Let the debriefing begin

I am, quite frankly, surprised to be writing in this space. But it (this space) has been calling to me in recent months — occasionally even poking me with a dull "Feel like posting?" stick, reminding me that I left the blog hanging. Just waiting for me to come back, catch it, and call it Done.

Some things in life just take a little time to get to, you know?

And now: It's time.

This was never going to turn into a life-without-children blog. That just doesn't fit me. And I can't possibly still discuss myself in terms of being infertile. I mean, I was infertile. That happened. But I don't call myself infertile now, more than three years after my last TTC hurrah. Infertility is not a theme that rules my everyday todays. How could it? As my brother once said when asked, years after a painful end to one chapter in his life (the short story is he did not get what he wanted), whether he harbored negative feelings about the different life's path he was forced to take: "That would be weird."

Do I wish things had gone another way for me? Please. Yes. Of course. Can I still connect with the pain of losing my chance at parenthood? I don't have to connect, really, because it's right there, part of my soul. But, to my brother's point, I've reached the time at which I can't hold that pain against the Rest of My Life.

So here I am, blogosphere! Ready to start writing the posts that will help me articulate the journey from there to here. From my infertile end to my new days in which it makes sense to bring closure to this blog.

I have no idea how long my debriefing process will take. Not too terribly long, I trust. But the only thing I need to know right now is that I'm doing it.

And that, I am.

New template

Well. The whole new-Blogger-templates thing forced me to visit this space. I'm really happy that new options are available after all these years. Pretty ones, too. Not sure I'll keep this particular background . . . or layout . . . or anything. But it's kind of cheery, I think.

Cheery, yet it features something going to seed, or weed — all with a view of the blue, blue sky. Which sort of fits the blog's main theme. (Or is that mine?)

Hey blog, you still here? Yeah, I am too.

I haven't completely settled into this new post-TTC life, you know. That's not to say that I'm not productive and busy, or that I'm without happiness or purpose or song. It's just that, gee whiz, moving on from the TTC life — which to me now also includes my pre-TTC life, which in turn includes the vision of life-with-family I somehow always had, even before I opened my eyes to it — is a more arduous task than I expected.

As for the grieving process, I did that up right, let me tell you. I felt it. Or more to the point, I let myself feel it. (Something I haven't always done when I should.)

True, there's no distinct end to grieving deep-down loss of any kind. It will always be there. It will always be not there. But despite having come a long, LONG way since last year at this time, I'm still wondering when. WHEN do I truly cross over into the light? No, not into the big white light. (Not ready!) Just into a rough approximation of the light I always lived in before, even during the darkest of times.

I know the light is there, waiting for me to reconnect to it. I feel it glancing my face sometimes, maybe even every day now. But I'm still living with a heaviness that keeps me in check. I walk around with that hint of a lump in my throat, that vague ache in my gut. Tiny afflictions that others can't really see. Well, that's not true. I'm sure others see those things in me. They just don't know it.

Oh, I smile easily, and I mean it when I do it. I just need to keep looking forward to looking forward to the day when my smile gets back to the business of being "my smile."

Creme de la Creme of 2009

Today Mel, our mighty Stirrup Queen, unveiled the 2009 Creme de la Creme, aka the year's best blog posts from the Adoption/Loss/Infertility community. Each entry is self-selected by its author, by the way, so the list is a sort of all-inclusive celebration of each blogger's favorite post. I chose this entry because I felt that it told more of my current story than all my other fly-by-night after-thought-type writings from the past year put together.

Show Mel — and the whole lot of us — some love by clicking on over to peruse a bunch of beautiful bloggers' unique-yet-universal thoughts on the whole damn ALI experience. You won't regret it!

(I didn't submit till after Mel's deadline, so it might be several days before my entry pops up on her list.)

Trouble sticking a fork in it

Every once in a while I look at my little "About the Blog" blurb and think I should update it to clarify in that space that I am no longer TTC. True, I say so at the end of the insufferably long "About the Blogger" list. Longtime readers know it. But, well, targeted communication is my real-life business, and it bothers that side of me to see a blog description of mine that doesn't quite capture what's going on in the blog's present.

I do know what's really eating me: The thought of adding promises of child-free-living talk to my blog's theme makes me ill.

For one thing, I am childless, no thank you very much. "Child free" — to me — still carries the connotation of choice, a happy circumstance. I mean, come on, free is "because I decided so, on purpose, to suit my own needs and desires." Or. It's just plain GOOD. Without restrictions. At no cost.

