Fairy Tales

I don't know why I'm still so incredulous. I was shocked two years ago when I didn't get pregnant the first month we started trying, shocked that another year passed with no luck, and shocked that all three IUIs failed last summer. You'd think the surprise and disbelief at my own infertility would have worn off by now. And yet, there I was, staring at my email message from the embryologist telling me that none of my measly three eggs had fertilized.

What?! None of them? You literally placed a sperm inside each egg and nothing happened? What are they, two seventh graders forced to play seven minutes in Heaven who don't know their asses from their elbows? It seemed to defy the laws of nature that an egg and a sperm placed next to each other wouldn't just do what they were placed on this earth to do. Disbelief is an understatement.

I knew that the IVF process could likely be filled with disappointment. I just didn't expect that disappointment to come so early. I never expected that I would only produce three eggs, and I certainly never expected to cancel my transfer because none of them fertilized.

And yet, I've been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby for two years. So, yeah, it makes sense that this wouldn't work. It makes sense that there might actually be something wrong. So why was I still so surprised? I think this is partly the fault of secondary infertility. I have had a child naturally, so everyone (including me) assumes that I will simply be able to have another baby, but what if my instant pregnancy with Ella was just a fluke? Perhaps infertility is my norm, and she was just an incredible miracle.

Who knows? Apparently no one because my doctor, one of the leading fertility specialists in New England, has been just as surprised as me.

I was discussing this incredulity with my girlfriend Christina this afternoon. It was right after our discussion of the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and she said, "Being surprised about your infertility is kind of like being surprised that a main character in Game of Thrones was killed."

I realized that this is a perfect analogy. Right at the beginning of the series they killed Ned Stark, the beloved hero, followed by his son and wife, two of the main characters. In episode after episode, horrible things happen to characters I adore, and still, every time it happens, I am shocked. Sunday night's episode was no exception. We were all rooting for the charismatic Oberyn Martell to avenge his sister's death by killing the monstrously evil Gregor Clegane (better known as The Mountain) and to also win the fight to save the wrongly imprisoned Tyrion from execution.

  

Before the episode began, my husband reminded me that this isn't an ordinary show. It is very possible that Oberyn will die and that Tyrion will die, and that every single person we love will die because George R. R. Martin is a sociopathic plot writer. And still, there I was watching breathlessly as Oberyn pierced The Mountain through the chest, bringing him to the floor. "He won!" I thought. "He did it!" and then, of course, The Mountain grabbed Oberyn by the leg, pulled him to the ground, and well... I'll spare you the details.

So there I was, shocked and angry once more. How could Oberyn die? This was supposed to be his Inigo Montoya moment! After the difficult news of my failed transfer, I felt as wronged as Oberyn Martell. He'd been waiting years for this moment, and he was so close to victory! I wanted to defeat infertility as much as he wanted to defeat The Mountain. He deserves it! We both do! And that's when I realized what the incredulity is all about. The real reason I continue to be shocked by  Martin's plot lines is because I still believe that just because you deserve something, you will get it. I want the heroes to win, and I guess I am the hero of this story. But your mother has been telling you for years that life isn't always fair. Just because you deserve something doesn't mean you'll get it. Sometimes the good guy loses.

This is a sad story, and it makes me wonder why we continue to place ourselves in the path of disappointment, over and over again. Why don't I simply stop watching Game of Thrones? For the same reason I'm going to the doctor tomorrow to discuss my next round of IVF.

Because no matter how naive it sounds, part of me still believes in fairy tales and that maybe, just maybe, the good guy will win this time.  

I'm just going to say it...

I've always been considered a bit of an over sharer. I have no problem telling people how I feel, what I fear, what I'm anxious about. This is why I've always loved but found therapy to be somewhat unnecessary. I often wonder why I'm paying someone a hundred dollars an hour just so I can tell him what I already told my husband, mother, sister, best friend, and hygienist earlier that day. I never pretend to have it all figured out, especially when it comes to motherhood.

