Reading List

Check out my new read....it was recommended to me by Randy - he's already read it. We're getting excited. :)

Little Nest

This nest FULL of tiny baby birds is nestled in a wreath on the front door of my parents' house. I squealed like a little girl when my dad showed them to me and couldn't resist hovering long enough to snap a photo - even though I knew my presence there was preventing the mama bird from tending to them. My dad said that he and my mom try not to use the front door these days because every time they do, mama flies away until the coast is clear. While I understand thats how it works.....I guess I don't really understand. Mama says - "ooops! danger is coming - I'm out, babies! fend for yourselves!"? I guess that you can afford to have that kind of laissez faire attitude toward your offspring when you make 5 or 6 at a time.

Meanwhile, our little nest is still loudly, achingly empty. Its been about a year since our last IVF attempt and pregnancy loss. Its amazing how different things feel now and yet how many things are still the same. I am infinitely glad that I am not reliving the sadness and trauma of last April, yet those events still shape and color my world. I have regained a small portion of the confidence and self esteem that infertility robbed from me, but I am not my old self. I don't have to worry about injections and intrusive hormones and devastating phone calls. But I still have an empty bedroom and a gaping hole in my life which separates me from many of my friends and peers and a parent-focused society. I still sometimes take a step back to look at the big picture and can't for the life of me believe this has all really happened to us - that this is real life - that we have to live this reality.

We decided at the close of last year's events to let ourselves heal for a while with no pressure, no expectations, and no foreseeable next steps in our quest for parenthood. We needed to get a few steps outside of the fire before we could think about rebuilding. And now, already, an entire year has passed. Do we feel healed? Ready to move on? I honestly don't know. I expected to feel ready...or not ready...or excited....or just....something. But I still don't feel much of anything besides lost. I desperately want to be a parent but with each day that goes by, the prospect seems more and more far-fetched and fantastic. I often feel old and like I've missed my chance - though logically I understand that this is untrue. But with the artificial milestone of one year passing since the end of our treatments, I feel like its time to pick ourselves up, look to the future, and start living the lives we want to live.

Gifted

This is a 5 Year Journal post. The goal is to answer a simple journal prompt each day of the year as a real record of daily life in this moment. 

January 12: What makes you mad?

When people say that children are a gift from God. It feels like a cold slap in the face to those of us who haven't been so privileged. Why aren't we gift-worthy? And why is the 15-year-old pothead who hangs out in front of the city library, smoking as she pats her swollen belly - why is she gift-worthy?

Yep. Wanna make me mad? Just call children a gift from God. That'll do it.

Tangled Up Memories

This is a 5 Year Journal post. The goal is to answer a simple journal prompt each day of the year as a real record of daily life in this moment. 

January 4 - What was your best memory of last year?

2011 was wrought with bad memories, including bot a failed IVF cycle and a miscarriage. Sometimes its hard to see beyond those things to pick a good memory, even though I know there were some. 2011 was also wrought with complicated memories – in other words, memories that should be joyful but are tangled up with painful feelings. The addition of my nephew to the family was both amazing and difficult for me – I love getting to know him but the whole situation often triggers very painful feelings that I still haven't worked through. And then I feel guilty for not being filled with joy. Ugh. Anyway…..one good memory (and I'm aware that this makes me sound shallow, but sometimes its the silly things that get us from one day to the next) is:

Getting my iPhone (I seriously love it far more than I should!)

Contentedness

This is a 5 Year Journal post. The goal is to answer a simple journal prompt each day of the year as a real record of daily life in this moment. 

January 3 - Are you content?

This is SUCH a loaded question for me and the answer has so many layers that I am feeling exhausted just thinking about them. I think the short answer would be: I am content for periods of time and in certain compartments of my life, but childlessness is such a gaping hole in my core that it (at least for the foreseeable future) and contentedness are absolutely incompatible.

