- "Michael Clayton." I would be interested in seeing the other three, but I want to read "Atonement" before I see it, & dh isn't really interested in "No Country for Old Men" (which I hear is extremely violent) or "There Will be Blood." We both loved "Michael Clayton" & I thought George Clooney was fabulous in it (fabulous looking, we already know, lol), but it sounds like tonight's Best Actor Oscar will go to that other great piece of eye candy, Daniel Day-Lewis. ; )

We saw "Away From Her" awhile back -- about a long-married childless couple facing the wife's Alzheimer's disease -- & absolutely loved it. The fact that it's a Canadian production (written & directed by Sarah Polley, of "Road to Avonlea," all grown up, and based on an Alice Munro short story) is also a source of great pride. Julie Christie (who is nominated for Best Actress -- as is Ellen Page, who played Juno) is wonderful in it & looks fabulous, grey hair, facial lines & all -- 40+ years after winning her first Oscar for "Darling" in 1965. I only wish that Gordon Pinsent, who plays her husband, had been nominated too. He may not be very well known in the States (which I suspect is why he wasn't nominated), but he's something of a national treasure in Canada.

Dh & I both love going to the movies (our first date was to see "Altered States" with William Hurt, & for years afterwards, we would try to go to a movie with William Hurt in it on our "anniversary" date), & Oscar night is sacred in our house. My own love of the movies, & of Oscar night, comes from my mother, who started taking me to the movies at a very early age, & let me stay up to watch the Oscars with her when I was almost as young. The first Oscar show I can clearly remember watching was the year "Patton" won all the awards (spring 1971, I would guess, when I was about 10). We were at my grandmother's in Minnesota for spring/Easter break & went to a friend's house so we could watch the show in colour (colour TVs still being something of a novelty then).

About a year later, I found a paperback book that had profiles & photos and lists of all the award winners & nominees in Oscar's history. I absolutely gobbled it up. I was hooked. If you asked me back then who won Best Actress in 1937, I'm sure I could have told you, and even today, I'd probably still be able to hazard a fairly good guess (Luise Rainer? Bette Davis?). Funnily enough, I find it harder to remember the names of the winners from last year than those from 50 or 60 years ago.

I don't think I've missed one Oscar show since then... although there have been a few close calls. The year I was in Grade 12 (spring 1979), I was working part-time at Woolco (which was later bought out by Wal-Mart). (My very first part-time job, the summer I was 17, was working at the concession stand at the local drive-in theatre, making popcorn, serving drinks, etc... which I loved... but I digress...!) The broadcast started an hour before the store closed, & I can remember craning my neck to see if I could catch a glimpse of what was going on from the televisions in the electronics department, & rushing home to watch the rest of the show (no VCRs in those days). Another year, my mother came to visit & I inadvertently bought tickets to see "Phantom of the Opera" the same night as the Oscars. We set the VCR, arrived home in time to see the last few major awards handed out, & then watched the whole broadcast the next evening, fast-forwarding through all the commercials & the dreaded dance numbers -- not a bad way to watch, albeit knowing who all the winners were already.

1998, when I was pregnant with Katie, was the year "Titanic" won all the awards -- my mother had just been to visit, and she & I went to see it together. (The doomed Titanic -- another omen for the pregnancy, perhaps??) Much as I love the Oscars, it's always a struggle to stay awake until the end of the show, and being pregnant (& often in bed by 8 or 9 in those days), it was even worse... but I did it, & I will do it again tonight, lol. Even though I will pay dearly when the alarm rings at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning...!

A "telling" post

Over at the Stirrup Queens site, Mel has asked us to tell her about... telling:

"...the topic I'm posing today is telling people that you're infertile, doing treatments, using donor gametes, using surrogacy or adopting..
"Some people go through treatments privately, without revealing to any friends or family members what they are experiencing. Others choose to tell a select few and still others tell everyone about their E2 levels, including the random woman buying Doritos in line behind them at the supermarket.
"There are also people we weigh and decided to not tell and other people who are told despite the fact that we are trying to keep the journey private. Everyone has personal, unique reason for why they do or don't tell.
"If you have told anyone, how did you broach the conversation? Did you wait for an opening or create it yourself (and if you created it, how)? Do you tell more than one person at a time or do you like to find private moments where you can talk about it one-on-one? Do you prefer to tell people in a written medium--email, letter--or face-to-face? Why did you tell them and how did they react? Were you disappointed or grateful, and did the telling make a difference in your life the day after and the day after that (in other words, did the telling do anything to change your daily existence either positively or negatively)?"