When I suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of my very unhappy baby three years ago, I didn't hide my anxiety or sadness. When strangers in the grocery store asked me if she was a good baby, I looked them in the eyes and said, "No." When people asked me how it was going, I would say, "I'm having a really hard time." People were a bit shocked by this. Some were even a bit put off, but mostly, people told me how "brave" I was for being so honest. This reaction puzzled me. There was no part of me that was trying to be brave. Bravery implies trying to overcome something fearful, but I wasn't afraid to share my feelings. It wasn't hard to cry in front of people and tell them I felt like I was losing it. Honestly, I couldn't have faked it if I'd wanted to, but, really, I didn't want to and couldn't understand why anyone would. Why would I try and tough this out on my own when there were so many people willing to help me if I just asked them to?

The most interesting revelation I had during those first six months of my daughter's life was how many other people had experienced similar feelings, and how many of them had kept it a secret. Both acquaintances and close friends would tell me, "Oh God! I felt the same way," "I was miserable,"  "I thought I'd made a huge mistake," "I was so depressed." It wasn't their reactions that shocked me but how for years these same women had pretended to be enraptured by motherly bliss, to have it all together, to be perfectly comfortable as mothers, to the point that they had me completely convinced. 

And as I spoke to them, I started to get angry. I started to realize that if I hadn't shared my feelings first, they never would have shared theirs, and I would have kept walking around thinking I was the only one who felt this way, that I was a terrible mother for being depressed, and that everyone else around me was perfectly happy. I started to realize that there were a lot of women suffering in silence and that, to some extent, society wanted to keep it that way.

I noticed this before my daughter was even born. As a chronic over sharer, I was not able to keep my pregnancy a secret during the requisite three month period. Many people were appalled that I was sharing the news so early, and several people cautioned me by saying, "Well, what if it doesn't work out?" I understood, of course, that Tweeting at the moment of conception wasn't a good idea, but these were friends of mine, people I saw regularly. My response was always, "Yes, if I have a miscarriage I'm going to be really upset. Am I supposed to hide that from you, too?" I realized that there were unique burdens that, for some reason, women were supposed to suffer behind closed doors.

Unfortunately, three years after the birth of my daughter, I'm learning this lesson all over again. I discovered recently that there is another word besides "depression" that women aren't supposed to speak of: "infertility." For exactly a year now, my husband and I have been trying to have another child. Recently, we underwent fertility testing and began a cycle of treatment. This has been an emotionally challenging year. Last summer, two of my girlfriends and I decided to get pregnant. They both did; I didn't. To spend the year watching their bellies grow bigger, and to watch the onslaught of Facebook and celebrity baby booms was difficult to say the least. Before we started trying, I had to wean myself off of the Zoloft I'd been on since my daughter's birth, so I was especially anxious and inching towards depressed throughout the year. I've had more ultrasounds and blood tests in the past six months than in the rest of my life combined, and the monthly roller coaster of hope and disappointment has distracted me from my work and my life. I'm telling you people right now that I'm having a really hard time, and just as with my post-partum depression, I refuse to pretend like everything is fine. 

So, when people ask me when we're going to have another baby, I tell them we've been trying for a year. And once again, every time I bring it up, I find out how many women have also dealt with infertility. I talk to women who tried for years to get pregnant but never said a word to their family members or closest friends. At night, when I indulge myself in the guilty pleasure of reading posts on infertility message boards, I listen to these women pouring their hearts out to strangers, discussing how long they've been TTC, and how many DPO they are, and that they just did the BD with their husbands. (That last one took me a minute- "baby dance" if you're still trying to figure it out). These women have no problem describing their cervical mucus to complete strangers, but keep telling their best friends and mothers that they aren't ready to start a family yet. And all I keep wondering is, why?

I know that I am being somewhat unfair to the women who choose to suffer in silence. Everyone who is dealing with something difficult deserves to do so as she sees fit. I don't expect most people to shout their private business from the rooftops as I am doing here, but to bear this burden alone when there are people in our lives who can ease our feelings of disappointment, pain, and fear just doesn't make sense to me. In my mind, keeping such a huge secret implies that one feels guilty, or embarrassed, or ashamed- three emotions no one who has dealt with infertility should ever feel.