New Year, New Blog Project

Photo taken by me, Chelsea Market, Manhattan

Confession time: I really haven't been in the mood to write recently. I like the idea of writing every day but when it comes down to it lately, I just keep getting sidetracked by far more important things to do. Things such as: avoiding writing. Basically I'm swamped. But here's the thing - one of my New Years goals is to write at least one meaningful blog post per week. But here's the other thing - another of my New Years goals is to live more simply. What to do?

I hava you answer! (That will look ridiculous unless you're familiar with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you're not, you should be.)

The answer is a project I found on Pinterest (which is a black hole of an activity that falls under the category of avoiding writing and that I'd highly recommend!) called 5 Year Journal. It was created by Tami Taylor and featured on the scrap-booking website Get It Scrapped. While I have NO patience for traditional scrap-booking (who knows why my brain says knitting tiny hats with delicate yarn is no problem and cutting out paper and photos is too much work?), I do love the idea of keeping a record of real daily life - for myself and for future generations. I actually think of this blog as a sort of scrapbook - just without the scissors and glue and tape and glitter and whatnot. And really, if you look at this project, it doesn't have to be about scrap-booking at all.

The 5 Year Journal is, essentially, a list of 365 prompts to follow - one question per day. You can write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or an essay - the idea is to have some record of your day, every day for a year and then start over next year with the same questions. After five years you'll be able to not only look back at the goings-on of years past, you can compare and contrast the entries for the same day year to year and see how time changes your answers to the same questions.

I don't know if I'll do this for five years, but I am intrigued by the idea of having a ready-made prompt every single day to get me started. Knowing that some days, when I'm up for it, I'll write a lot. But other days, when I don't feel like even looking at my Mac (Her name is Mrs. Mackey, by the way - and she is married to Mr. Mackey - Randy's Mac. I know - we rocked it coming up with creative names.) I can answer a question in as little as a word or sentence and instantly have a record for the day.

My plan is to try and do the 5 Year Journal every day. Some days the simple prompt answer will be all I blog. Some days I'll use the prompt as a jumping off point for a more in-depth blog entry that highlights something I would have written about anyway. Sometimes I may tweak a prompt if I feel that it would be more suited to my needs.  Also - I'll be perfectly honest right from the get-go: I will most likely not physically post every day. I may miss a few days or a week and write all those posts at once, back-dating them to the appropriate day. Also, there probably won't be photos for every entry. Its not ideal, but life is busy, and also its my blog and I can do what I want. :)

With no further ado......Let the 5 Year Journal begin!

January 1: What is your number one goal?
See yesterday's post. I think that will suffice as my answer for this prompt!

I will do today's prompt in a separate post. Two posts in one day! Might be a record for me. :)

So Christmas has come and gone and part of me wants to write a moving and comprehensive composition about the emotions involved in our first post-treatment holiday season. But a bigger part of me is tired. And lazy. And content to leave the bulk of those emotions trapped in their little hiding spot - a spot which has become more reliable as a holding cell over the past few months, allowing me many greatly needed days of peace. But a spot, nonetheless, which still has only tenuous control over the monster it contains and must be closely monitored. Wow - those last two sentences took a turn I wasn't expecting. Anyway, back in sanity-land, as I was saying - the bigger part of me - the lazy part is winning out. So I'm going to go for a minimalist approach and try to sum it all up with one photo and a short description:

 This is Daniel and me on Christmas day. And yes - he is wearing a Santa suit, in case you were wondering. It was a blast watching him experience his first Christmas. It was also exhausting watching him experience his first Christmas. Or rather, it was exhausting watching everyone watch him experience his first Christmas - wishing I had gotten to experience it as a parent rather than an aunt. Feeling relegated to a life of being the next best thing. Worried that I don't matter as much as I would if I brought a child to the mix. Ashamed of myself for worrying about it. And the cycle goes on and on.

So to sum up: Christmas was about 80% fun/cozy/happy/relaxing and only about 20% anxiety/longing/aching/less-than-ness. I'd call that a success. 

