Ok. Here we go. I started writing this blog, and what I hope will one day be a book, back in 2013. Maybe even 2012. The book started as a diary-- I guess the blog did too, and now I want to go back and shape it so that it not only tells our specific story but is also useful. As a therapist now working primarily with people going through infertility, I think useful tools to survive the madness is important. Hearing other people's journeys and cultivating hope are part of that tool kit, but I also think there is a process that happens for many of us. There are distinct stages and common issues that arise one you step foot on IF Island. There is resistance and acceptance and everything in between and perhaps there are some insights I might be able to share the address some of these things. That's my goal. Right now it's all very personal so I'm trying to keep the intimacy while making the overall story more broad as well as more tangibly useful. Sooo.... with that in mind I'll share the preface as a staring point and ask a question at the end that might help me direct my efforts and guide my editing. Thanks for hanging in there with me. Any and all comments, thoughts etc are always appreciated.
PREFACE
I’m lying on the shower floor staring up at the underside of my husband’s ball sack. We’re trying to make a baby and my ovulation schedule is clashing with a “surprise” 12-day visit from my brother-in-law. We live in a loft with no walls, and the shower is the only place we can have privacy. So here I am, my legs running up the wall and my hips in the air, trying to defy gravity. Trying to keep all the swimmers moving downstream, I hold my nose and direct my husband to block the water from beating down on my face and then we laugh. We laugh at the absurdity of being put in such positions to create new life, and how much our own lives have changed over the past ten years.
That was January 2011. We were hopeful. We were naive. We were convinced that by September of that year we’d have a family. Junior Mint would be born healthy, a Virgo or a Libra, with his father’s perfect nose and his mother’s thick hair. He’d be the first grandchild in the family and we would turn my husband’s “man cave” into a nursery. We had it all planned out.
Never could we imagine that by spring 2014, Junior Mint would still be a figment of our imaginations. Never did we think we’d be putting the word out to my OBGYN to call us if a pregnant woman came into his office saying she didn’t want her baby. Never did we dream we’d ever be tracking an abandoned newborn left under a bridge in Ghana, or looking into what pieces of artwork my parents could sell to pay for a round of IVF. And we certainly never imagined asking my sister for her eggs or researching embryo donation. NEVER!
But never say never, right? We had to reframe the ideas we had about how we were going to “construct” our family, and we had to accept that none of them were going to be easy -- or cheap. We watched as most of our friends popped out one, two, even three kids with ease, usually taking the miracle of life for granted. And we had to constantly remind each other that, somehow, some way, come hell or high water, we would eventually become parents.
QUESTION:
What are the distinct stages you feel you experienced or are experiencing on your "journey to parenthood?" (Example: confusion, sadness, anger, denial, refusal to accept, letting go of genetics, accepting reality, jealousy, feeling I'm cursed...etc)
Are there any specific topics, issues, or concerns you wish you had some tools to deal with? (Example: how to process moving to third party reproduction and letting go of genetics, dealing with friends who are pregnant, working with anxiety of the unknown, etc.)