When you are trying to conceive, the two-week wait between ovulation and menstruation can seem like forever. Especially if conception is taking longer than you expected, waiting can be mentally taxing and emotionally draining. You can’t change the wait period, but you can change how you face it. Instead of letting infertility take over your life, control how you respond to the waiting with these four tips:

Allow Yourself Time to Obsess

Telling yourself to stop wouldn’t work anyway, would it? Instead of finding your mind drifting there – and then feeling annoyed and guilty – let yourself obsess. Schedule a time (15-minutes maybe?) in your day if that’s what it takes. Think about pregnancy symptoms or the lack thereof. Read your favorite infertility blogs. Daydream a bit about the excitement you may feel someday soon. If you don’t let yourself work through those feelings – good or bad – in a healthy way you won’t be emotionally and mentally prepared for whatever happens next. Your mind will be unsettled because it hasn’t been able to sort through what you are feeling. So let yourself experience the emotions of trying to conceive (TTC) – then once you have felt them move on and focus on something else. Trust me, it’ll be a lot easier once you do.

Stay Busy With Meaningful Activities

After your obsession-alloted time is over, get busy. Don’t think of activities as distractions, but things you can do to better yourself and be happy in the moment. Part of what makes TTC so hard is feeling like you are stuck in limbo. You are constantly waiting for something without much control over how or when the situation will change. You can use an ovulation calculator to determine your most fertile days, which can help minimize the number of months you’re TTC, but you’ll still have to wait. So spend that time wisely. Every month, schedule any lunch dates, girls nights or weekend classes for the two weeks after your expected ovulation. Check items off your to-do list, start a new project or pick up a hobby that you know you’ll be interested in whether or not you conceive this month.

Lean on the Support of People Who Understand

Having someone to talk to will help you cope with the anxiety of the two week wait (TWW). Whether a spouse, friend, parent or online forum member, seek out someone who is willing to listen. It’s tempting to keep things bottled up, not wanting to burden someone else or share intimate feelings and fears. But sharing your experiences can help you feel understood, loved and not alone. A confidant can be a great source of strength and support for you – even if you’ve never met them.

Situations that could be adding to your stress:

• Scare tactics, facts or blogs that leave you feeling negative
• People who aren’t sensitive to your situation
• Movies focused on conception, pregnancy or babies
• Baby showers, baby stores, friends who have babies

Popular relaxing techniques:

• Writing in a journal
• Meditating
• Doing breathing exercises
• Participating in yoga and other forms of exercise

Find Relaxing Techniques That Work for You

Don’t just consider relaxing techniques that help you feel calm, but also address any anxiety triggers. Once you do, it’ll be easier to steer clear of those situations (and people) or figure out how you can change your perspective, so the wait isn’t that difficult.

About the Guest Author, Jessica Burgess:

Jessica is a drama queen, freelance writer and scuba diver. She lives in Hawaii. There is nothing more important than a mother’s love for her child, and Jessica knows that. An avid scuba diver, she is one of few lactation specialists in her region (the Pacific), and she isn’t afraid of touting her knowledge of micronutrients and your baby’s health. She isn’t just a mom; she’s a former NICU nurse-turned-writer. Her only goal is to give you the nutritional and emotional tools you need to make the best of your new family addition.

Hey Judah. Welcome to the world!

Updated: Daddy is back in the US and we’re all doing well, just waiting for our son to get out of NICU. You can find all family updates at my personal blog, #GoTeamZoll.

Here’s the full segment below:

And for context, here are some of my posts referenced in tonight’s segment:

• The Logistical Nightmares of My Insurance
• A Visual Guide to Our Insurance Madness

I did touch on it very briefly, but I’ve gotta say – the fact that there is so little insurance support out there as I tried to figure out our insurance options for undergoing treatment is infuriating. I can’t even imagine trying to do this in a non-mandated state.

But there is hope. I didn’t say there was zero support – you just have to know where to look.

Organizations like Fertility Within Reach and RESOLVE New England both provide some insurance advocacy guidance. At Fertility Within Reach, Davina is one of the most passionate and knowledgable people I know when it comes to insurance advocacy. She has a wealth of great resources at her site, including an Insurance Appeals Guide.

Similarly, RNE has many insurance resources as well, and I personally had to call in to their Insurance Advocate Call-In Hours a couple of times when I first was trying to figure out what my insurance options were going to be before I left my job in 2011. Both Fertility Within Reach and RNE have been essential in helping make it *slightly* easier to navigate the whole insurance rigamarole.

It’s just a shame I had to go through all of that in the first place. No matter whether you’re dealing with infertility, diabetes, cancer or any other health condition – it shouldn’t be this complicated to understand and plan for how much your medical treatment will cost you out-of-pocket. And, to be even more blunt – it should all be universally covered to begin with. But I digress…

Thanks to HuffPost Live for hosting this important discussion; I’d love to keep it going!

And if you’re looking for some financial resources to assist you on your family building journey, check out my comprehensive list of Financial Assistance Resources here.

What did you think of the segment? What more would you add to the conversation? Share in the comments!

We talked about all things open adoption as well as the emerging but controversial adoptive family tradition of Birth Mothers Day, something that I only had very little personal knowledge of:

I believe that birth moms should be honored for their unique role in our children’s lives. Jim Gritter points out in his book that in an adopted child’s life there are three important adult roles: Life Givers (genetic/biological parents), Life Sustainers (adoptive parents) and Life Affirmers (others who cheer on the child: coaches, teachers, relatives); This framework gives credit to everyone who helps make a child who she is. Some birth parents, though, don’t like having a separate day of celebration, as it highlights, well, separateness.

We also talked about this idea of an “open-hearted” way toward adoption and the inspiration for her new book:

This new-fangled thing called “open adoption” usually makes people think of contact between adoptive parents and birth parents. That’s what I thought, and I also assumed openness was done for the benefit of the birth mother — to help assuage her grief after placement.

But openness is so much more than just contact. And the person who most benefits is the child at the center. Openness is more about the spirit with which we parent and how we expand our definition of “family” than it is about the amount or type of contact. We open our hearts to those who made us mothers, to the child who has the monumental task of integrating all parts of his identity, and to our own selves as we acknowledge and release our fears and insecurities.

It requires us to live from a place of vulnerability and authenticity; as Dr. Brene Brown says, we must Dare Greatly.

You can read my entire feature interview with Lori over at Disney Baby today: Celebrating Birth Mothers Day: An Interview with Adoption Author Lori Holden.

Advocacy Day is so damn awesome that last year my mom even came with me.

Advocacy Day is a powerful, transformative experience – and there’s still time to sign up and participate.

This year, I can’t make it to Washington, DC on May 8th- I’ve got two advocacy efforts pulling me in two different directions on the same day; I’m chairing a fundraiser event next Wednesday in Boston.

That said, if you’re like me and can’t make it to Washington, there are still plenty of ways to get involved right from the comforts of home this Wednesday.

Thunderclap It!

RESOLVE has launched a really neat way to participate via social media on Advocacy Day next Wednesday. Using a service called Thunderclap, you “donate” a social media status for the day. You can post to both Facebook and Twitter and what Thunderclap does is it auto-posts your message of support for you at a specific time. Signing up is as easy as connecting your Facebook and Twitter accounts. How easy and cool is that??

Sign up here!

Blog About It!

There are two big issues that advocates will be talking about at Advocacy Day: 1) getting an Infertility Tax Credit re-introduced into the 113th Congress and 2) passing the Women Veterans and Other Health Care Improvements Act. If you can’t make it to Washington, there’s no reason you can’t use your blogs and social media to help raise awareness about these key issues.

The Infertility Tax Credit was aptly named the Family Act in the last congressional session. Had it not been for the fiscal cliff madness at the same time, we probably could have gotten it passed. Now we need to start over and get this bill reintroduced in the current legislative session.

The Women Veterans and Other Health Care Improvements Act would improve the reproductive assistance provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs to severely wounded, ill, or injured veterans and their spouses, and for other purposes. This bill will also provide access to fertility treatment for seriously injured veterans and their spouses, adoption assistance, permanent authority for VA to provide child care, and other elements. Introduced into this legislative session by U.S. Senator Patty Murray, RESOLVE is working hard with advocates this year to spread the word to get this much needed legislation passed.

If you do blog about it, be sure to share your post over at The Infertility Voice Facebook Community and let RESOLVE know too!

Contact Your Elected Officials!

So you can’t make it to Washington… but that doesn’t mean your elected official doesn’t have a local office, too! Send your elected officials an email or give them a call. Tell them that you, as a constituent, matter. Tell them that infertility patients matter. Tell them that these two bills matter. The beauty of our elected government? They have to listen to you and actually respond.

Get your U.S. House Representatives’ contact info here. Get your U.S. Senators’ contact info here.

And don’t be afraid to call their offices and actually speak to a staffer – every call is logged and your elected officials actually do like to hear from their constituents. It can be really empowering to actually talk to someone on the phone and advocate for yourself and causes important to you!