** ** ** ** ** **

I've always been a very private person, especially when it comes to personal matters. When all the other little girls at school got together to talk about boys -- & who they liked -- I would keep my mouth resolutely shut. OK, my very best friend probably knew which guy I secretly fancied, but I would never take part in the general giggly, gossipy give & take of who-likes-whom. I knew (from experience, & watching others) that the minute I confessed, it would be all over the schoolyard, & my life would be hell for the next God-knows-how-long.

Likewise, dh & I knew we were getting married, long before we actually told people of our plans. We both still had to finish school & find jobs, etc., & I knew that the minute we started telling people we were engaged, a big white tulle cloud would descend upon us, and that would be all anyone would want to talk about.

After we got married, I braced myself for the inevitable questions, hints & jokes about pregnancy & babies. When dh & I returned from our honeymoon, one of his aunts had a "welcome home" party for us to celebrate our wedding (since most of his relatives did not travel to attend). I was absolutely stunned (& silently furious) when they brought out a cake with one blue, one pink and one small yellow candle on it, to much laughter & nudging -- it was starting already!

Then as now, I identified myself as a feminist. I knew that I was so much more than my ability to reproduce. I refused to be painted into a traditional corner so quickly, & resented people trying to do so. I believed (then and now) that when, how, why and even whether we decided to have children was a strictly private matter between dh & myself. Questions & hints about our family plans would be dismissed with an evasive, "Oh... someday... eventually... one of these days, maybe..."

As the years went by & there were no babies, the questions & hints began to dwindle. We finally decided to take the ttc plunge after being married for 10 years -- by which time I think most people had written us off in the babymaking department, perhaps assuming that we didn't want children. I've known some people who announce excitedly to all & sundry, "We're trying!" No way, not me.

So there was a lot of surprise & delight among our family members when we finally announced our pregnancy in the spring of 1998. FIL even confessed, "I didn't want to ask..."

After our daughter was stillborn, I got murmured comments along the lines of "You'll have another baby someday" & "You ARE trying again, aren't you?" Never mind that I was in my late 30s & this pregnancy took 2.5 years of trying (13, if you thought we started trying the night of the wedding). I would generally answer "I hope so," because I knew another pregnancy (let alone a successful one) was definitely not a sure thing.

So when we began infertility testing and then treatment, we kept it to ourselves. Why? Well, as I've already described, it's just not in my nature to blab about intensely personal matters to all & sundry. And there's certainly no subject more intensely personal than trying to conceive. And I was having enough trouble coping emotionally as it was. I felt I couldn't handle the weight of other people's excitement, expectations, disappointments & sympathy/pity on top of my own feelings of stress, hope, disappointment, failure...

And GUILT. Guilt for waiting as long as we did to ttc. Guilt for being so smugly confident that of course WE would never be one of those couples I read about in the women's magazines -- infertility was for women with irregular periods & sexually transmitted diseases (which of course they got from having multiple previous sexual partners, unlike moi...). Guilt, guilt, guilt for not providing my parents with a (living) grandchild to spoil long before this (particularly when I knew my only sister was childfree by choice and it was all up to me). Guilt for not making my own fabulous grandparents great-grandparents, even though they both hung around until I was 37 years old (how many 37-year-olds are lucky enough to still have a complete set of grandparents living?). Guilt that any children I ever did manage to have would never know personally just what wonderful people they were. Guilt that my dh would never get to be the fabulous daddy to a (living) child that I knew he would be.

