Tag: conversation

Collateral Damage Gets a Breather

Infertility Honesty

Socializing With Fellow Child Free Not By Choicers

I felt my whole body present and peaceful before I opened my eyes.  Light filtered in through our hotel window which faced Pittsburgh’s Point State Park, just to the side of Heinz field.

“I feel, like…..good” I stated to my husband (mornings for me have never exactly been a time of intellectual prowess).  However, in the noticeably less plowing and more functional third year of grieving and mourning the loss of one’s children to infertility, feeling good still rates as news.

“I can’t quite explain it….” I meandered as I stretched my body and gulped in as much of my good feeling as I could, reflecting on our weekend in “the Burgh” with fellow blogger Kinsey.  “I think I might feel…normal……..which is of course weird.”

The precious few times I’ve been asked to site the toughest aspect of what I go through, aside from not getting to have children, I always answer “the social ramifications”.  Hovering in the backdrop of my response is the shaky, filmy sense that even I don’t yet really know what that means.  Not fully, anyway. Read more →

Precious Resonance

Infertility Honesty

The Global Sisterhood Summit Part 2

Wrestling with the feeling that the other shoe is always about to drop was unavoidable – my subconscious associates anything infertility with the reasonable becoming a debacle, things going wrong when you do everything right and, most of all, deprivation.  I was concerned that my flights weren’t real, that my boarding passes wouldn’t print and anything else non – sensical you can think of.  Read more →

Truth, Death and Mother’s Day

Infertility Honesty

“It’s a pronatalist world and we’re just living in it……”

I knew entering a nail salon the afternoon before Mother’s Day was not the brightest of moves.  It’s about as smart as adopting an indoor porcupine, actually.  I live in permanent mockery of my “poor little first world problem”, as I’ve been known to call it – yet my trips to the nail salon have turned fodder for many a blog post.  For the involuntarily childless infertility survivor, women + mindlessness is never good.  And so off I went, in part because my sweet cousin had just passed away, I was a little shell shocked and knew I’d be on a plane in a couple of days, and in part to treat myself. Read more →

#StartAsking My Personal Story of Asking

Infertility Honesty

I seem to be just getting started, however I know the week is about over.  To those of you who stayed with me this week, thanks for your abidance.  I felt as if I spent the week with some of you in a way, and I liked it!  It also goes without saying I admire your endurance:-)  So just one more post……..

Coming Out to the Band

A few months before we did our first round of IVF, I joined a symphonic band.  Having played flute since I was ten years old, and having made a living teaching lessons and playing weddings for the first portion of my adult life, (about 15 years), it was a quaint notion to be able to “just sit and play” after my years of hustling.  And better yet, I was second flute for the first time in my life, a position that averted me the pressure of solos and afforded my playing to be “off” when I was on hard hitting meds.  Plus I was thrilled to be playing harmony for the first time in my life, also a quaint notion, this time for the big fish in the little ponds who always ended up in the developmentally limiting position of first chair.

One of the things our band director does is send both birth and death e-mail announcements to the group, the death announcement subject line reading “regret to advise”.  People’s joyous and heartbreaking life events would be acknowledged over and over again as I tumbled through round after round of failed IVF in silence.  In this experience I observed rage, loneliness, sadness and disenfranchisement. Read more →

#StartAsking Reproductive Medicine to Prioritize Patient Care

Infertility Honesty

Dear Reproductive Medicine,

I’m one of your patients.

I went through five IUI’s (all done with injectables), one hysteroscopy/laparoscopy surgery for stage 3 endometriosis, four fresh IVF cycles and one frozen.

I also, during my four year trying to conceive trek, unexpectedly dealt with PTSD that went undiagnosed for quite some time and entailed panic attacks, many of which took place in your waiting rooms.

My husband and I have now embarked on the third year of grieving and mourning the loss of our children, notably all by ourselves.  And no, we don’t consider our departure from reproductive medicine and the pursuit of a family with children a “choice” upon which our grief can be blamed.  It was, rather, the only sane and responsible action to take under the circumstances.

Yes, I’m one of your patients.  A patient who, two years and three months out of her final treatment is disturbed by many aspects of the care she got….and didn’t get…..while in the care of reproductive medicine.  Prompted by this year’s National Infertility Awareness Week theme, it’s time to #StartAsking. Read more →

#StartAsking For Support From Family

Infertility Honesty

Guest Post – My Mom

I’ve been noticing that it seems our family members need to speak on our behalves a lot more.  I envision a future where people speak up for family members dealing with infertility as much as they do for any of life’s other crisis and unexpected heartaches.

I know that eliciting support from family is not always feasible.  Not everyone has a parent, parents or siblings within reach, due to death and other circumstances.  And, since we have about as much of a choice of who our parents are as we do over our reproductive situations (please read: none!), some of us are dealing with more astronomical levels of crazy than others.  Please know that I abide with these circumstances too.

The path to incorporating the hardship of treatments, the losses brought by infertility and the needs that arise because of them into my extended families’ reality has not been an easy one.  But we all persisted and I’m glad we did.  It touches on a spirit present in some of my other posts, which is that one doesn’t matter less in any given equation because they couldn’t have children easily or at all.  So, with that said I’ll turn things over to Mom. Read more →

#Startasking Eight Reasons Why Asking is Hard

Infertility Honesty

I’ve done my share of speaking out on my trip through infertility and now involuntary childlessness.  I’ve asked my family and friends for support.

I insert my truths in conversation when I’m able.  I educate when I can.  In doing these things I’m habitually asking people for acknowledgement and to be informed themselves. Read more →

#StartAsking Ok, I’ll Ask the World

Infertility Honesty

7 Things To Know About Infertility

 

Dear People in the World,

In the spirit of this year’s National Infertility Awareness Week #startasking theme, I’m asking you, people in the world, heck, I’m imploring you, once and for all to please take the disease of infertility seriously. Read more →

Let’s Hang Out! The Child Free Not By Choice Social Conundrum

Infertility Honesty

A Week in the Life of an Infertility Survivor Pt3

One of the greatest losses stemming from infertility and childlessness for me is the hefty strain it has put on socializing and forming relationships with people.  It is, in my opinion, one of the least understood and most underrated challenges of not only childlessness, but of one’s changed perspective having survived trauma and loss.

The phone rings in my car, somewhere on the New Jersey turnpike, interrupting my pop music reverie.  Perhaps it was Rachel Platten’s Fight Song, or Adele’s Hello, or Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, I don’t quite remember.  In the midst of anticipating a quiet Thursday evening at home organizing myself and gearing up for my yoga teacher training weekend, I was reminded by my husband that we had a party to attend at one of his restaurants. Read more →

The Illusion of Back to Normal

Infertility Honesty

“I only sobbed for a couple of hours.  And then I laughed because it was just so absurd.”

“Holy crap”  I said.  My friend who was unexpectedly and tragically widowed four years ago was in LA filming a movie this year in mid-February.  She got through the whole of Valentine’s Day without a trigger, and it seemed her chosen tactic of ignoring the day had triumphed as she was driven back to her hotel.  Looking forward to chilling out after an intense week of work, she arrived at the hotel only to find a Valentine’s extravaganza of sorts in the banquet room in proximity to hers.  She was greeted at the hotel by dressed up ladies in the arms of their dates and “relaxed” in her hotel room to love ballads galore and amorous prompts filtering through the walls from the over eager MC across the hall.

Kind of like unintentionally stumbling upon a church service or a restaurant on Mother’s Day in our world.  Triggering times a million?  Oh, I think so. Read more →