Carefree, debt free, error free, cancer free, drug free, allergen free, worry free, wrinkle free, cling free; free admission, free food, free beer, free samples, free estimate, free concert, free puppies; free country, free speech, free time, free will, free spirit, free love; free on bail, buy one get one free, don't tread on free, free-for-all, free and clear, home free, set me free, free to be you and me, free at last, free at last . . . free, free, free, free, free, YIPPEE!

For another thing, I don't think I'll spend a lot of time blogging specifically about life without children. I am still processing/blogging about IF, loss, and stepping off the family-building path. "No kids" is part of that. But I feel like adding any sort of "life without" thingy to the blog description invites the assumption that someone might come here to read about day-to-day observations on life as a childless person. Granted, that's the situation. But it's not the accurate bent, if you will, of the blog.

Also, although I'm moving along and trying to evolve, I'm not all the way ready to COMPLETELY evolve the blog so that it no longer does what I created it to do for me: provide a safe haven for semiprivately discussing private hopes and fears on the way to whatever conclusion our TTC journey reached. One can and should argue that said conclusion made its appearance a while back. It's just that I'm still working on accepting it. Oh, I've committed to it. But the associated feelings are still raw sometimes, and my head can still spin when I realize not just how things turned out but that they did, in fact, turn out. Past tense.

As labels go, I think "infertile" still fits until I hit menopause. "Childless" is how I feel at present, but I don't like that as a descriptor for myself or anyone else (although, re me, "Area Childless Woman Wins the Lottery" wouldn't bother me too much). And "child free" just doesn't apply to me.

None of this is to say, you understand, that I go around throwing any of the terms into my everyday conversations.

---------
Me: Hi, I'm Lisa.

Other Person: And what do you do, Lisa?

Me: I'm an Infertile. Have been for years. I love it!!

Me (alternate answer): I'm a childless writer. You?
---------

Sorry for that digression. Anyone still with me?

I wasn't at all sure that I ended up making the point I had in mind when I logged on. Then I caught sight of the post's title, which pretty much says it all.

"We interrupt this silence to bring you a new post!"

It's been a while!

I took a break on purpose. Partially to give myself a break, and partially to mull over whether to keep writing in this space. I didn't do anything special to help myself come to a decision. Just decided to decide sometime.

Before I started this blog, I thought I might like to do a completely different sort of semi-anonymous personal blog. Something fun. Books, music, cooking, movies, dogs, and/or wine&beer&cocktails all seemed like topics I could enjoy blathering on about. Not infertility. And certainly not the version of it I'd lived up to that point, where IF meant you do not . . . you cannot . . . you will not conceive a take-home baby. I had nothing to say about that except that it sucked and I hated it. I just didn't know where I could go with that theme. Plus, I felt then that DH and I were just about done with TTC and it didn't make sense to blog in retrospect.

But then we committed to surgery and pursuing IVF with a new RE. Something shifted. I had hope again and something to look toward. A brand-new set of experiences to see through to whatever end was in store. A story. And onto Blogger I jumped.

Funny thing is, despite the TTC thing having fallen off my to-do list — and maybe, in a strange way, precisely because I have no intention of spending the rest of my days living in infertility (and, for you close readers out there, the "in" was a conscious language choice in lieu of, say, "with" or "after") — I know that this story is still unfolding. The rest of my life will not be an epilogue. And I need a way to facilitate putting the IF ride in its proper perspective within the much larger framework of that life.

So. More blogging for me. Unless or until I decide to decide otherwise.

Creme de la Creme day

Today's the day that Mel from Stirrup Queens presents a massive list of the best posts from the 2008 IF/Adoption/Loss blogosphere, a cyber-land that she supports and nurtures with such incredible ferocity.

Each post has been self-selected by its author, so it is not a contest (if you submit, you're "it"). Rather, the idea is for each participating blogger to select a single post that best speaks to her or his point of view.

I chose a fairly recent post to represent my experience. If someone were to read just one entry from my blog, that's the one that I think sums up my story as it stands right now. It does seem like an ending, but I personally feel that the year's worth of posts have been "about" my bringing this journey to its inevitable conclusion. In some ways what came before hardly matters. Right now I'm still blogging. I have more to convey. But I am operating in a sort of wrap-up mode.

Please check out the Creme de la Creme list to view a startling array of experiences. You'll see yourself in them. You'll see everyone else. You'll learn new things. You'll laugh, cry, and maybe even throw a fit or two. Even if time permits you to view just a handful of selections, I guarantee that you won't be sorry you clicked.