Are you going to Advocacy Day? Will you be advocating from home this year? Share in the comments how you’re going to raise YOUR infertility voice on Wednesday, May 8th for Advocacy Day!

Just a quick reminder that if you’re interested in writing as a regular volunteer Contributor for The Infertility Voice, I’m accepting applications through the end of the day tomorrow, April 30th. Head here to fill out all the info!

If you’re interested in submitting just a post or two from time to time, instead of a regular post, you can submit your guest posts right here! For now, I’m asking for original content, so if you’re just looking to dip your toes into guest blogging, feel free to try out your infertility and adoption writin’ chops here

I’ll be reviewing all applications this week and hoping to have some decisions made by early next week… so stay tuned to see who’s joining us for the new Infertility Voice contributor lineup!

But what does “joining the movement” really mean?

photo credit: H o l l y. via photopin

For me, joining the movement has been a gradual evolution of not only finding my voice within this community, but of discovering the kind of woman I really am – and who I’m meant to be – in the process.

Infertility has a way of doing that to us: stripping us bare of our own sense of identity, self-control, ambition and hopes. Infertility leaves as raw, naked and left to confront parts of ourselves that maybe we weren’t really ready to just yet. And as gut-wrenching, draining, and just downright awful that experience can be: you really have no choice but to truly “know thyself” in the process.

You can’t hide from infertility. She follows you around like a shadow. You see her as you pass pregnant bellies and strollers on the street. You hear her when your best friend tells you she’s pregnant. She sits between you and your spouse on the couch when you’re watching TV. You see her in the mirror.

Infertility changes you in so many ways, big and small that sometimes, you’re not even really sure who you are anymore.

I’m a Gemini and an INFP. I don’t do “stagnant” well. And for a long time, my infertility was more than just a rut in my life: it was a total, full-stop stagnancy. My life felt like it was perpetually on hold with no end in sight.

(Even now – I still worry. Less so, but until our son is home, in our arms – I won’t really fully exhale.)

I’ll never forget the moment I found out my diagnosis. Apart from feeling like I wanted to throw up and pass out simultaneously, I felt like my sense of time slowed all the way down nearly to a stop. It wasn’t like a record scratch but more of a slow-motion effect as it felt like all the air suddenly left the room.

The feeling lasted for days, then weeks. I found myself driven looking for answers: I scoured message boards and forums and clinic websites. And as the realization sunk in that my reproductive system was well and truly busted, I needed to do something.

So I started writing.

When RESOLVE calls us to “join the movement” – looking back, I realize that was my first step, that crappy little blog that I wrote under my Hebrew name. It wasn’t flashy or pretty. But it was somewhere I could move through my emotions and begin to cope with that new and terrifying reality that I might not have children.

I moved toward healing.

Just a few weeks after my diagnosis, it was my first NIAW. I “outed” myself on Facebook, then quickly retracted my post. But after 3 different people privately messaged me sharing that they too were dealing with infertility… I reposted it.

I moved another step forward, encouraged by the support of others – encouraged by knowing that I wasn’t alone.

And then RESOLVE inspired me to create my What IF video. For the first time, I went really and truly public with my identity and our journey. It was at once nerve-wracking and liberating. For as much support as I felt when I first outed myself on Facebook, I realized I had the power to offer that support to others.

To remind others that they too are not alone.

In doing so, I moved toward reclaiming my identity.

And then PETA and that whole shit-show… and subsequent victory. I went to my first Advocacy Day. My second Advocacy Day. I would three-peat it this year if I didn’t have a fundraising event in Boston I’m co-chairing that same night.

I moved towards empowering others and at the same time, empowered myself.

And all the while, the years went ticking by. It seems like in a blink, it’s been just over four years since I started this blog and I look at the wake, the ripples left behind from all this moving. And I’m stunned.

There were times where it certainly didn’t feel like time was going by that fast. I still had my ruts, still had my stagnant days and weeks wondering if parenthood would ever happen for my husband and I. I doubted my body, my faith, my ability to to just keep myself together – emotionally, spiritually, physically – at any given moment.

But I still moved forward.

When I look back at why I joined the movement, I realize I had a choice: I could either stand still and let infertility pull me in whatever direction it wanted, let the world move around me, or…

I could move ahead of my infertility. I could set my own path. Name my own terms. I may have been robbed of control, but I wouldn’t be robbed of hope. Nothing gets to take that away from me without my permission.

I moved because the alternative was too painful to bear.

Do you need to march on your state capitol, demanding insurance coverage? No. Do you need to appear on your local news talking about your busted ovaries? No. Do you even need to start a blog? Nope.

Joining the movement is as simple as making the decision to do SOMETHING. Seek out a support group. Join an online forum. Share your journey thus far anonymously. Confide in a friend that you’re having trouble trying to conceive.

I never thought joining the movement would look like this for me, but I’m so proud of where I’ve walked and the legacy I’m leaving. I’m so deeply, humbly grateful for every single person who has supported me along the way. And all it took was two things.

First, I had to be brave enough to take the first step and second – to be reassured in knowing that I was not alone.

I had to make the choice to move, to heal, to reclaim, to empower and advocate.

If you’re tired of standing still, make the choice to join the movement.

Take that first step and join the movement, whatever it may be for you. Only you have the power to forge your path through infertility.

And remember: you can take that first step with confidence because you are not alone.

This post is part of RESOLVE’s Bloggers Unite Project for National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW).

Learn more about how you can participate here, more about NIAW here and more about infertility here.

I’s funny to go back and watch this video, to think about all the things that are different in my life now. The fact that we own a home instead of living in student housing where this was filmed. The three pairs of glasses I’ve gone through since then. Remembering, very distinctly, getting sushi with a friend after Larry and I shot this on Boston Common – and now that friend is due with her first child this August.

The pain I was in at the time I made this video… I was at a point in my life where I was very ready to let the grief of infertility and POF consume me, but something about that year’s National Infertility Awareness Week Bloggers Unite project from RESOLVE resonated with me, moved me in such a creative direction that I felt almost compelled to make this video.

A lot has changed in three years.

When I posted this to Facebook, someone commented how they already had two years of trying under their belt when this video came out and three years later… still nothing. I am incredibly grateful that our journey has only lasted four years, because it’s comments like those that remind me – it could have been a lot longer.

And to everyone who still is on that journey – every day is another step to your resolution. Whether that’s pregnancy, adoption, surrogacy or resolving without parenting – there IS resolution. The grace and finesse is in learning to adapt and shift over time to a resolution that makes the most sense for you: emotionally, spiritually, financially.

photo credit: Victor Bezrukov via photopin

It’s weird going back and watching or reading your own work sometimes. I see all the things I would have done differently with this video (the biggest change being turn OFF the damn Ken Burns effect in iMovie). Sadly, the original, editable video file is no more, lost on a hard drive that died over the past three years.

It is an imperfect, moving snapshot of a time in my life that was at once painful and hopeful.

Gil posted this excellent, thought-provoking question to me when I shared this video again on Facebook today:

Is there anything you would say to the Keiko of 3 years ago, if you had the chance?

There are a LOT of things I would tell myself from three years ago, related to infertility and otherwise. (Some important non-infertility advice: don’t lose business cards. Don’t let your boss get you down. Social media is a legitimate profession. Get yourself a WordPress self-hosted blog sooner.)

But I think the most important thing I would tell Keiko of Three Years Ago:

“You will be a changed woman, some of it at a great cost to your psyche, ego and heart – but you will come out a stronger, more empowered woman for it.

And that what you’re doing will make a difference.

Just you wait and see.”

I know this video has meant a lot to a lot of people – quite literally around the world. I am still in awe of and still humbled by that fact.

Online communication as tools for hope and healing, be they videos, social media, blogs or otherwise – it truly is a powerful, connective force. It’s this video that ultimately paved the way for The Infertility Voice three years ago… I just didn’t realize it at the time. It’s the response from this community that motivated and pushed me to create this space as you see it today.

And so to each and every person who ever liked, clicked play and shared this video…

Thank you.

Thank you for being a part of phenomenon that has shaped the person I’ve become today, something that has left a legacy of empowered hope and strength about infertility in its wake.

It’s National Infertility Awareness Week.

There’s lots going on all over the web, including RESOLVE’s Blogger’s Unite project this year, focusing on the theme Join the Movement. Learn more there and add your voice to the chorus to get yourself in the running for RESOLVE’s Best Blog Award. I’ll be adding my Join the Movement post mid-week.

If you’ve been tagging along for the last 3 or more years with me, following me through blog and domain name changes… what’s your journey been like?

Share your story in the comments.

Um… bit of a crazy week. I’m all like “write for The Infertility Voice!” and then just kind of peaced out. I had no idea just how chaotic this week was going to become. I posted my call for contributors just hours before the Boston Marathon bombings and it’s really occupied a lot of my heart and head space the last 4 days.

And then Larry gets up this morning for work, I’m sleeping in for a few extra minutes, and he comes back into the bedroom:

“You should get up and watch the news with me. The shooting at MIT last night is connected to the bombings and the two guys are on the run, shooting up people in Watertown.”

What the actual fuck.

