Eight years of childless/free living

This weekend marks a very special "anniversary" in my personal history -- the day I consider to be the true beginning of my childless/free life. Of course, I've lived without children my entire life (aside from the six months I was pregnant in 1998) -- but July 18th was a special day, an initial milestone marking the beginning, or at least the earliest stage, of my journey down the road less travelled. (I'll be otherwise occupied on July 18th, so I thought I'd blog about it early!)

It was the summer of 2001. Our third & final injectable/IUI cycle had failed in late May: we had reached the previously agreed-upon end of the fertility treatment road, & were embarking on the new & scary path of permanent childless/free living. In mid-June, I began having a series of frightening, debilitating anxiety attacks. I went to my family dr, was prescribed some Ativan, and endured a battery of tests (at my insistence) to satisfy myself that I hadn't had a heart attack, as I had initially feared. We went back to see the infertility counsellor we'd seen earlier for some guidance on this new path we were taking, & started getting ready for a much-needed family holiday on the Pacific Coast.

As I had when our daughter was stillborn in 1998, I began searching the Internet for resources -- something, ANYTHING, that would tell me I wasn't alone in facing this scary situation.

And I wasn't. Blogs hadn't been invented yet (or if they were, they weren't very well known), but I found a recently created message board that seemed custom-made for women like me. Women who had hoped to have children but, for a variety of reasons, hadn't. Some were like me, with a history of lost pregnancies and failed infertility treatments. Some were married to men who had families with previous partners & didn't want more children. Some were still hoping for a miracle, but trying on childfree living for size.

I made my first post on the board on June 18, 2001. I immediately felt accepted and understood. I began to look forward to logging on every day & finding out what everyone was doing and how everyone was feeling. It was a virtual support group. We got to know each other by posting "Two for Tuesday," "Wednesday woes & woohoos" and a "Friday Five." I found a few (very few) other boards for women in my situation (some listed in the sidebar of this blog), but most of them were not very active, and the bonds among the members not as strong as the ones I had formed with these women.

In the spring of 2003, the site underwent an "upgrade." Suddenly, I couldn't access the board anymore. PANIC!!! I had e-mail addresses for a few of the girls, & one day, I received an invitation: one of the members had created a private Yahoo group where we could reconnect. Eight of us eventually gathered over there and picked up the conversation where we had left off before we had been so rudely interrupted. : )

Eventually, I was able to access the old board again. But things were never quite the same there after that. There were many people we just never heard from again. A few of us "oldtimers" hung around to answer questions from newcomers. While the number of active posters slowed considerably, our threads continued to receive lots of views, indicating we had a lot of lurkers.

Last year in June, the hosting site shut the board down because of a lack of activity. The archived board is still there (although not, sadly, the posts from its earliest days -- so I can't link to my original post from 2001), but you can no longer post or respond to posts there, & it is not listed on the main site index of message boards. I blogged about the board closing here.

Only four or five of us still post on the Yahoo group now, not quite as often as we used to in the early days, when childless living was still a new & scary thing. But there is a bond and a common history we share that I treasure enormously. I've met two of these women in real life & it was simultaneously a weird & wonderful thing, to have someone step off the computer screen and into your arms for a hug. We've joked that that when we grow old & grey & widowed, without kids to "take care" of us, we'll move into a house together like the Golden Girls and take care of each other. (Or maybe we're not joking.)

Girls (I know some of you read this blog), I've never met most of you, but I can't imagine what the last eight years would have been like without all of you to vent to, cry with, laugh with and celebrate with. Thank you, thank you, thank you. To the extent that I have "accepted" my childless/free life, you all deserve much of the credit. I couldn't have done it without you. : )

Show & Tell: Our anniversary weekend in Stratford

(Apologies in advance for the wonky formatting -- trying to get the photos & text in the right places has been an exercise in frustration...!)

Thank you for all your good wishes on our wedding anniversary. Most years, we've fallen into the pattern of just going out for dinner, & then doing something special on the anniversaries that are divisible by 5. Even though this wasn't one of those years, we decided we wanted to do something a little more.