Window Pane Aviary

Kim (from Surviving Motherhood) and I share more than our name - we are both struggling with infertility and have found a common bond in that experience, though she is dealing with secondary infertility. (Did you know that people who already have children can still experience infertility? It happens more often than you'd think - I have four long-time friends currently caught in its clutches.)

Kim's infertility struggle brought her to my little corner of the interwebz and she decided to order a baby quilt for her cousin. She wanted something in shades of purple with the baby's name added somewhere on the quilt. Not being a huge purple fan myself, I was worried I would have trouble finding fabric we both liked - and then I stumbled upon the Aviary 2 collection in lilac and kinda fell in love. With purple fabric. Who knew? And Kim loved it too. The purples are deep and and complex and paired with spring greens and sky blues. After I ordered it I kept seeing the same color palate in the early spring foliage everywhere I went.







I loved working with the fabric and the quilt top came together in no time. I LOVED using an asymmetrical pattern in the lay-out because 1) I like asymmetrical things and 2) NO SEAMS TO LINE UP! And yes - that sentiment DOES deserve all caps - especially from a quilter (like me) for whom precision does not come naturally.



Once I pieced the top together, Randy and I made a trek up to The Fabric Shack in Waynesville, OH - kind of a fabric Mecca - to find backing and binding fabric. I didn't order any from the same line because I thought: "I'll get that stuff at JoAnn's - it will be cheaper than ordering and simple to match up." FAIL. I didn't realize how difficult it is to match up shades of purple and how few aesthetically pleasing purple fabrics there are to be had. Hence the trip to The Fabric Shack - where we did find suitable options - but even there they were few and far between.

After I had the quilt front, batting, and backing sandwiched together and safety-pin basted I was feeling so in the zone that I thought it would be a great idea to try out hand quilting it. You know, for the experience. I'd sit on the couch next to Randy and watch my favorite shows and feel so connected to the quilt.



This lasted for about 20 minutes until I realized that my hand quilting looks like it was done by a blind 6-year-old.



I'll need a lot more practice before rolling out any hand quilted beauties. So out came the seam ripper and we went back to our regularly scheduled machine-stitched programming. Since the piecing on this quilt is so asymmetrical it didn't make sense to quilt along the all the seams, so I decided to stitch series of horizontal lines about 1/2 inch apart. I really like the effect and the added smoothness that comes from having no intersecting lines.

And so, with no further ado...presenting the Window Pane Aviary Quilt!











And NO Kara from My Other Car is A Crane - this is not for you! Stop asking!

I can't wait to start working on the next quilt! Anyone interested?

Words

I have always found comfort in words. Reading them, writing them, hearing them, and dissecting them. I'm pretty certain I was the only one in my high school class who was regularly reprimanded for submitting papers that were too long. When I needed a self confidence boost a few years back, my solution was to start this blog - a place to write words. And today it was words spoken and written by friends and family that carried me through. Thank you to everyone in my life who has reminded me that I am a mother on this day that has been looming over me like a storm cloud for weeks now. I am humbled by the understanding and empathy poured out to me by so many people. As much as I love words, I don't think I could possibly convey how healing it is for my soul. The thoughtful Facebook messages, texts, blog comments, and e-mails really helped keep my head above water this weekend. And the following just blew me away:

Flowers from Randy's parents with one of the kindest and most impactful messages I've ever received.





A gift from my parents filled with healing words - some that I'll share here and some that I'll keep for myself. The card that accompanied the gift made me cry immediately - but its a cry I wanted to have and a card I'm SO glad I got.



The card came with a couple of very thoughtful gifts, one of which featured more healing words. This necklace, accompanied by  this message:





My oldest friend, Mandi, sent me this card (and a little hope pocket charm), which is so refreshingly straightforward with no trite promises or cliched platitudes.



Perhaps though, my favorite words from this card were the ones she wrote inside which I hope she doesn't mind me sharing here: Mother's Day must feel like getting kicked in the emotional nuts. Yes - it does - and I'm so lucky to have friends and family who get it.