We’ve been glued to the TV since 8am this morning. Larry is working from home, his office downtown closed today. I’ve been stalking on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit for updates. Part of me can’t pull myself away from the screens because I need to see this remaining suspect get caught.

I need to know that this madness is ending.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted Contributor applications so far! The response has been wonderful and I can’t wait to read more. If you’ve already submitted something, please pardon my lack of response. This week has been a little nutty, so I’m hoping to start thoroughly reviewing applications beginning next week.

Still haven’t submitted your application? What are you waiting for?

They’re been no guest blog submissions yet. Thinking of just dipping your toes into The Infertility Voice rather than applying for a regular Contributor role? Have a piece that you just need to get off your chest and share with the community here? Submit your guest blog!

Looking to help the folks in Boston? Consider donating here to the Boston TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) Fund for programs supporting victims and their families. They’ve almost reached their $200,000 goal.

What a week. Stay safe, everyone.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this space and the community that has surrounded me. I’ve written much lately about how I feel my identity has been shifting but that my heart still beats for this community and this space. I couldn’t walk away from here if I tried – there’s just too much of my heart and soul here.

I struggled with feeling pigeon-holed as THE Infertility Voice, this all-definite title I gave myself.

The truth is, The Infertility Voice isn’t just about my voice.

The Infertility Voice?

It’s all of our voices, our stories, and our journeys.

That’s what makes our community vibrant and diverse. That’s what makes our case to insurers, legislators and the general public. Infertility is what we share in common and in that commonality, we find strength and empowerment by speaking out and sharing our stories. We lift each other up, we speak out for each other, we support, comfort and look out for each other.

If anything, we’re a chorus of voices, experiences and stories.

And now, I think it’s time to open up the mic.

The Infertility Voice: Regular Contributor Application is Open!

I have a few contributors lined up to join me in creating unique, compelling, engaging content on a regular basis at this site, but I need a few more. I’ll still be sharing bits of my journey and commentary on pertinent infertility and adoption related news and information, but I’ll be stepping back and taking on the conductor’s role as Editor-in-Chief whereas Infertility Voice contributors will make up the soloists.

Currently, I’m seeking 2-4 regular Contributors who can commit to submitting one post per week. Ideally, I’m looking for the following:

• Diverse, compelling writers with their own personal infertility or adoption blog*
• Writers currently unresolved and either in treatment or in the adoption process, or in the family building decision-making process
• In addition, we seek writers who have experienced pregnancy loss or miscarriage

*Yes, you must have a blog in order to be a regular Contributor.

Ready to take the plunge? Apply to be a regular Contributor here. Applications will be accepted through April 30th.

Guest Blogging Opportunities

If you don’t have a blog or don’t want to be a regular Contributor to this site, but want to share your story with the infertility community online, then consider submitting a guest blog. Guest blogs must be original content not previously published elsewhere on the web and may be published anonymously.

What kinds of guest blogs am I looking for? Glad you asked:

• Personal stories about specific moments in your journey or a summary of your journey so far
• Advice articles, how-to articles, list posts
• Commentary on infertility and adoption related news items, media or entertainment
• Success stories

If this sounds more up your alley than a Contributor role, head on over here to submit your guest blogs now! Guest blogs are welcome anytime and will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Help me spread the word by sharing this post!

Know someone who you think would be a great fit as a Contributor or would have a kickass guest blog to send in? Share this post with them!

Pardon the dust over the next couple of weeks as I continue to hammer out and finalize the look of the new site. I’m really, really excited about opening up this space to a more diverse group of writers and I hope you are too. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg… I’ve got a lot more planned to make this site an even better resource for you to roll out in the next few months!

What other ideas, suggestions, questions or feedback do you have as I continue to craft this space? What do you think about opening up this space to more voices? Sound off in the comments!

Well to start, that’s slightly less than the entire population of Israel. That’s slightly more than the entire population of Hong Kong. Or, another way to look at it: it’s the combined populations of entire nations like Moldova and Lithuania.

In the United States, 7.3 million people is just slightly less than the state of Virginia and just a smidgen over the state of Washington. It’s like two whole Puerto Ricos put together.

We could fill an area as small as 426 square miles (the city of Hong Kong) or as big as 71,300 square miles (Washington state).

To put it plainly, 7.3 million people is a lot of people.

At first, it’s easy to see just how massive 7.3 million people can be. We could fill whole cities, states and countries with our numbers. And then, like any statistic, it’s easy to start glazing over the population, to start seeing these groups of people as just a number.

The truth is, 7.3 million people is just too many people.

7.3 million matters because we matter, because our stories and journeys and hopes and fears and dreams of becoming parents matters.

That’s why, in order for our numbers as a community to ever be effective, in terms of advocacy, insurance coverage, media portrayals and general social acceptance and understanding – we can’t rely on our numbers alone. We need to be more than just a number.

We need to show people what 7.3 million people really looks like.

7.3 million looks like your neighbors, your sisters, your co-workers, your spouses, your friends.

7.3 million looks back at you in the mirror every morning, when you wonder if this month will finally be the month.

7.3 million people could look like this:

I am what infertility looks like

I’ve got 12 new NIAW Facebook Timeline Covers available for download here. All free. All sized for your personal Facebook Profile or Facebook Page. Go get yours today and if you use one, let me know in the comments!

Let’s take over Facebook and show everyone what 7.3 million people really looks like and more importantly: why that matters this year. Join the movement and make a difference this year!

Help Spread the Word

• Download your NIAW Timeline Covers here.
• Tweet, Facebook and Pin this post or the NIAW Timeline Cover gallery page.
• Repin this pin.
• Like and share this Facebook photo album.
• Blog about these NIAW Timeline Covers.
• Join the movement!

National Infertility Awareness Week is coming… are you ready?

More importantly, are you ready to Join the Movement this year?

NIAW has always had a special place in my heart. It’s when I first “came out” about my infertility to a larger group of friends and colleagues, just over a month after I was first diagnosed in 2009. In 2010, it served as the springboard for my What IF video that would later go on to be recognized by RESOLVE at the Hope Awards that year.

In fact, NIAW means a lot to me.

This is the year to Join the Movement and it’s the theme of this year’s Bloggers Unite project from RESOLVE:

The theme for this year’s Blog Challenge is “Join the Movement…” The goal of this year’s Blog Challenge is to bring together bloggers to talk about how you are making the difference in ways large and small in the lives of people with infertility. Topics covered in your blog post can include how you broke the silence of infertility in your life, how you advocated for the infertility community, how you advocated for yourself, or how you created a support community to help you through the infertility journey.

So how can you join the movement? Blog. Tweet. Post on Facebook. Create a pinboard. Tag your photos to raise awareness about infertility on Instagram. These are the easy things you can do right from your own computer.

Want to kick it up a notch?

Register for Advocacy Day on May 8th in Washington, D.C.

I’ve written at length before about the amazing, empowering experience that is Advocacy Day. Hell, it was so awesome the first year I went my mom came with me to Capitol Hill last year.

I’ll be posting during the week of NIAW (April 21-27) about how I’ve joined the movement. And I have some brand new Facebook Timeline covers that I’m finishing up that you can download and post to your own Facebook pages in the lead-up to NIAW to help raise awareness about infertility.

And, if I can get a bunch of projects sorted out in time, I just might make a follow-up to my What IF video this year (no guarantees, but I’ve been considering it for months now).

One last thing: I’ll be asking you to join a very special movement here at The Infertility Voice very soon. I’m still ironing out the details and logistics, but stayed tuned for updates early next week about what I’ve got planned for this space.

It’s big, it’s bold, and I’m going to need your help to shape The Infertility Voice into something even bigger, so keep your eyes peeled Monday or Tuesday of next week for all the details.

Until then, tell me: how will YOU join the movement this year for NIAW?

Yesterday, I talked about how I’m battling prenatal depression. Today, I want to talk a little more broadly about the liminal space of pregnancy after infertility.

Pregnancy after infertility is such an unsupported realm of uncertainty. For those of us who are pregnant, especially for the first time, we’re unsure about all the random weirdness that happens to our bodies. We worry about losing our babies. We worry if we’re doing things “right” or “well” – such relative concepts. We hold ourselves to often unrealistic standards and we are cruel with ourselves should we not meet them.

On the flip side, people don’t understand why we might be worried, scared or even sad. People assume that pregnancy is all sunshine and rainbows when in truth: pregnancy can be downright ugly, painful and scary. Thankfully, I don’t think my pregnancy has reached those kinds of lows. But for some women, it all but knocks you on your ass.

Now add depression on top if that all.

As I work through this and as I make strategic support plans for the high likelihood of post-partum depression to follow once the Knish gets here, I’m trying to take a step back to reflect on what lessons can be gleaned from my experience so far. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

First, prenatal depression is real, valid and seriously under-recognized, reported and treated. Second, collective emotional support resources for the pregnancy after infertility community are seriously lacking.