We've realized that we've fallen into a bit of a rut these past few years. Because we don't have any kids, we're obviously free to take off whenever we want -- and yet, we rarely do, especially the past 10 years. When you factor in commuting, we're out of the house for 11-12 hours every day, & we're pretty tired when we get home (how on earth do working parents do it???). It's very easy to fall into a rut & wind up laying on the couch watching TV (or mesmerized by a computer screen…!).

We decided that really needs to change! I recently started working on a scrapbook that will include at least one two-page layout for each year we've been married, with a selection of photos & highlights from that year, including vacations we took, shows we saw and what we did on our anniversary that year. (Hopefully, it will be finished in time for our 25th anniversary next year.) Anyway, going through my old datebooks, I realized, "Boy, we used to get out & about a LOT more!" Yes, I know we're 24 years older than when we were first married… but we're not THAT old, not yet…!!

We tossed around a few ideas. We considered going to Niagara on the Lake, one of our favourite getaway spots -- home to the Shaw Festival, as well as some fabulous wineries, & only a half-hour drive from Niagara Falls. We've been to NOTL many times before, though, most recently for our 20th anniversary. (I must blog about NOTL some other time.)

And so, we decided to head to Stratford -- home of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. (How lucky are we to have two such fabulous summer theatre festivals so close to us?) We've only been to Stratford three times (twice for the theatre, once just to look around) -- never overnight, & the last time was 20 years ago -- so we decided it was about time for a return visit.

And we are so glad we did. All weekend long, we kept looking at each other & saying, "WHY don't we do stuff like this more often??" lol


Stratford is about a two-hour drive west from Toronto, population around 30,000. It's a very pretty town, first settled in the 1830s, with some very well preserved Victorian-era houses & buildings, lots of gorgeous trees and parks, etc. The only thing I really didn't like is that almost ALL the parking downtown is metered -- 2 hours max -- & the parking lots are expensive (captive audience, I guess). Most plays run well over two hours, so dh had to leave the Sunday matinee at intermission to put more money in the meter. Be forewarned & bring lots of quarters, loonies & toonies!

(At left: Stratford City Hall.)

Ontario Street (Main Street)

Downie Street (I think?)

The world-famous Shakespeare Festival began in 1953, with performances in a tent. Over the years, it has expanded to four theatres and broadened its repertoire beyond just Shakespearean plays, with performances by renowned actors such as Alec Guinness, Christopher Plummer, Peter Ustinov, Dame Maggie Smith and William Shatner.

Both the Shaw & Stratford Festivals are heavily dependent on tourists (from both sides of the border) -- and both are hurting this year, because of the economy as well as the new rules requiring passports to cross the U.S.-Canada border. The Saturday night play we attended was fairly full, but not a sellout, as you might expect on a holiday weekend for both Canada and the U.S. We heard one hotel employee saying that when the Canadian dollar was at around 60 cents U.S., they used to get retired Americans coming & staying for two or three WEEKS, because it was such a cheap vacation for them. Not these days, unfortunately.

Nobody we talked to had been to Stratford recently & could recommend accommodations for us, so we scoured the Internet looking at hotel reviews. (Stratford has tons of B&Bs, but dh is more comfortable in a hotel setting -- preferably something fairly modern, lol.) We settled on the Arden Park Hotel -- a nice, clean, relatively modern, 5-storey hotel that had been recently renovated -- big room with a king-sized bed, flat screen TV, etc. -- new(er) carpeting, new tiles & fixtures in the bathroom, etc., located directly across the street from a Williams Coffee Pub and a Dairy Queen. It is a 20-30 minute hike downtown, but just a 5-10 minute walk down the side street & through a beautiful park to the Festival Theatre, the festival's largest venue.


We had better luck asking for recommendations on where to eat. Dovetailing nicely with its status as a tourist mecca, Stratford is home to a chef's school. There's a wide variety of very good restaurants to suit every taste & budget.