Blogging it

You know, I'm just not sure how to handle this blog right now. I keep toying with the idea of switching to a pregnancy blog . . . one that the family can actually access for news. But then I think, Where will I write about what I'm really thinking? I can do that in a regular journal, of course. But that's a whole different kind of outlet. It is for me, anyway, and I do like certain aspects of blogging.

I'll keep the status quo for now. Probably until I'm out of the first trimester and start actually talking about the pregnancy in real life. Honestly, it's STILL not feeling altogether real to me. Our immediate families know, and so do several friends and a few of my colleagues, but we've mostly kept a lid on it. (Not that I'm not positive some people we've told have told others. But that doesn't directly affect us.)

Later, I'll likely start something for general public consumption but maybe keep blogging here about my take on being pregnant after years and years of thinking I never would be. That "take" isn't all somber and full of fear and doubt . . . but is reflective of my particular path, which I really don't discuss with very many real-life souls.

My 9-week ultrasound happens tomorrow. Hoping to see good growth and a nice solid heartbeat! If we do, that will be my last appointment with the RE.

It may not be all good, but it's not all bad, either

Right from the beginning I wanted to keep this blog on topic. To stick to infertility and, more specifically for the time being, my last-gasp attempts at ART. It's a little depressing to read, though, isn't it?

Well of course it is! IF sucks old dirty rotten donkey eggs. (No offense to donkeys. Really, I don't know where that came from.) There's nothing bright and sunny about the topic. If I'm not whining — er, blogging — about my inability to do the ONE thing my body was uniquely created to do, I'm worrying about the emotional and financial tolls 4.5 years of failed TTC efforts have exacted. Or I'm venting about my state's lack of mandated coverage for medically necessary fertility care. OR, I'm reminding myself that it's illegal for me to snatch that tiny, helpless, perfect, crying infant I saw today in the park — the one whose mother kept slamming down her book so she could lean over the stroller and say "SHUT UP."

All that stuff is honest and comes with the experience. It helps for me to express some of it. But I often find myself looking for positive things to write, on topic, too. It's hard to pull off, though, because most of my happy thoughts and news have nothing to do with my theme here. I want to add a different dimension, but I kinda can't and sorta won't. While every day looks like a bad day when viewed through the IF lens, I think writing about that life angle every day is not the best thing for me. So I don't. Except when I hit a streak where I do.

The point to all this? Good question. Let's see if I can work out an answer.

IF takes up a ton of space in my life, to be sure, but I work on staying rooted in the reality of my WHOLE life, both what's going on now and what the future may hold. I'm grateful that IF hasn't erased the rest of me, and I guess maybe that's where I'm going with this today:

I don't know how this IVF will go. I don't know what we'll do if it fails. I can't predict exactly how the pain from these "infertile years" will color the rest of my life. What I do know is that, no matter what happens, I won't be denied a life. Because I already have one. And it's a good one, at that.

Back to the blog, back to the IVF life

Technically it's been 10 days since my last post, but I've interacted with the blog since then. Gave it some special one-on-one time. My Blogger dashboard shows 3 half-finished posts and 1 over-finished manifesto. I'm moving that to my private journal before somebody gets hurt. The other bits originated under the influence of flu and probably weren't going anywhere anyway.

Guess what? As my title suggests, we've decided to try IVF one more time. The decision-making process was complicated, but we're doing it, for better or "we'll be okay." Good result, bad result, we want one good try on the books before turning the page.

We're working through whether to start right away or wait one more cycle. Timing-wise for DH's job happenings, it would be better for us to get going asap. But biology (mine) will trump convenience (sorry, Giant Aerospace Company). Dr. K wants a confirmed natural ovulation as the cycle go-ahead, so I'll get a 7 DPO progesterone check next week. Not sure if we check for cysts then or wait for Day 3.

I'll follow the antagon protocol this time: no BCPs, no Lupron (amen!); Ganirelix to stop the LH surge; Follistim and Menopur for stimulation; HCG trigger; Medrol for assisted hatching; PIO for progesterone support.

Here we go!

Friday funny

This Onion headline made me laugh this morning:

"New Blog Gives Much-Needed Look Into the World of Geoff"

It sums up what I was thinking about this blog just yesterday. I mean, who cares?

Not that I'm stopping yet. But I've been a little sick of myself lately.

Here's the hilarious audio. Hoping other bloggers/readers enjoy it too.

Acronym update

I just updated the list of ART acronyms and abbreviations. Soon I'll create a list of relevant definitions (not today!), too, and link to both in the sidebar. Creating a little order and value for the blog — besides the obvious value as an outlet for me — is a good task as I try to keep myself on an even keel.