I feel like we as a community do a lot to keep each other going on the journey, but once some of us reach the precipice of pregnancy and parenthood, suddenly, the anchor’s been pulled up and we’re set adrift. And I’m not saying that it’s a matter of fellow passengers suddenly abandoning ship – although that does happen. When it’s just infertility that we’re dealing with, we have plenty of life rafts and life jackets in the form of professional support outlets: RESOLVE, therapists, support groups, coaches, tons of books, websites, forums and message boards.

But where are those life jackets and preservers when we see those two lines? When we get the call from the adoption agency? Support outlets for pregnancy and parenting after infertility are few and far between. And I think we can – and should – do better to support those going through this transitional state.

There are some resources out there. PAIL Bloggers is a great example. I’ve been largely a lurker but it’s a growing community and one for which I’m grateful exists. For those not in the know, PAIL Bloggers hails itself as “a community resource for what comes next” and is open to the Pregnant and/or Parenting through Adoption/Infertility/Loss community.

Mel has written some great thoughts about the feeling of being off-balance once finally pregnant or parenting after infertility over at BlogHer: Pregnancy after Infertility is Neither Here Nor There. And A Little Pregnant has a frank, no-holds-barred piece on The Bitter Girl’s Guide to Pregnancy After Infertility that’s definitely worth a read.

With regard to professional support and resources, you can find collections of pregnancy/parenting after infertility articles and resources at RESOLVE, RESOLVE New England and The American Fertility Association. RESOLVE even hosts a Living After Infertility Resolution Online Community at inspire.com.

And honestly, a quick Google search turns up resources from a handful of other places like fertility clinics, message boards and other fertility/TTC news and community aggregates.

But I’ve gotta say…

Support for a community as liminal and transitional as pregnancy/parenting after infertility feels sparse.

So… what do we do about it?

If you’ve been reading me for more than just this post, you know I like to call out and name the problem/beast for what it is and then make a plan of action to do something about it.

So if the beast in this case is sparse support for the pregnancy/parenting after infertility community, what can we do to support them?

This is one of those times where I don’t have a concrete answer, so I’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re pregnant, parenting or still in the trenches – I think it’s important to hear from all stakeholders. Because let’s face it: even if you’re still going through infertility, the hope is that you will someday parent, somehow – right? So you need to know that this untethered boat waits for you too, so why not help work to help throw a line out to this community that you may soon join?

What can we be doing better as a community? What else could infertility organizations offer to provide more support? How can we leverage what exists in better ways?

Let’s chat and brainstorm in the comments.

*casts a guilty glance*

I know. I know.

To get you quickly up to speed: the Knish is just fine. He’s very active and I believe he has waged a war against my belly button from the inside. I think he knows that I really don’t want my innie to become an outie and he’s on a mission to pop it out, one kick at a time. At nearly 28 weeks along, the time is flying by. I’ve got another run-in with a glucose test next weekend. Fingers crossed, I’ll pass it.

We have a follow-up ultrasound in two weeks. I can’t wait to see him again.

Other than that, the belly and boy continue to grow. I am (finally) gaining weight. And I’m nesting like crazy.

Speaking of crazy…

I’ve certainly felt like it. For a while now, actually. And it’s been over the last few months that I’ve stumbled upon probably one of the dirtiest, darkest secrets about pregnancy they never really tell you about. And I’m not talking about pooping while birthing (although, yeah – pretty dark and dirty).

I’m taking about prenatal depression.

And no, that’s not a typo. I know – it seems like I should be saying “post-partum” depression but no – ooooh no friends. It can start LONG before your baby ever gets here.

And no one really talks about it.

It’s interesting really. I do so much vocal, out-loud advocacy for the infertility community because as far as I’m concerned, infertility is nothing to be ashamed of: it’s a disease. And yet, I haven’t posted here because I’ve been so ashamed of dealing (or rather, not dealing very well at all thank you very much) with prenatal depression, which is just as much of a disease as any other.

I’ve clammed up about what it’s like to live with this kind of depression in the very ways I advocate others to fight through when dealing with their own infertility. And then it just became layer after layer of guilt, of feeling like a phony, a sham…

Who am I to tell others to speak out when I’m just cowering in shame over here?

I’m finally opening up about this in more detail here because of this Slate article, found via a link on a completely unrelated topic sent to me by a friend:

“Despite these stats, prenatal depression is still relatively under the radar, and many obstetricians are not well-trained in its complexities. Until very recently, doctors didn’t even know a woman could get depressed during pregnancy: They thought antenatal hormones protected against it. And women who have prenatal depression don’t want to talk about it. You’re supposed to glow while pregnant, not spiral into darkness.”

(Source: Not Just the Pregnancy Blues: Why isn’t anyone talking about prenatal depression?)

As I read this article last week, the tears just began to flow. I found myself unconsciously nodding along to Grose’s words. I’ve definitely felt detached from this space here because I’ve been carrying such survivor’s guilt. But then at the same time, there’s this vicious part of prenatal depression that harps away at a woman’s psyche: “You should be happier for this pregnancy.”

Now add that infertility layer on top and you might see why I’ve felt crippled by this depressive weight lately. It’s been an oppressive, silencing wedge between me and my writing for the past month.

Prenatal depression is more than just “feeling blue.” It’s struggling to get out of bed in the morning. It’s constantly worrying about every thing you put into your mouth and your body: will this harm my baby? It’s worrying about whether or not I’ll be able to give birth vaginally or via cesarean (which is still up in the air right now).

It’s not just worrying about what kind of mother you’re going to me or getting the pre-parenthood jitters. It’s finding yourself trapped by paralyzing, irrational fears and then being equally as terrified that all of your worrying and stressing out and trying to suppress the random bursts of tearful sadness are hurting your baby.

It’s not eating enough when your baby needs the nutrition the most. It’s counting down the hours until you can go to bed for the night so the day will be over quicker.

It’s watching your marriage morph into something that confuses and scares you because your partner is confused and scared about the kind of woman you’re turning in to: a woman one who can barely function. And all he wants to do is understand and help.

And all you want to do is sleep.

“Numerous studies have pegged the rates of prenatal depression at more than 10 percent of women, and yet the myth persists that pregnancy protects you from melancholy. And it’s a dangerous one. The lack of public conversation about prenatal depression and the fallacy of the happy, glowing mother-to-be can block women from recognizing the problem and seeking help.”

(Source: Not Just the Pregnancy Blues: When should a pregnant woman take antidepressants?)

I’m seeing a therapist who works specifically with women and couples who are undergoing fertility treatment and especially women who are pregnant after treatment. She’s amazing – there’s a level of understanding and intuitiveness she possesses that makes opening up in our sessions so much easier than a therapist who just doesn’t understand the emotional complexities of pregnancy after infertility.

At my last session, she threw out the idea of possibly adding medication. Not a requirement – just a recommendation with a referral to a psychiatrist who works with pregnant patients. It’s a loaded suggestion for sure, and one I know that’s fraught with deep opinions on either side. To give you an idea of where I’m at when it comes to medication beyond my thyroid meds during pregnancy, consider this: when I had a fever of 101° back in January, while I had a nasty cold, I had a full-on panic attack meltdown about having to take Tylenol until my fever broke.

That said, I’m seriously considering resuming antidepressants for the first time in almost six years. This is an extremely personal decision, one that I’m making very carefully with my husband.

(I know it’s a loaded issue for some and I just ask that for the sake of my own decision-making process, please leave any loaded opinions out of the comments for now. Right now I just need support on trying to forge ahead in the healthiest way possible for me and my baby.)

I’ve got some more thoughts on all of this, but this post is already pretty verbose so I’m going to save it for a second post tomorrow, one that I hope you’ll join me in sharing your thoughts with me.

Stay tuned tomorrow for The Untethered Boat of Pregnancy and Parenting After Infertility.

Longer, more convoluted answer: it’s complicated.

I haven’t posted here since late February and that’s no good. Spam comments have begun piling up in my Akismet queue. Pageviews are down. I can practically see the virtual tumbleweeds that blow across the main landing page of my site. Truth is, it’s not like I’ve been crazy busy and have had no time to blog. Ironically, just as I finally come back to this space, things are really picking up right now.

I’ve been dealing with a lot emotionally and it’s kept me from this space. I’ve spent the last week – seriously, a whole week – working on a single post talking about that more in detail. In writing it, it’s now become a sprawling monster of a post that I think I’m going to need to break up into a couple of posts. Hoping to finally finish writing it this weekend to post early next week. If you’re really curious, here’s a preview.

I wanted to touch base and let folks know that yes, I’m alive, yes the Knish is still growin’ like a fiend and that everyone is a-ok.

Also: I have a very healthy* appetite right now.

*Healthy is a relative term here.

I’ve been thinking about about this space: what it means to me but more importantly – what it means to you. I’ve certainly felt a major shift in my identity, one that’s bound to get even more complicated once the Knish gets here in June.

No matter what… I just can’t walk away from this space. I’ve got too much heart and history invested here. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to walk away from this space. At the same time, I want to be cognizant of what a shifting identity means – how do I honor and keep this space for those that need it? And how do I do that in a compassionate, sensitive way?