That's why I choose to talk about it. When my two girlfriends got pregnant last summer, I felt incredible joy for them and incredible sadness for myself, and I told them that there were days when it was really hard to be around them. When a huge box of fertility medications, needles, and syringes arrived on my doorstep and I nearly had a panic attack wondering what I'd gotten myself into, I called my girlfriend who recently went through IVF, and she offered to come over and show me how to use everything. Every month when I found out I wasn't pregnant, I had at least five girlfriends I could text and get encouraging messages from. When I needed someone to watch my daughter while my husband and I did our first insemination, I had three people offer to help.

And last night, when I discovered that our first IUI procedure didn't work, I cried to my husband, texted one girlfriend who always knows the right thing to say, and made lunch plans with another friend who can always make me laugh no matter how terrible I feel.

I am so lucky to have such amazing women in my life who are happy to lift me up when I need a hand, and I think I owe it to them to be honest, to create connections of shared experience rather than barriers of secrets.

Recently, I got an email from a friend of a friend. This is a woman I know only casually, and she explained how she's been trying to get pregnant for a year and didn't know if she should try fertility treatments or just keep trying naturally. My girlfriend had given her my email address because she knew I'd be happy to talk to her friend. The woman wrote, "I totally understand if you don't want to talk about it." I sat at home reading this email, and I was so glad she'd decided to email me. I was so glad that it was me she had reached out to because I knew I was the right person for the job. I told her, "What do you want to know? You can ask me anything." I realized then that being honest about our difficult experiences not only helps us to feel less alone, but it shrinks the space between ourselves and others. So, to some extent, I feel not only a desire to speak up, but an obligation to.

You may think I'm completely out of line for insisting that you share your pain with others, and maybe I am, but I'm also so glad to be an over sharer because it means I don't ever have to suffer alone, and if it makes you uncomfortable, well, tough, because it makes me feel a whole lot better.

I'm off to share a big plate of sushi with a really great friend. I feel better already. 

A disappointment

At the ripe old age of 32, I know that life is filled with disappointment. Whether you have a charmed life or not, things are not always going to work out the way you'd hoped. I have come to accept this truth in my own life, but yesterday it suddenly occurred to me that now I have to accept it for another person's life, a tiny person, one so bright-eyed that I'd rather endure the most horrible disappointment imaginable than watch her deal with one ounce of it. And that, my friends, is called motherhood. Luckily, we're not talking about any life-altering disappointment here, just a little cancelled ballet class, but it was enough to bring one of us to tears (that would be me).

Ella has been talking about going to "ballerina" class for quite some time. She loves nothing more than to twirl and leap in full ballerina costume, and she has been begging us to take a dance class for at least four or five months. I waited until she turned three, then began pursuing a class that would be a good introduction- low-key, nothing too intense. I avoided places that advertised the number of awards they'd won, or the ones with glossy pictures of ten-year-olds trussed up like 1930's prostitutes. I found an inexpensive place near our house that advertised a fun, non-competitive, no recital, no polyester costume sort of dance class perfect for a wee one just starting out. About two weeks ago, I signed her up. Since that day, we've been talking about it. At least three times a day, she would ask me, "Is my ballerina class today, Mommy?" Finally, the day arrived, and I picked her up early from daycare, leotard and ballet shoes in hand, and we talked about what it meant to be in a dance class the whole way there.

Then we walked in the door, and there was no one else there, and the girl behind the counter looked surprised to see us. I tried to ignore all of these warning signs.

"We're here for the ballet class?" I said, both of our smiles plastered to our faces.

The woman did not return the smile.

"Oh gosh. I completely forgot to call you. That class was cancelled due to low enrollment."

My heart sank. Ella's head fell to my shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," the woman said. "This never happens. I just completely forgot to call."