M-Day

Armageddon is coming and it is disguised as a perfectly sweet and innocent, Halmark-filled, basking-in-the-goodness-of-warmth-and-comfort, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, national holiday. And no amount of newfound freedom and optimism on my part can protect me from the perils it brings. I speak of course, of....of....I don't know if I can say it. M-m-m... Try again. M-M-m-mother's Day. Many people do not know how dangerous it is - how insidious. They don't know that it can eviscerate even the most battle-hardened infertile person, transforming her (albeit usually temporarily) into a bitter, world-hating, self-doubting volcano of rage and tears ready to explode at the slightest stimuli, from the Mother's Day Sale sign in the store window to the Facebook post encouraging us to say thanks to our moms.

Luckily for you, you have an inside source on the matter. You will know the truth! As you might expect, Mother's Day can be the hardest day of the year for an infertile woman. Its true that all holidays are difficult, as they generally revolve around family and children, but this one is the mother of them all (ha! see- I can be funny AND bitter!). Its kind of a nightmare scenario for us. A day when all the women who already have everything we so desperately seek are honored and showered with gifts just for being lucky enough to have the very thing we can't.  ACK! And on top of that, we have our own mothers to think about. Awesome, selfless, kind, and generous mothers who deserve to be honored because of how much they've done for us. But honoring our mothers on this day requires us to participate in the unholy abomination that is currently driving us mad!

So please excuse me for a while from polite society until the beast within retreats from the forefront. You won't see me on Facebook much this weekend as I can't bear to see status updates from my friends reporting on the breakfast-in-bed that their awesome kids and husband arranged for them. Profile pictures of my friends in joyous embraces with their children that already knock the wind out of me on a daily basis will prove too lethal this weekend. Church services are a breeding ground for unintentional heartache on Mother's day - no solace for my weary soul. And family events, no matter how understanding the family, are just recipes for disaster.

I think Randy and I will find something else to occupy our time and attention on Sunday and practice the "avoidance" strategy of coping. Or just maybe, I might make/buy myself a gift, as I am just as much a mother in spirit and intention as anyone out there - even though I have no one to make me handprint art or bring me burnt toast with a vase of dandelions on Sunday morning.

*Above photo taken with my new Canon Rebel T3i in Randy's parents' back yard.

Changes

There's nothing quite like life's door slamming in your face to motivate you to make sweeping changes where you can. I'm sure its a control thing - trying to exert control over the details of life that I am still (to some extent) in charge of. So in that vein, I'm announcing some big changes for The Spotted Elephant - the blog and the business.

Well, kind of. There are big changes coming, and I am announcing that....but that's all I'm saying for now. We aren't quite ready to reveal everything yet - but we are super excited about them and wanted to give a couple hints. Hint: a name change is coming!  Another Hint: an Etsy shop is in the works! (BTW: I thought the cat was pretty well out of the bag about Etsy - what it is, etc., but I recently found out that my own sister had never heard of it. SO - if you are currently thinking "what's an Etsy?" please click the link and check it out - amazing online handmade marketplace!)

*Picture above taken with my new Cannon Rebel T3i at Girl Scouts during our water experimentation day. Its a picture of change. Get it? :)

...the rest of our lives

Hello there. I haven't been around these parts much lately. I took some time off from cyber-world to breathe and really, to figure out who I am now that I am officially no longer trying to conceive. It occured to Randy and I recently that its been five years since we have just been us- living our life for what it is instead of  for what we need it to be. Five years since we have had goals that weren't colored by our desperate quest. Five years since we haven't been carrying the extra weight that accompanies the sometimes invisible but ever present stress of trying, trying, trying. Five years since we haven't spent every day failing.



We dreamed of the day when we were finally released from the purgatory of trying - and often worried that it wouldn't be as freeing as we hoped. But our new circumstances have proven surprisingly liberating. The world seems full of promise for the first time in years. We want to live life and have fun and make plans and start projects and be sociable and delight in what we do have - each other. Don't get me wrong - I wish we had been successful. I wish our lost children were here in our arms. Nothing we do now will ever make up for our losses, and no one will ever convince me that they are part of a bigger plan that will work out for the best. But this is where we are now and though its not ideal, its so much better than being in limbo.