So, with that in mind, I’ve been thinking about how I want to shape this space in the coming months – and I would love you to help me shape this space for you. I wanted to reach out to y’all because let’s face it: you can’t blog in a vacuum. This space is as much for you (if not more so) than it is for me, after nearly four years of blogging.

I’d love your input and perspective and I’d love to have it be a dialogue with the community. So rather than just throw up a simple form and collect your answers, you can comment anonymously on this post only so that you can speak freely and also respond to other people’s comments if you feel so moved. I know my comment form asks for a name and email, but just plug in a burner email and pseudonym to comment anonymously.

So please – feel free to be honest. Here’s what I’d love to learn from you:

• How did you find The Infertility Voice? What brought you here?
• What is it about The Infertility Voice that keeps you coming back here to read?
• What are your favorite types of posts? Your least favorite?
• What do you want to see more of here? Less of?
• When you think of The Infertility Voice – what does that mean to you?
• How has The Infertility Voice helped you?
• Any other thoughts, concerns, suggestions – I’m all ears.

I hope you’ll feel free to comment honestly and candidly. Looking forward to your thoughts.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want one.

When I was in high school, I wanted some cliched drama mask and treble clef combo. As my Glee-like levels of drama nerd-dom have waned, however, I feel more drawn to ancient symbols that are reflections of my shared Japanese and Irish heritage, such as triskeles and mitsudomoe. And, as sacrilegious as it sounds, I like the idea of getting a hamsa tattooed somewhere on me as well.

I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to getting a tattoo, other than I’ve always wanted one. Nothing big or ostentatious: just something small and personal, rife with intimate meaning, somewhere discreet but where I can see it when I want to, such as the inside of the wrist, the inside of the ankle or the top of the foot. (I know – I’m picking some of the most painful areas to boot.)

I told Larry that once we are finally over our infertility battle, that is, once we’ve got our son home and in our arms – I’m getting a tattoo. I feel like I need to honor this journey with an indelible mark on my body – a visible scar to match the invisible ones on my heart.

Turns out, I’m not the only person who’s had this idea.

I had first read about getting a tattoo to honor an infertility journey sometime in the last two years. For the life of me, I cannot remember the blogger, but I do remember her tattoo: a black hibiscus. And I seem to remember she got the same tattoo along with two other fellow bloggers or peer support group members, each of them honoring their own infertility paths. (If that’s you, let me know – I’d love to link to your post showing off your spiffy tattoo )

So recently, I put the call out there on Facebook and Twitter to see who else had gotten tattoos to mark their infertility journeys.

Here’s what some folks on Twitter sent my way:

@keikozoll I do. Two footprints of our 27-weeker preemies embraced in a blue rose of the triplet we lost.

— Tricia (@TCStream) February 21, 2013

@keikozoll Yes. Small butterfly next to my hysterectomy scar. It represents a new beginning. Endo never allowed me to have children.

— Catherine Lambert (@Liasomothers) February 21, 2013

Heather emailed me her infertility tattoo story:

“Just over a year ago I overcame my 5 year struggle with infertility… by accepting it. It consumed me for 5 years and became who I was instead of a part of me. I now live my life childfree and LOVE my life again. Infertility stole my identity for 5 years… and like most women struggling with infertility, I almost took my own life. My tattoo is a symbol of who I am now: “Stronger.” The saying in life is that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I have it on my foot symbolizing that infertility walks with me through this life; healed, but never forgotten.“

Kimberly sent me a link to her blog post talking about her infertility tattoo:

“Now every time things get difficult, you can look at your wrist and it will help you find the strength you need to get through it.”

“I love this tattoo. This tattoo holds so much meaning. Seeing it on my wrist brings tears to my eyes because I sincerely believe it. We will get through this. Not only does this tattoo serve as a tribute to my grandparents and their health struggles, but its a reminder of our own struggles with infertility and that this is not a permanent problem and that if we fight and believe in the fight, one day we will get the chance to become parents and to give our love to a little bundle of joy.” Read Kimberly’s full post about her tattoo here.

Natasha N. sent me this lovely pic of a sea turtle to honor their path:

A symbol of longevity and fertility

“Here is my tattoo honoring my infertility journey. I got it on vacation in Hawaii after my husband returned from a seven month deployment. Sea turtles are known fertility symbols and represent strength, patience and the power to endure and persevere. We went on a snorkeling tour while there and on one of our dives there were a ton of sea turtles surrounding us out in the ocean! So with everything combined- the infertility journey, the spirit of the island, the memorable vacation, and experience of all of those symbols of fertility and strength surrounding me, I thought what better a time to finally get that tattoo that I have been wanting?

I placed it on my foot to remind myself that this is something I have walked through and that I am still standing despite it all (so far ) and also because I didn’t want it in some horrid place that will look awful when I am 70! It all came together in some great way, so I am glad to have it and use it as a reminder when I need it.”

Jessie sent me this lovely little blackbird that sits on the inside of her wrist:

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

“Here’s my tattoo and the story: we did IVF in January 2012. We transferred 3 embryos. It ended in a chemical pregnancy. My tattoo has “2012″ in the branches to represent the year of our loss, as well as a “3″ in the bottom left corner to represent the three embryos we transferred and lost. I chose the picture of the bird in the tree because I love the song “Blackbird” by The Beatles. My brother played it on the guitar as I walked down the aisle to marry my husband. Back then, the lyrics ‘All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise’ resonated with me. During this whole journey, the lyrics ‘take these broken wings and learn to fly’ were a reminder that this does not define me nor will it destroy me. I got the tattoo on the inside of my left wrist six months after our loss.”

Catie shared a wonderful story about how she and her mom Kelly got matching tattoos:

A mother-daughter bond of love, told in ink.

“Here are my Mom’s and my tattoo. Its a simple version of the infertility awareness symbol. Mine says BELIEVE, because I have to always remind myself to believe that I WILL be a mother (one way or another). My Mom’s is actually written in Irish, and it says FAITH, HOPE, LOVE because she wanted to support our journey and she says that’s what it takes. They are on our left palms so that they are visible to us and everyone else, and people can ask what they’re for. I love them!”

And finally, Anasara sent this picture of her bumptious looking pomegranate tattoo:

“Pomegranates, a longstanding symbol of fertility, serve as a strong analogy to those of us dealing with infertility.”

“I got my infertility tattoo in late 2011 prior to undergoing our 1st IVF cycle. It was my 8th tattoo overall (#9 is scheduled for my birthday in April) so I’m no stranger to the needle even before infertility, LOL! Although all my tattoos have special meaning, this one was by far the most cathartic to get. I think it had to do with finally ackowledging the fact we were entering “the final frontier” (to my DH & I) of ART since IUIs never worked. I wanted something that was both beautiful and yet not obvious to the world, not for privacy’s sake (I’ve been ‘out’ as an infertile since we started seeing an RE almost 4 years ago) but so people would ask me ‘why a pomegranate?’ and I would get to educate them on the meaning.” Read Anasara’s full post about her tattoo here.

Do you have a tattoo honoring your journey so far? Thinking about getting one? And what do you think about getting a tattoo in general? Share your thoughts in the comments and link up to any blog posts you might have about your own tattoos!

And in case you’ve missed it, here are the first two posts: The Great Big Lie About Personhood Legislation and The Other Embryos.

Today, I’m boiling down the argument against granting personhood status to embryos in a single infographic, whipped up by yours truly.

Please pin, tweet and share this graphic – much obliged!

Infographic by Keiko Zoll. Copyright TheInfertilityVoice.com

Despite rising beta numbers that could have gone either way, only one of those two embryos implanted. And here I am, 23 weeks pregnant with a healthy boy.

And about 40 minutes from my house, four additional high-grade embryos are chilling away in frozen storage.

Right now we’re not in any kind of position to decide what to do with those embryos and thankfully, our insurance covers the first year of storage fees. My philosophy right now is let’s see what it’s like raising one child before we decide if we want any more. I think that’s a fair philosophy, no?

But I think about those four embryos and even the one who didn’t make it – a lot.

I get accused of talking about politics too much. I don’t make any attempts to hide my political inclinations: I’m a progressive feminist – and honestly, even those two labels don’t fully capture the complete spectrum of my political, moral and ethical beliefs. But if I had to sum it up quickly, there you have it.

And how I label myself is not to shut out others: I thoroughly welcome and enjoy respectful conversation and debate. All viewpoints have always been welcome here in this space. The only thing I take issue with is when someone forces a particular viewpoint by stating falsehoods. Come here, make your case – but dont’ lie. Don’t just make up facts to support your beliefs. And that’s something with which I take umbrage whether your left, right, somewhere-in-between or unaffiliated. If you’ve got a point to make, at least have credible, accurate info to back it up.

So yesterday, I had a bit of an enraged reaction to recent personhood legislation working its way through North Dakota and some alarming legislation out of Arizona. And yes – I got unabashedly political in that post.

As I mentioned in the update at the end of that post, it’s not about casting judgment on any political movement – it’s about pointing out the fact that groups like Personhood USA are funded and orchestrated by one very vocal, very well-funded segment of conservative politics. It’s not a judgment but a statement of facts.

