We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

There are so many posts/reflections/musings/rantings/cryings rattling around in my head these days it is hard to keep them straight. It seems that writing is becoming a 'save it up' activity for me; I have to think and think and think and think and read and read and read and think and think and think before I'm ready to put something down in words. The problem is that then things get forgotten or morph, but maybe that's ok. I dunno. Who cares. The nice thing about a blog is it doesn't have to be polished or perfect; it's a snapshot in time no matter what, so maybe I just go for it, right? Ok, I will. Here goes. I do not promise coherence in anyway: tone, tense, or subject. That's how my brain/heart/soul/feelings are these days, so maybe that's an accurate snapshot. I feel ... I don't know if there is a word for it. I'm all over the map. My mood and level of 'ok-ness' can switch by the minute, hour, day, second. Sometimes I am ready

I did tons of pre-writing for this post. I have thought about the opening line for weeks. I thought about how I'd set it up for the big reveal at the end. I thought about how fun it would be to finally write good news. I thought about all the work on myself and my state of mind that I did between my last post, when I was pretty down-in-the-dumps, and when I had the last transfer, when I was feeling pretty good. I thought about how I would talk about all that work and the difference it made (the title is an allusion to that work) It didn't work. The last transfer, which had about an 80% chance of a positive pregnancy test, didn't work. I couldn't believe it. This time was different, for me. I really thought I was pregnant, I thought we'd have twins. I thought that this was going to be the happy ending to this long long road. It's not. Being sad is really hard work. It takes a lot of energy, and takes away the things that give you energy back. It's a d

When I was 18, I went to Europe for a year with Intermenno, an exchange program of sorts that no longer exists, sadly. I learned a lot of things that year: German, how to make soup, how to wash different kinds of lettuce (there are a lot of kinds of lettuce), that cups dropped on a brick floor break much more readily than cups dropped on a linoleum floor, Swiss German, how to take trains and travel around the continent, how to take care of a man (die maenner muessen versorged sein) - which now sounds a lot dirtier than it did then. Back then it referred to doing their laundry and cooking their food the way they liked it. It also sometimes meant cleaning my host-brother's apartment, which I was strongly against doing. I remember clearly saying to my host mother 'Other people have jobs and are gone all day and then come home and cook their own food and clean their own houses'. I think she didn't quite know what to do with me... But anyway, I digress. The most impor

A few weeks ago we went to Ontario to visit Jake's dad and step-mom. While we were there we went to the McMichael A rt Gallery to look around. I highly recommend this gallery. It's not far from the Toronto airport, has a restaurant and is gorgeous inside and out; the grounds are just as impressive as the collections of art inside, which is saying something. (Sadly, both times we've been there the weather has not been conducive to wandering around outside - it was pouring the first time and -25 (which is like -45 anywhere else ;)) the second.) The McMichael is a private art collection that has been turned into a museum/gallery that is open to the public and houses many many Group of Seven and other forms of iconic Canadian Art. The first time we went we were eager to see 'our' Lawren Harris painting (hanging above our fireplace); they have the original.    When we were done our tour and hadn't seen it, we went to the desk to ask about it. Turns out, the

Possibly the most unhelpful advice ever given to an infertile woman is 'try to relax'. This is also often followed by 'don't stress about it'. Another winner is 'it'll happen when you stop trying'. That last one is true for some (mythical couples, I suspect), but definitely not for most. First, some amount of stress is inevitable: my body is not doing what it is supposed to for a reason no one can figure out. That is stressful. But also, even more so, having kids is a dream that does not die easily. If you are willing to go through IVF and its related procedures, that means that you don't just have a passing desire for children, you WANT CHILDREN. If you didn't want it, badly, you would not put yourself and your partner through all it entails, physically, emotionally, monetarily. So in this context, each repeated negative result multiplies inside you. Each one brings you closer to 'maybe this won't work. THEN what?' OF COURSE this

Today one of my students asked if she could tell me something. We went outside the room, and I was nervous about what it was going to be. She is the oldest of 7 kids living in her house, her mother has cancer that she didn't appear to be getting treated, and through it all, my student was the rock of the family. She also came to school every day and worked super hard; you'd never know that her home-life was in such a shambles. She is so resilient, it's unreal. So in the hall, she has this huge grin on her face and she tells me that her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and she (my student) was so terribly sad, but she never stopped believing in God, and she prayed and prayed and prayed and then her mom came home and told them at her most recent drs appt they didn't find any cancer. My student was overjoyed. She was shining like there was literally a light inside her. (Now, not to be a scrooge (although I do tend to skew that way these days), but I have serio

This is a topic that people ask about often, and it's one we talk about fairly regularly as well. If it were as easy as 'Here's a 0-2 year old. You have to get a home study and lawyer and go to court a few times, but then that kid is yours', I think we'd be all in. But it is definitely not that easy. We live in a province with a small population. There is one private adoption agency in the province, and they have 85 families waiting to adopt. Last year, they placed 5 babies. The year before it was 11, or something, but still, those are not good odds of being chosen. Like, it might be worse odds than we currently are playing with frozen embryo transfers. There is also 'foster-to-adopt', which is when you take a child from the child welfare system (here it's called Child and Family Services; in other places it's called 'Children's Aid' or 'Child Protective Services') who has been removed from their home because it was deemed uns

After our most recent negative result, I reacted very badly. Way worse than I thought I would. I won't get into the details, but it was not pretty. I went for a walk with a friend the next morning and I said to her 'You know what they say about insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results?' She came right back with: 'That's the definition of perseverance.' This is where this blog isn't going to be like other in/fertility blogs I've found. They are mostly about the lengths they've gone to/are going to to have a child. In these arenas, the underlying subtext is 'keep going! Stop at nothing to achieve your dream!' Actually, it isn't subtext - it's right out there. It's just the text. By chance one day I found a blog run by a woman who had been down the infertility rabbit hole and came up empty. By that I mean, she decided to stop 'trying' before she had a child. She decided t

I've been watching Gilmore Girls a lot lately. It's something that I find happens when I'm feeling a kind of low-grade sadness (plus, netflix on my new phone and limitless data make it too easy). There's something about the rhythm of the dialogue that is comforting; also I've watched them so many times it requires about 15% of my attention - just enough to keep hard thoughts away while I'm occupied doing other things. I haven't written much about infertility for a few reasons. First, it took a long time for me to realize that word applied to me. But it definitely does. Second, it's hard to put this stuff out there. The truth is, despite this post being 'public', I don't want to talk about it with everyone. I have a few people who I talk to regularly, and they know who they are, but other than that, I don't want it to be something people ask me about. 'Hey, how's that infertility shit (and it is shit) going?' ewww....no t