We feel like we have our lives ahead of us now and we can mold them however we want. We are going to take the summer to "find ourselves", as cliched as that sounds. We want to go camping, take photography classes, redecorate, travel, reinvent our business, and generally figure out who we are as two best friends living life together with no other objectives. We feel like we are in the first days of the rest of our lives.



*First two photos above taken with my new Canon Rebel T3i in Randy's parents' back yard. Bottom photo taken with my Sony DSC-T100 in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 2008.

Care Package

My parents have lifted me out of countless pits in the past. They cannot rescue me from infertility and miscarriage and I know this eats them up. They don't like to see their children suffer and they also mourn for their grandchildren who will never be. Though they can't fix this problem for us, they are great at showing their love and concern in practical ways. Last night they dropped off a care package - something to brighten our day and help us escape for a little while.



All the fixings for a movie night, including jammies for both of us.

Things like this get us through a yucky evening - less because of the content and more because of the comforting knowledge that they took the time to do something nice in our time of need. It helps more than they could ever know.

Comes in Threes

Thursday, April 7, 2011



It happened today. I have miscarried/am miscarrying. For the third time. And life goes on as if it doesn't matter. Miscarriages are strangely received by society - especially such early ones. Its a death - our child's death. But there are no memorial services, no flowers sent, no casseroles delivered. Amazingly, many people who know what's happening don't even mention it or ask how I'm doing. Do people just not know what to say/do? Are they embarrassed about the subject? Or do they just not grasp how utterly devastating this is? The nonchalant manner in which the event is often treated even tricks my brain and plays with my judgment, causing me to second guess my own emotions and my own convictions about the significance of the loss. I start to think maybe its really not a big deal. I go back to work much earlier than I feel ready to because I don't want to blow it out of proportion. And then I scream inside my head "how could you blow your child's death out of proportion?" But people on the outside don't have any connection to the life that was fleetingly in me - its more like an abstract concept than a reality for them. I don't know what its like from the outsider's perspective anymore. I just know how lonely and dismissive and small the typical societal reaction feels for those going through a miscarriage- the death of someone's child, their dreams for the future, and a portion of their soul.

Time Bomb

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Our plan was for both of us to go back to work today. Randy made it. I didn't. I just wasn't ready yet. Lying in bed this morning I just could not fathom going about my daily tasks as though things are normal when they are actually so, so wrong. I'm a time bomb, just waiting for the child inside me to die, after all. I stayed in bed until noon and probably would not have gotten up even to eat lunch if not for my sister. She came to bring pizza, hang out, and deliver a fresh supply from her stash of the TV show we are currently using as an escape from reality. She also provided a friendly ear to listen to my incessant fears, which have morphed from: "what if I can never get pregnant?" (check) to "does my life even have any purpose? what was the point of my existence?" and "what makes me so bad that my babies can't live inside me?" I really can't imagine having to go through today alone, without someone to pick me up, dust me off, and take care of me.

So Close

We were pregnant. And then we weren't.



Its happening all over again. A phone call from the nurse on Friday to tell us we were pregnant. A phone cal from the nurse on Monday telling us that our follow-up tests show that a miscarriage is imminent.

I have a baby. And its dying inside me. And there is nothing I can do about it. Again.

We are numb. We are tired. We are worn down. The tasks of daily life seem impossible right now - how can we go about our lives as though everything is normal when everything is so wrong? Piles of laundry, dirty dishes, and meal times that come and go seem simultaneously trivial and overwhelming.

It feels like no one is in charge. If someone was looking out for us, why would we get SO close after all this time, just to be devastated again? We were ready for another negative result. We were not ready to lose another child. If this is part of an overarching plan, its a plan I want nothing to do with. I feel broken and scarred by this journey. I know life will go on but right now I have nothing left.

Yeah...What He Said

I'd Blog.....