While visiting friends recently in nearby Waterloo, we asked whether they knew of any good places to eat. The husband works with a woman who has lived in Stratford all her life, & she had given him the names of two good restaurants to try. So we made reservations for one, Foster's Inn, on Saturday night. It's known for its steaks, so we both had steak & it was very good.

The restaurant is actually just a few doors down from the Avon Theatre -- however, the play we were seeing Saturday night was at the Festival Theatre, so we decided to return to our hotel, park the car & walk. The play was "Cyrano de Bergerac" which was wonderful. I saw it at Manitoba Theatre Centre years & years ago, when I was about 14 -- Len Cariou, a Winnipeg-born actor who has won Tonys on Broadway, played Cyrano then.

This time, Cyrano was played by Colm Feore, who is probably one of the better known stage actors in Canada (his wife directed the production & their son had a minor part in it too). I don't watch "24" but the program said he's on it! -- so you might recognize him. Some reviews I've read say he was a better Cyrano in a 1996 Stratford production. I don't know about that, but I thought he was wonderful, as was the young actor who played the tongue-tied Christian.

The next day we had brunch at the hotel, which was OK. It was served buffet style -- however, you had to go to one of the ballrooms to load up your plate at the buffet & then walk with it back down the hallway to the restaurant!! Kind of strange. Also, the hotel had hosted a wedding the night before & many of the guests were staying at the hotel, so it was very busy.

After brunch, we took a walk back to the park to look around (since we'd been in a hurry the night before), crossed the street from the theatre & took a walk along the beautiful Avon River (got some great photos of people feeding the swans).


Waterfall in the park -- when we were walking through on Saturday night, there was a whole family here having their portrait taken. Very cool setting!


Garden with a sundial & statue of Shakespeare on the grounds of the Festival Theatre.


Swans on the Avon River.

Another view of the river.

Returned to the hotel, got the car & headed back downtown for a Sunday matinee performance of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" at the Avon Theatre. OH MY GOSH -- it was hysterical!!! I was honestly getting weak from laughing so hard. Really, really funny & very well done! It's gotten great reviews. Dh saw the movie years ago (with Zero Mostel & Phil Silvers) but it was all new to me (except for the opening number, "Comedy Tonight"). I understand Nathan Lane starred in a revival on Broadway about 10 years ago (I could definitely see him in the role!).

We had hoped to go to dinner at the other restaurant our friends had recommended -- but when we went to call for reservations, we realized it was closed on Sundays. A lot of the restaurants in Stratford are, it seems. Very long story short -- after some wrangling with dh over what to do, we wound up at the hotel dining room. We looked at the menu in our room upstairs, picked out what wanted & headed downstairs & were seated. Only to find out that they didn't serve the regular menu on Sunday nights. We had a choice of three main courses, plus the salad bar & dessert bar (leftovers from brunch! -- which didn't appeal to me, so we didn't have any of that).

I had the prime rib & dh had broiled whitefish (the other choice was pineapple chicken). It was OK, but nothing special. Lesson learned for next time! Later, we walked across the street to the Dairy Queen & I had a Skor Bar Blizzard. : )

We got up the next morning (Monday, which was our actual anniversary), had breakfast, checked out before 10, & were back home again by noon. Went out for dinner again later that night.

We will definitely be doing this more often in the future. : )

To see what others are showing & telling, hop over to this week's Show & Tell post at Stirrup Queens.

And they lived happily ever after...

I know, I know -- happily ever after??

Well, actually... yeah. Despite the infertility, stillbirth, involuntary childlessness, health worries, anxiety (both of us) & other stresses that come with being human in the 21st century -- I am so glad I married this man 24 years ago today. : ) Happy anniversary to us!

Happy Canada Day!

Yesterday I got a tattoo. At work. On my right ankle.

OK, it's only one of those dollar store rub-on things that washes off. (At least I THINK it washes off... it's one day later &, as you can see, it's still strong & clear.)