When I say I’m a progressive feminist, I don’t claim to represent ALL progressive feminists. Just as Personhood USA doesn’t claim to represent ALL conservative Christians. So, before folks think I’m rallying the mob and grabbing pitchforks in an anti-conservative crusade – slow your roll. I’m not.

It was October 10th. The day before beta.

Larry was at work and I was taking a shower. As the hot water poured over me, I instinctively closed my eyes and placed my hands on my belly. The tears flowed.

“I have no idea if you’ve stuck around,” I said out loud. “But I hope you have. I love you both already so much. And if one or both of you make it, I promise you will be loved every second of my life until the day I die.”

A pause, then: “I love you.”

Groups like Personhood USA and the Center for Arizona Policy (the group responsible for the embryo tracking bill proposed in Arizona) push their pro-life agenda in the name of “pre-born” Americans. Of the two organizations, CAP has the most articulated position statement when it comes to infertility treatments (emphasis mine):

Largely because of the rapid advances in technology, this field has gone almost entirely unregulated. As a result, many in the industry have pushed the boundaries of ethics in the name of “building a family.”

It is tempting to gloss over these troubling ethical questions because the outcome is often that a couple who desperately wants a baby receives that wonderful gift. Infertility doctors and advocacy groups work to keep the focus on the desires of the infertile couple to have a child and off the difficult issues. However, when life is destroyed or someone’s health is jeopardized just so another person can have something they want, the grave moral problems remain, despite the efforts to sweep them under the rug. An unethical action is not justified by how much good comes of it in the end.

Personhood USA takes a broader standpoint, calling out this as one of their organization’s commitments:

Moving churches and the culture to make the dehumanization and murdering of preborn children unthinkable.

In these sweeping position statements, they imply that infertility patients who pursue IVF are destroying, jeopardizing or outright murdering “pre-born” Americans when their doctors perform the standard procedures and protocols of the IVF process. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, in doing so, they seek to shame and dehumanize anyone who would infringe upon the “rights” of “pre-born” Americans, be they the 16-year old girl who wants an abortion or the 30-year old woman from Massachusetts who used donor eggs to get pregnant.

The implication is that these “pre-born” Americans – these 8- and 10-cell blastocysts – are unwanted.

And it couldn’t be further from the truth.

You want to talk about wanted? Loved?

Let’s talk about my fertilization report, the day I found out we only had 6 fertilized embryos after 20 eggs had been retrieved:

I talked to my friend Natalie who gave me the permission I needed to NOT be okay with this right now. And so I rage. I rail. I tremble. I let this fear consume me. And then I break it down for what it is: I am afraid that these embryos aren’t enough. I am afraid they won’t make it to Saturday. I am afraid this cycle will fail.

And:

There are six embryos. Six of our embryos. Any one of them could become our child, our children. I live in a world, at a time in history where six of my potential children are growing right now, in a petri dish, in a lab just 40 minutes from my house. How remarkable. How fortunate we are to be alive at this precise moment in time.

Like I said, I think about all those embryos a lot. About whether we have more children down the road. About how, if we decide not to expand our family beyond one child, what will happen to them. Larry and I have legal arrangements in place should either of us die or we divorce, but what happens to them in any other context remains in the air.

Do we let them thaw and discard them? Donate them to research? Donate them to another couple?

These are all hypotheticals. And while we’re not yet at a point to engage more fully into those hypotheticals, I want to direct you to a blog post from RESOLVE New England about one woman’s thought process on what to do with her excess embryos.

Personhood USA would eat this up about me, because this progressive feminist just called her embryos her “children.” That she would whisper and sob the words “I love you” to balls of cells in her uterus. (And this is a great example of why labels are so janky at really capturing the full spectrum of a person.)

But it doesn’t change the fact that groups like CAP and Personhood USA and state legislatures have no business regulating my ability to have a family simply because I require medical treatment to get pregnant.

Did I “desire” to have a family? Absolutely. But not only is it my right to have a family as a free human being – it’s a biological imperative.

I can’t say it more plainly: personhood legislation strips that right to have families from infertility patients… in the name of life. In the name of families.

I haven’t written before about these other embryos because I’m so focused on just getting through this whole “gestating a fetus” thing right now. But I do think about them. I worry about them and their time in storage as much as I worry about my son’s first day of school. I worry about what will become of them as much as I wonder about the kind of man my son will grow up to be.

Infertility patients aren’t just throwing excess embryos in the trash because they’re just balls of cells.

They’re our potential children – but they’re not “people.”

And we need to do what we can to protect them from any legislation or regulation that seeks to prevent their creation in the first place.

There are two important legislative stories that have emerged over the course of today that I need to get you up to speed on… and then I need to talk about just why they are so tremendously fucked up.

North Dakota Senate Passes Personhood Legislation

Yup. You read that right. At 1pm today, the North Dakota Senate passed SB 2303. This bill is an attempt to clarify some IVF regulations mentioned in SB 2302 and those regulations – which have now passed in the Senate and move on to the House – have disastrous implications for the infertility community of North Dakota, both for patients and practitioners.

Firstly, its sister bill, SB 2302, made headlines by attempting to regulate the maximum number of embryos that could be transferred at once. While the ASRM already has embryo transfer guidelines in place, the North Dakotan legislature took it upon themselves to further regulate those guidelines with absolutely zero medical basis. Oh, and trying to regulate that no embryos can be frozen, effectively wiping out any North Dakotan cancer patient’s chance at fertility preservation. Thankfully, SB 2302 failed two weeks ago.

Enter: SB 2303. As of 1pm today, the North Dakota Senate just voted this into existence:

“Human being” means an individual member of the species homo sapiens at every stage of development.

So… legal rights have just been granted to 8-cell blastocysts. Which would effectively make it impossible to practice IVF in the state of North Dakota. It’s not yet law; it still has to go through the House and then get signed by the Governor. That said, knocking down 1 target in a line of only 3 steps to law (well, 3.5 if you count vetos) is too close for comfort.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more fucked up, I read this little gem.

Arizona Wants to Track Every Human Embryo… and Make it Public Knowledge

I really can’t explain that any more simply. Arizona’s SB 1376 – drafted by a lobbying group adamantly opposed to any and all assisted reproductive technologies – would require all fertility clinics in the state to track, collect and report data on every single human embryo created and then publish that information publicly.

RH Reality Check sums it up thusly (emphasis mine):

“…this newer bill seeks to capture and make publicly available information on the disposition of every embryo created in the process of in-vitro fertilization, and the results of every treatment involving ART. The information required is largely redundant to the statistics and information submitted to the CDC, most of which is publicly available.”

This is bad news for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s requiring clinics to collect the same information twice and submit it to both state and federal regulatory bodies – and much of this is also submitted to SART, the professional arm of the ASRM. (Smaller government says what?) Except that it also starts to dig way deeper into patient privacy by seeking the collection of information, including:

• the number of embryos deemed not viable for transfer or preservation and used for training
• the number of embryos donated to another individual for transfer
• the number of selective reductions performed, broken down by number of embryos transferred before the reduction
• the percentage of selective reductions resulting in miscarriage

RH Reality Check has the full proposed absurd list of data collection points here.

And now, I need to get something off my chest. Again. For the umpteenth time.

I hope that somehow, someway this time sticks in the minds of those who seek to demonize infertility patients and the treatments to which we have a fundamental right.

The “Pro-Life, Pro-Family” Agenda of Personhood Legislation is a Lie.

Despite what they’d have you believe, personhood legislation is anything BUT pro-life or pro-family.

Personhood legislation isn’t about G-d or miracles or precious little babies waiting to be born. Personhood legislation is about a deeply conservative anti-family, anti-choice agenda that seeks to undermine and overturn women’s legally granted rights to govern their own reproductive health. I can’t put it any more plainly.

I am continually baffled by women who not only support this kind of legislation but actually propose it because it impacts them, their daughters, their sisters and every other woman they know.

But here’s what really gets my knickers in a knot.

Personhood legislation doesn’t promote family values, it prevents families. It prevents people like me, people like you who read and comment on this blog, and the 7.3 million other people in this country whose reproductive organs biologically reject the heteronormative missionary-style perfectly-timed-intercourse coupling of how babies “should” be made – from being able to have families of our own on our terms.

Personhood legislation doesn’t save all the unborn children, it prevents them from ever being conceived in the first place. Personhood legislation seeks to punish us for biological realities for which we have no control.

I find it infuriating that groups like Personhood USA push a “pro-life, pro-family agenda” when they’re really trying to evangelize a single religious view – theirs – of “G-d given rights” for every American… despite every American’s Constitutional right to religious diversity and plurality. By trying to grant personhood status to embryos and even eggs, personhood advocates dehumanize infertility patients and practitioners in the process.

That makes about as much sense as the murderers who think they’re justified in killing doctors who perform abortions – in the name of life.

I’m calling out the personhood movement on their great big lie. Personhood advocates seek to champion “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all “pre-born” Americans. Guess what? That’s a lie.

What they’re really trying to peddle is the notion that all peoples’ rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are equal but some peoples’ rights to those same values are more equal than others.