Normally, in times like these, I would have simply said, "Oh that's okay. No big deal." I am quick to forgive peoples' mistakes. That's the number one rule of life my mother taught me. "You can't get mad at people when they do something by accident." And this has always been a relatively easy rule for me to follow, but at that moment I realized that someone disappointing me feels a lot different than someone disappointing my little girl.

I didn't say anything. I wasn't mean, but I didn't tell her it was okay, and our sullen faces revealed our feelings. Of course, if the woman had called me the day before, the class still would have been cancelled. Ella still would have been sad, but to walk in there with her leotard and shoes all ready to go was more than I could handle. 

We walked out of the building and sat on the steps so I could explain things to her.

"The ballet class was cancelled, buddy."

"What's cancelled?"

"It means that there isn't going to be a class."

"Why?"

"Not enough kids wanted to go."

"Why didn't they want to do it?"

"I don't know. Because they're really silly, but we'll find another ballet class, okay?"

"Right now?"

"No, not right now, buddy. Now we have to go home."

The look on her little face just crushed me. I couldn't hold it in. It came at the end of a very bad day I'd had, and I just couldn't control myself. I started blubbering like an idiot on the drive home.

"Mommy, why are you crying?"

"I just feel really bad that you couldn't take your class today."

"It's okay, Mommy. We'll find another class."

She held my hand as we drove home, and I realized that she was going to be fine. It was just a dance class, afterall, not a broken heart, or a cut from the volleyball team, or a rejection letter from her top-choice college. It was the first of many disappointments in her life, and I realized that I was going to have to experience all of them with her, so I'd better suck it up and show her "It's okay," even when I feel like it isn't.

And I know I won't be able to fix every disappointment in her life, but for now, it's nothing a little Swan Lake and a popsicle can't fix. Thank God for YouTube and for little girls who are a lot tougher than their mothers.

Party Pooper

I often try to write post titles that include puns. However, in this case, the title should be taken quite literally.

About a week ago, a few of us got together to honor my girlfriend Christina who is about to have her second child. Ella was very excited to go to the "shower party" and play with her friend Loreli. She wore the Christmas dress she refused to wear during the holidays, sparkly pink tights, and her pink boots. We were all dressed up in matching black and white dresses and looking forward to a very grown-up day.

Now, you know that the potty training saga has been going on for close to a year now, but we decided a few weeks ago to really go all in and make this thing happen. So, for about three weeks she's been wearing underwear all day except for at nap and bedtime. This is working out quite well in terms of peeing. She never has a peeing accident, and we can even go out for the day, and she will pee in stores or wherever we are. Great. Awesome. A lot of progress. However, the whole pooping on the potty thing is an issue. She doesn't want to do it, and she will hold her poop in for days to avoid the issue. The only time she will poop is if we put a diaper on her, but sometimes she still refuses that and just holds it in.

So, there we are at Christina's house enjoying some bagels and company, and somewhere in the house is my pretty little daughter who hasn't pooped in three days. Suddenly, my friend Kye emerges from the bedroom and tells Christina, "I think your dog pooped on the floor." I stop for a second, look around for Ella, can't find her, and begin to panic. "Oh no," I say, "I don't think it was the dog."

I find her playing in the living room seemingly unaware of the fact that she's taken a giant crap on Christina's bedroom floor with poop all over her pretty dress, feet and legs, trailing it through the house. Embarrassed doesn't begin to describe how I felt. Mortified comes a little closer. I knew that I shouldn't scold her or try to make her feel bad about it, but I'm telling you the kid didn't seemed affected at all. Is it bad that I wanted her to be a little bit ashamed of what she did? I took her into the bathroom and cleaned her up while simultaneously yelling to Chris and her friend Teresa to stop cleaning up the mess. I put a diaper on her after that, which was a good decision because she pooped again before we left. I guess holding it in can only last for so long.