(I've never really had the urge to get a real tattoo -- I feel like I'm a little "old" for it (although my aunt got one when she was in her late 50s -- much to my other, older aunt's chagrin...!) but if I ever did, I always thought I would get a butterfly on my ankle, for Katie.)

We had a little pre-Canada Day celebration at the office -- everyone wore red & white, we had cake & an all-Canadian trivia challenge quiz. My team was narrowly beaten, but as consolation, I won one of the prizes -- two new stainless steel water bottles decorated with Canadian flags, and a red chef's apron with paper napkins to match -- both bright red with "Eh?" in white type, lol.

Dh & I have never really done much on Canada Day. If we had kids, I'm sure we'd feel compelled to take them to a parade or fireworks or have a backyard barbecue. Or even to turn on the TV to watch the celebrations on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (something I would love to take in personally some day). Or something.

Instead, we went to a movie & lazed around the house. It feels oddly like Sunday. (I'll take any holiday I can get, but these four-day weeks do screw up my whole sense of timing.)

Even when I was a kid, though, I don't have too many memories of Canada Day celebrations (it was called "Dominion Day" back then). My most vivid Canada Day memory is from one year when I was a teenager in the late 1970s. We walked a few blocks down to the shores of the local man-made lake to watch the fireworks display, which was being set off on a bridge over the lake to the city park. All of a sudden we saw someone diving over the side of the bridge & into the algae-filled water (yuck). And then a barrage of fireworks the likes of which we'd never seen before, all over in a hurry. Seems something caught fire & set everything off just a tad prematurely. Fortunately, no one was hurt & no damage was done.

But then, low-key celebrations seems to be the Canadian way -- not too much fuss or patriotic hoopla, especially when compared to our cousins across the border. But yet there's still a quiet sense of pride and good fortune that we live in a country that remains one of the most beautiful, diverse, blessed nations on the face of the Earth.

Happy Canada Day!

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!

Thanks for the thrills

Having just written a long, rambling post about the music of my youth (in part, anyway), I couldn't ignore the death of Michael Jackson yesterday. It's one of those shocking "where were you" moments that I know I will always remember (we had just gotten home and turned on the TV news) -- like Elvis's death in August 1977 (I was 16, I had a girlfriend from out of town visiting for the weekend, and we spent most of the time listening to the radio, which was playing Elvis music & callers' reminscences nonstop) or John Lennon's in December 1980 (I was 19 and in second-year university and saw a news report on my little black & white TV in my dorm room -- they played a montage of Beatles film clips set to "In My Life" & I bawled my eyes out)(I have told dh that I want "In My Life" played at my funeral).

I first became aware of Michael & the Jackson 5 when I was about 10 years old, I guess, through -- what else -- Tiger Beat, & the other teen magazines of the early 1970s. To be quite frank, at that time, being a whitebread girl from smalltown Prairie Canada, you might live for years & years without ever encountering a black person (you MIGHT have one Asian family in town, running the lone Chinese restaurant for miles & miles around) -- & so I didn't relate to the Jacksons or their music very much at first. At that time, as I've written before, I was more into David Cassidy & the Osmonds.

I was never a huge, huge Michael Jackson fan, but as I got older, I grew to appreciate the Jacksons' music more and more. "Off the Wall" came out when I was still in high school, and "Thriller" when I was in university. The year I was in grad school, "Thriller" & the videos made from the songs on it, absolutely dominated the airwaves. Video was such a novel art form, and I absolutely loved "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" and the epic "Thriller," as much if not more than the songs themselves (not to mention the Weird Al Yankovic parodies of them!). I could watch them over & over, finding some new little detail to marvel over every time. Dated fashions aside, I still think they hold up today.

It's the Michael from those videos that I like to remember -- not the "wacko Jacko" of the last 15-20 years. I look at the clips of him from the Ed Sullivan show with his brothers, singing "Want You Back" & wonder what happened to that cute little boy with the sparkling eyes, big smile, even bigger voice and polished dance moves.

It's so very sad. What a colossal waste of talent.