Namely, the rights of “pre-born” Americans over the rights of 7.3 million very real, breathing, walking, talking Americans living right now with infertility.

To support personhood is to support a baffling contradiction of beliefs and actions.

To support personhood is to deny me and you and 7.3 million other Americans living with infertility – people living with a disease – our right to build our families with medical treatment to which we are entitled.

Personhood USA is committed to “protecting every child by love and by law.”

Except the children that infertility patients so desperately want to have.

Except the children who are created in perhaps some of the most medically miraculous ways, ways that bridge science and G-d.

Except the children like my son, whose kicks and somersaults in my womb remind me every second just how hard-won he is, just how loved and wanted he is.

Because if the personhood movement had their way, my son would have never been created in the first place.

And if you think you’ve seen me fight for this community, just try and stand in between me and my child and watch what happens.

Angry?

Good. You should be.

Now go do something about it.

Live in North Dakota or Arizona? Contact your State Senators and Representatives.

Pissed off about groups like Personhood USA? Send your dollars to RESOLVE’s Center for Infertility Justice instead.

Need to vent your rage? Share this post on Facebook and Twitter. Blog about this. Post about this on Facebook and Twitter and get others fired up with you.

Don’t just sit here and be horrified. Do something.

Fight like the family you so desperately want and are entitled to have depends on it.

[Edited to add: Some folks have expressed concern that I'm passing judgment on people who are pro-life or conservative. Let me clarify: I'm not. I'm merely stating the known fact that personhood legislation is largely being orchestrated by a very vocal, very well-funded arm of the pro-life conservative movement. This is not a judgment, but a statement of fact.]

We decided that it was time to formalize our Valentines’ observance, so we settled on the possible exchange of cards and the definite exchange of chocolates. And by exchange, I mean one of us is responsible to buy a box of these local confections of awesomesauce deliciousness for us to share. (The fact that we live within 5 minutes of the Harbor Sweets Factory is a dangerous, dangerous thing.)

I believe due to sheer scheduling, I will be picking them up this year.

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks.

LOVE

One love wasn’t meant to be.

One love has spent half his life with me.

And one is waiting to be born.

SEX

(*The Knish is fine. It’s a precautionary thing because of some marginal placenta previa they’re hoping will resolve on its own. I have a follow-up ultrasound in 6 weeks. Nobody’s really worried.)

The are-you-kidding-me part of this? I’ve been on pelvic rest for 5 weeks already and I’ve got 6 more weeks to go. This is officially the longest dry spell of my entire sexual LIFE. I am a big fan of sex and while I still have plenty of options on the table, it’s just not the same. TRUST ME.

If I seem a bit tense, well – there’s your answer.

And if Valentine’s Day and infertility has got you in a bind about sex, here’s what I had to say on the matter this time last year.

ROCK N’ ROLL

The Vagina Monologues are part of the V-Day Movement. It coincides with Valentine’s Day here in the US every year and its mission is simple: V-Day exists until the violence stops.

This year, the focus of V-Day is centered One Billion Rising. From V-Day:

One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women dancing is a revolution.

Strike. Dance. Rise!

There are hundreds of One Billion Rising events happening around the globe today. Click the graphic above to search for one near you. And if you can’t strike or dance at a live event, rise at your blogs, on your Facebook pages, your Twitter streams and wherever you can online. You can even watch a livestream of One Billion Rising events live across the globe all day today here.

I may have doctor’s orders not to shimmy or shake today, but I can certain inspire others to strike, dance and rise up against violence against women. Strike, dance and rise today for your sisters around the globe. Strike, dance and rise today for yourself.

And while I’m not necessarily able to dance today, I strike, dance and rise here on this blog for my son, and for the world I’m helping to shape for him.

I wrote a little bit about pain a couple of weeks ago, about learning to swim in it like a fish, breathing in the pain along my journey. And in a lot of ways, pain is an intrinsic part of the infertility experience, be it the sting of an IM needle into your hip or the heartbreak of an adoption fall-through. There is immediate pain: needle pricks and speculums and transvaginal ultrasound wands – but there is also lingering pain, the kind that gets triggered again and again down the road: birth announcements, shower invitations, Mother’s Day followed right behind with Father’s Day…

Pain is a defining factor of the infertility experience.

…Which makes those rare moments of joy a rather complicated subject, one that we as a community often struggle with. I’ll admit that even now, it’s one I struggle with here in this space.

I’ll be candid: I feel less interesting as a blogger lately. My pregnancy is going fine for the most part. I hesitate to write about the mundane or even the “I’ve never been pregnant before is this normal” posts because I know the kind of pain they can cause. I vividly remember glazing over pregnant bloggers’ blogs while in the very thick of our infertility journey. Some I just stopped following entirely.

But mostly, I just feel like I’m kind of boring right now. Because let’s face it: if it bleeds, it leads. There’s not a whole lot of excitement or drama in my life right now, which – I’ll admit – is a nice change of pace given the last four years of my life.

I feel like there’s two sides to the pain coin, when reading about painful or traumatic experiences on other infertility bloggers’ blogs. On one hand, we can measure ourselves and our experiences against someone else’s. It allows us a moment of pause to stop and consider, “Gee I’m lucky I’m not her” and/or “Well, maybe I don’t have it so bad right now.” On the other hand, these moments of comparison can also swing wildly in the other direction with, “Oh, you think that’s bad, well look at my story…”

For some, reading about all things horrible and awful in another person’s life allows us to take stock in our own gratitude. For others, it’s a springboard into competition and one-up-man-ship.

My question in the latter instance is this: what exactly are you trying to win by suffering the most?

(My gut says things like: validation, acceptance, sympathy, attention. But maybe it’s more complex than that – I don’t know. I used to be friends with a one-upper. Key words here: used to. I cut that person out of my life over 10 years ago because I had really had enough with this imaginary game of “I’ve suffered more than you” with her.)

And so this brings me to the flip-side of pain: joy. And more specifically, how reticent we are to embrace joy when it comes, let alone write about it on our blogs. I think for a lot of us, joy comes wrapped in a big ol’ bow of guilt. We feel guilty about celebrating and honoring the moments of joy in our lives because our RSS readers are often filled with stories of gut-wrenching pain. We ask ourselves silently: who are we to feel such joy when there is so much pain around us?

Allow me another moment of candidness: I got pregnant at the same time as two other bloggers I read. One is currently experiencing some rather intense complications with her pregnancy. The other lost her baby just shy of reaching her second trimester. I don’t know if my blog is in their RSS readers, but I was hyper-aware that they might be. How could I post about my joy about finally rockin’ a tiny baby bump when for one of them, that dream literally died?

The survivor’s guilt is overwhelming some days. But it’s not just relegated to the survivors alone, as moments of joy can be as immense or as microscopic as our self-awareness allows and at any point in our infertility journeys. That’s one of the reasons I love Lori’s Perfect Moment Mondays: a deliberate, intentional time each month to stop and reflect on that one moment of joy, peace, clarity, or self-awareness.

I just wish we didn’t need to give ourselves permission to write about these moments of joy. I wish that joy flowed as freely as the pain, that we didn’t have to hesitate or water down our posts before hitting “publish”.

But maybe that’s just the survivor’s guilt in me talking.

I’d love your thoughts on all of this: Pain Olympics, survivor’s guilt, giving ourselves permission to be joyous… and what are your moments of joy right now? Here’s mine

I am also brave, strong, bold and empowered.

If you told me four years ago I would one day say that about myself, I would have laughed in your face.

“I’m nothing,” I would have said. “I’m broken. I’m a failure. I have no idea what tomorrow is even going to look like, let alone feel bold or empowered.”

That’s how I felt in the hours and days following my diagnosis. How I felt for months. And then gradually, I started to move beyond the feelings of failure and shame. I don’t know what the exact moment was, but it was like a gradual realization, like the slow opening of a flower bud or a seedling poking through the soil to touch the air for the first time.

And while I can’t pinpoint that moment of change, I know that I must have made a choice fairly early on to stop letting infertility dictate my life and instead learning to live with it, merely a part of me instead of consuming me. I couldn’t choose to magically resume my fertility again, but I could choose to decide how to live with my infertility.

It’s how I approach my depression right now, too. I can’t choose to magically balance the chemical responses firing away in my brain and endocrine system, but I can choose to decide how to live with my depression.

(Depression and infertility are basically interchangeable in this instance.)

I described this phenomenon to Esperanza, as we chatted online recently. I talked about how over the course of the last four years, I’ve let pain become a part of my life instead of consuming it. Rather than drown in the pain, I learned to breathe it in like a fish. I learned and accepted that pain was simply a part of my environment but that it wasn’t the ONLY thing in my world. It’s almost like swimming through a polluted stream: I still have to breathe, but the water will clear again.

In these past four years, I’ve learned to swim with the current: honoring grief, pain, messiness, anger, guilt, shame. But I’ve also learned to swim against it, too.