I'd blog and tell you about the eventful week we've had, but the estrogen is making me feel like a shell of a person who doesn't care about blogging. I have zero motivation for just about anything, including writing. So instead I think I'll just sit here and stare at the lovely lanterns Randy's parents (and brother and sister) brought over to help bring a bit of brightness to our lives during this dim period. They are helping. :)

Estrogen: Invented by Satan

With no time to come up for air we have already started drug stimulation for our LAST IVF cycle - transferring the two frozen embryos that resulted from last month's egg retrieval. While the drug protocol is much simpler for a frozen cycle, it impacts me much more severely. I am taking estrogen three times a day to prepare my uterine lining for the transfer. Estrogen turns me into a stereotypical woman with PMS X 10.  I do things on estrogen that I never do under normal circumstances.

• I cried while listening to a song in the car today. When the song was over I replayed it twice, crying the entire time. (A cover of Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love) I don't cry at songs in real life.


• Yesterday I spent two hours sitting on the couch trying to decide if I wanted to take a shower or not.


• Today I really wanted a turkey and sun-dried tomato bagel sandwich from Bruegger's but settled for Arby's because it meant I didn't have to get out of the car.


• Today I had to take frequent bathroom breaks not to answer the call of nature but to have a "cry break" in private.


• This afternoon/evening my abdomen felt worse than it did right after retrieval/transfer. It felt like all my internal organs were bathed in acid and ballooning up to the point they were going to burst out of my skin and I didn't know why. Randy read that bloating and stomach pain can be a side effect of the estrogen.

Needless to say, I (and probably everyone around me) will be glad to to bid good riddance to this poison forever more.

Aftermath

Strangely enough, the baby commotion over the weekend was a good distraction from our failed cycle.  Who would have predicted that? But now that the party has died down we're back to reality and back to facing our failed cycle and all of the emotions that go along with it.



Empty Crib from Eyefetch.com

I feel like I've written until my fingers are numb about the emotional impact failed cycles have had on me - I'd link you to some posts here but there are so many - if you are curious you can click on Baby Envy in the categories to the right to see more posts than you'd ever want to read on the subject. So instead of writing the same post on a different day, I thought I'd present a wider perspective and tell you how failed cycles and infertility affects women/couples across the board. It sometimes helps me to see these statistics because it reminds me that my pain is valid when much of society is not set up to treat people experiencing infertility with the compassion they need. (You guys are all awesome  and very compassionate- but to see what I mean, just find any online news story about infertility and read the comments. You'll probably give up hope for the entire human race after a few minutes of reading those gems.)

• 13% of women had suicidal ideation following a failed IVF attempt in a study by Baram, Touretelot, Muechler, and Huang.


•  "It's like a death. Procreation is one of the strongest instincts in the animal kingdom."  -Dr. Alice Domar Ph.D


• Women failing to conceive often have clinical depression rates similar to women who have HIV or cancer, according to Andrea Mechanick Braverman, PhD


• A study from Uppsala University in Sweeden found that three years after the end of IVF treatment, most men and women were still processing and had not adapted to childlessness, indicating that the grieving process was still unresolved.


• Emerging from fertility treatment babyless, broke and in need of professional support to get back on the rails is a common experience, according to the British Infertility Counselling Association.


• After a failed IVF cycle, women experienced a further lowering of self-esteem and an increase in depression relative to pre-treatment levels, according to the MGH Center for Women's Mental Health.


• Dr. Lisa Tuttle encounters many women who say they can't stop thinking about it, that it haunts them even while they're sleeping.


• 71% of women experiencing infertility feel that they are flawed, according to a study by GfK Roper.

So please - the next time you are buying a gift or attending a shower or making a meal to support a happy, healthy, pregnant/new parent friend or family member- think about these statistics and try to also send out a little love and support to someone you know who is facing infertility's depression, self doubt, and grief rather than the anticipation and joy of a new baby.

I  have appreciated the support I've gotten during this time more than I can even articulate.