I went home feeling a bit defeated about the whole potty training thing. It's frustrating because she's obviously physically capable of controlling it, but has decided she just doesn't want to go in the potty. So, how do I convince her that pooping in the potty is where it's at? In the past three years of her life, I haven't been able to convince that girl of much of anything.

Later that day, I started reading a potty training book that asks you to take a personality test for your child before you begin training. Shockingly, Ella falls into the "Strong-Willed" category. So, for her, everything is about control (like I needed to take a test to know that). I'm supposed to act very nonchalant about potty training, as in, "Oh hey, there's this thing called potty training. You may have heard about it. Some kids are doing it, but you know whatever, it's not a big deal." So far, this does seem like the way to go for her. We ask her if she has to go, but if she says no, we don't push it. I think this makes for a longer process, but I'm just going to have to accept that this will take a while.

Update: A few days after this incident, she did poop on the potty for the first time. She looked absolutely terrified, but she did it. So, small steps in the right direction. I know she won't go to college in diapers. Live and let poop I say, live and let poop.

Operation Awesome Summer: The Sequel

This post is coming in a bit late, mostly because "Operation Awesome Summer: The Sequel" is off to a bit of a slow start. If you read the first post in this series "Operation Awesome Summer" than you know that I am not always very good at summer vacation. I know, all you none summer vacation people are thinking that I am a big jerk, but every year it seems my good intentions amount to very little tangible summer fun, and when people ask, "So what'd you do this summer?" I reply a harrumph and say, "nothing" like a grumpy teenager after school. But just as last summer was way better than my first summer as a mom, I think this summer has the potential to be even better. In my personal experience, since one-year-olds are way better than babies, than two-year-olds must be way better than one-year-olds. Therefore, with the advent of the regular nap and the improvement in communication and motor skills, summer should just keep getting better and better. These were my thoughts as summer got underway this year, and I was excited to be able to spend my days running and playing with my full-fledged kid.

Who could have guessed that it would be me who derailed our best laid plans, not Beezer? On day two of summer vacation (that's right- day two) I decided to be productive and get a little weeding done with the beeze. We have some pretty unruly weeds growing behind our shed and I wanted to take advantage of Ella's love of dirt and worms to both play and get something done, every mother's goal for a day spent with a child. Being the absent-minded bonehead that I am, I failed to notice the poison ivy I pulled out of the ground and apparently rubbed all over my face (really? my face?). Two days later, my face looked like that witch from last season's True Blood had put a hex on it, and I was officially miserable. I didn't want to go in the sun, or be around people, and sitting in the house made me think of nothing but itching. Ella was going stir crazy, I was going itch crazy, and it all turned into a grumpy summer mess just two weeks in. I admit, I gave myself a good long time to wallow. Then, I rubbed some Calamine lotion on my face and said, we need to do something fun.

It had to be something special if it was going to jolt me out of my poison ivy funk. It also had to be cool (both in temperature and fun factor). The solution to this problem is called Kid City. If you've never been, I highly recommend it. It is essentially a giant house filled with room upon room of imaginary worlds. Ella was particularly fond of the fishery where she collected fish off a conveyor belt and carried them to another conveyor belt (honestly, she would have spent the whole day there. I am seriously considering getting a conveyor belt and a bunch of plastic fish). She also liked the fence that you could "paint" with water and brushes. Okay, looking at this description from your perspective, it doesn't sound too great, but I am telling you that there is a lot of stuff to do besides sorting fish and painting fences. Check it out.

Anyway, it was the kind of easy, fun morning we needed to get ourselves back on track. We've got a week chock full of plans ahead of us including playground excursions, library storytimes, and even camping (more on that later). Here are some of the other summer plans we have in store:

1. Cape Cod
2. New York City
3. Beardsley Zoo
4. Maritime Museum
5. Stepping Stones
6. Brooksvale Park
7. Hiking up a big mountain (per Ella's request)
8. Swimming
9. Visiting family and friends
10. Not getting poison ivy

That last one isn't very fun, but is one of my new summer priorities. Hope you guys are having a fun, itch-free summer yourselves.