I did have two friends at work that I confided in (one of them with her own fertility issues), an e-mail list for ttc & subsequent pregnancy after a loss (then, as now, I somehow find it easier to spill my guts to total strangers on the Internet...!), and people in our "real-life" pregnancy loss support group, many of whom were also struggling with infertility issues.

Admitting failure -- at something that just about everyone else took for granted (heck, at something that far too many people in my family had happen "to" them, as an "accident") -- to myself was one thing. Admitting such failure to others... well, you can imagine. I'd always succeeded in just about everything else in my life that I had done (well, outside of phys ed class & organized recess sports, where I was a total, utter failure). For the most part, school came easily to me. I landed jobs fairly easily. I just took it for granted that if I applied myself & worked hard, success would be mine. Infertility was a huge blow to my self-esteem & the capable, accomplished image of myself that I liked to project to others.

My dh encouraged me to tell my mother about our difficulties in getting pregnant again -- especially after she called one night (a few years after we'd stopped treatments, when I was in my early 40s), her voice full of excitement, to tell me about a neighbour's daughter who had just adopted the cutest baby through an agency in the city... "and I just thought I'd mention it to you..."

I got off the phone & cried for two hours. My mother was never one to hint too openly about her desire for grandchildren, especially after our loss (although I knew it was there), and her previous comments about adoption had always been tinged with ambivalence -- which probably contributed to my own ambivalence about it as an option for us.

"Well, you know, she's adopted," she would say, sotto voce, when an acquaintance was having problems with her teenaged daughter (something I heard her say more than once about more than one adopted child). "And she's mixed race. That's a lot of baggage to be carrying around." When a friend's marriage broke up, Mom wondered whether the stress of adopting twin boys -- who turned out to have behavioural issues, possibly related to fetal alcohol syndrome -- on top of the mixed-race girl they had previously adopted -- had contributed to the breakup of their marriage. If I adopted, would she be saying the same things to me, about me, about our adopted child (even though I knew she'd love that child to death)?

And now here she was, blatantly hinting that *I* should consider adoption!! I felt the weight of my mother's desire for a(nother) grandchild in that moment, & it nearly crushed me.

Several years after we finally abandoned treatment, I finally did tell my mother what we'd been through. We were home during the summer for a visit, and she & I went for a walk at dusk. We ran into someone she knew, with a cute little girl who was hopping with excitement about starting junior kindergarten in the fall. As we continued on our way, I found myself remarking that Katie would have been starting junior kindergarten that fall too. My mom said she knew, & we both got choked up. Then, hesitantly, my mother said, "Have you ever thought about adopting?"

"Oh Mom," I said, "I just don't think I have it in me. Not at this point in my life." She conceded that adoption was not for everyone.

But then I found myself adding, "But we did try, Mom, we really tried!" I told her everything. (Well, not everything. But a lot.) I said we hadn't tried IVF, but we had tried other things. I told her about the drugs & how they'd made me feel. About being poked & prodded and getting up at 4 a.m. to get to the clinic by 7, and then heading to the office for a full day of work.

I told her about the failures. I told her about the anxiety attacks I'd had, how I just couldn't continue living with the stress. I reminded her of the time she came to visit us in the spring of 2002. I had another major anxiety attack the night before she arrived, & had told her about that when she arrived (but not the whole story behind it all). She & I had planned a trip to explore Montreal together for a few days while she was here, & we'd had to cancel because I was just too unwell & afraid of being sick in a strange city.

She said, "I wish you'd told us. You shouldn't have had to go through all that by yourself," & I explained to her that I found it hard enough living with my own disappointment, let alone hers & Dad's -- knowing they would be waiting anxiously to hear the results of the latest cycle.

By then, we'd reached the corner of our street & were just standing there, talking & crying. We knew my dad & dh would be waiting inside the house to play cards. She told me she had to water the flowers in the garden, & to go on ahead & clean myself up. I managed to get past dh & dad (already dealing the cards) & upstairs to the bathroom to splash my swollen red eyes with cold water & compose myself before facing them, and she followed a few minutes later.

I still don't regret keeping my mouth shut while we were in treatment. But I'll admit that I felt an immense sense of relief at having finally come clean with my mother, after the fact.