Photo by Beth Punches via Flickr

And I had a LOT of time on my hands before we ever dived into the madness that is fertility treatments. I kept myself busy, but it wasn’t “busy work.” I’d like to think I’ve been doing important work for this community that’s made a difference. It might not be on some grand, paradigm-shifting level (which, is still my goal) – but I see it in the emails and comments that people leave telling me how much this space and my words have meant to them. That’s what keeps me coming back to the space, but I know it matters to others. (So fret not: this is not some parting soliloquy of blog abandonment.)

And during all that time, all this waiting – it allowed me to really re-evaluate not just my whole life, but fundamentally, who I am as a person.

I’ve realized now that infertility is the most painful journey of self-discovery you’ll ever take.

And you know what? Nine times out of ten it’s a journey that you’re pulled into against your will, whether you’re ready to take that journey or not. Infertility is not just putting your feet to the fire… it puts your very sense of self to the test.

I have learned some stark truths about myself. I have seen darkness and shadows and grief and pain within me like I never even thought was possible. But I’ve also seen resolve and light and hope and peace within me too, with reserves so deep I wonder just how deep those emotional reserves really go.

This weekend was my first retreat for the Boston New Leaders Council Institute. To say that it was transformative is an understatement: I was surrounded by 17 NLC Fellows whose life stories, triumphs and ambitions overwhelm me to the point I almost wonder exactly how the hell I got into this group of greatness. In 48 hours, I identified – I mean really dove deep and identified my strengths. I put to paper and my soul the work I really need to be doing: not the work I want to do, not the work that’s easy to do, not the work that others expect me to do – but the work that feeds my purpose.

And so I’m taking the remaining five NLC Institute weekends and the rest of this year to commit myself to this work, the details of which will be slowly forthcoming here in this space. And, shocker – I’ll be creating (yet another) website in the next few months as I sort it all out.

None of this would have been possible without my infertility.

I would never have had the courage to take the great leaps of faith and bold risks that I intend to take over the next twelve months if I hadn’t dug as deep as I have over the last four years: examining the kind of life I have, the life I seek to create, the woman I want to become and the legacy I intend to leave.

There will be false-starts and disappointment and frustrations. But I also hope there will be growth, success and new ventures that are going to benefit of LOT of people – beyond the infertility community. I’m just not ready to share any plans yet, simply because there ARE no concrete plans yet, just lots of bold ideas. But as committed as I was to seeing my way through infertility, I intend to see these plans through as well. And I can’t wait to share the fruits of those labors with you when it’s time.

And remember: no matter how painful this journey of self-discovery might be – just hang on. Do what you have to do to work through it. It is worth it so that you can look yourself in the mirror, look at all the invisible scars of this long-fought battle and say to yourself:

I am brave.

I am strong.

I am bold and empowered.

Because you are.

I turn 31 in May, so I just make the cut for this statistic. On one hand, I’d like to believe it’s because my generation doesn’t need to even consider the legality of abortion as it has always been legal in our lifetime. On the other hand, I worry that our generation has lost sight of the significance of just what Roe v. Wade has meant to millions of women and families in America since it’s ruling forty years ago today.

So that’s a huge motivator of why I’m writing today, of why I’m blogging for choice.

I am all too keenly aware of how this topic is both a sensitive and impassioned one for many of you. Today, NARAL wants us to share our stories about what choice means to us. So despite whatever your beliefs and opinions are on the abortion debate, I hope you’ll allow me the comfort of my space to share my story and my thoughts.

Pregnancy tests have been a loaded object for me most of my life. Prior to getting engaged, they were a mark of shame, of clumsy embarrassment and guilt. When Larry and I were in college and after we moved in together, we had our share of pregnancy scares. In every instance up until 2008, our plan for an unplanned pregnancy was a no-brainer: I’d get an abortion. It wasn’t because we didn’t love or want our future child – far from it. We loved the idea of our child growing up in a supportive environment: physically, emotionally, financially. And for those seven years before we got engaged, we just couldn’t provide that.

That changed on January 28, 2008. It was just two days after our wedding and we were walking around the Magic Kingdom at Disney World for our honeymoon. We had stopped in front of Peter Pan’s Flight, one of my favorite rides. In front of us was a sea of parked strollers, their seats empty and their owners presumably occupied with their little ones on nearby rides. We laughed at the sight, joking that one day too, a stroller of ours would join that throng.

“I guess ‘eject’ isn’t our immediate response now, huh?” I said casually, even though having children was never a casual idea to us.

Larry chuckled. “You know, I guess you’re right.” He smiled.

We wouldn’t have “the talk” for another ten or so months, when we decided that we’d wait at least three years before diving into family building mode.

That all changed just a year and three months after our wedding when I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. That day changed everything in our lives, our marriage, and our previously imagined ideas of how we’d build our family together.

In the days and weeks after my diagnosis, I remember having this particularly bitter thought: all those pregnancy scares were a waste of our time, causing us unnecessary worrying and stress because it was never going to happen anyway. The truth was that I’d never need an abortion because my body just wasn’t capable of getting pregnant on its own. That revelatory notion brought me little comfort as I grappled with the knowledge of my barren womb and my desperate longing for a child of my own.

Infertility was never a choice for me. And for 1 out of every 6 couples in the United States, it’s not a choice. It’s a disease. Infertility is as biologically indiscriminate as cancer, diabetes, or the size of your feet. In many ways, infertility robs us of choice: the choice to build our families the way we imagined we would; the choice to parent when we want to; the choice to have genetic children of our own.

I was robbed of all those choices the day I found out I had infertility.

Roe v. Wade isn’t just about abortion.

Roe v. Wade is about choices and rights. It’s about the choice to terminate or the choice not to terminate a pregnancy. It’s about the right for women to make decisions and choices about their bodies and their own lives. It’s about protecting those choices and those rights.

I have a right to build my family. I did not choose to be infertile.

Infertility and reproductive choice are inextricably linked to one another. And sadly, that link is largely bound in legislation that would seek to deny me access to those medical procedures that would help me build my family. Defining “when life begins” or “when a person becomes a person” – as was the case back in late 2011 – directly challenges and threatens Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to her reproductive choices and rights. But personhood amendments also challenge and threaten the entire infertility community, potentially barring us access to the necessary medical treatments and procedures we need to build our families.

While it seems that personhood legislation has largely died down since Mississippi Initiative 26 failed, it has popped in some frightening ways since then. The idea of a personhood debate still looms large in the back of my head as a direct threat to the infertility community and as such, I remain vigilant.

Because I’m not about to have my choices and my rights – my right to build my family in the way I choose in this infertility paradigm – be taken away from me again.

The legacy of Roe v. Wade was never about taking away life.

The legacy of Roe v. Wade lives in the protection of reproductive choice. And for the infertility community, its legacy lives in the protection of that choice. It’s that protection that paves the way for us to access the treatments we need to build and create the families we so desperately desire.

The families we have a right to build.

If that isn’t pro-life, I don’t know what is.

See the rest of the blogs participating and join in yourself here for today’s Blog for Choice, hosted by NARAL.

I’ve been largely silent lately as I’ve been struggling with depression yet again. What I thought was due to my thyroid levels being as wonky as they have been throughout my pregnancy is in fact not the case, which leaves me facing a darker reality that perhaps its root lies elsewhere. The good news is that my TSH last month was up in the rafters (for me, anyway) around 7.5. This month they’re back to where they should be, coming in just under 1. I’m hoping they continue to remain stable throughout my pregnancy.

So I’m left to wonder: is it pregnancy hormones? My body adjusting to finally coming off the extra hormones I was on for the first 14 weeks? Or is it something more?

And like any good depressive, I’ve been avoidant of actually confronting it.

Another factor that’s played a role into my recent radio silence has been my relevancy here in this space. I’ve felt strangely confined by labels and definitions lately, that I’m somehow irrelevant because I’ve “crossed over.” Because I’ve “made it.” Truth be told, I don’t think I’ll have ever “crossed over” until the Knish is safely in our arms, home from the hospital.

I created Team Zoll as an outlet to talk about all the nitty gritty things about non-infertility and pregnancy-related things but the truth of the matter is, it’s nearly impossible to seperate the two right now. I’ve worked to create this relatively infertility-free approximation of mommyblogging that rings false. Most of my pregnancy posts over there seem to be complaining and full of gripes. And then I second guess myself that I’m not “enjoying” this pregnancy the way I *should* be, because we’ve worked so hard to get here. So I clam up. And of course, I hesitate to write about any of my pregnancy experience here.

It is a vicious, vicious cycle of self-doubt, only compounded by at times an overwhelming depression about what I’m doing with my life right now. And then there’s the whole “pregnant ladies shouldn’t be depressed” line I tell myself, buzzing in my ear like a mosquito, closely followed by “you should be more grateful right now.”

I spend a lot of time building other people up, of reassuring them that they matter, that your infertility experiences and stories and journeys matter – and they do.

I just sometimes wonder how my own story matters right now given this new and changing dynamic of my own life.

I wish I could tell you that the moment you see a BFP – especially if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen one in your life, like I did – I wish I could tell you that it’s like the slate gets wiped clean and you’re like, “What infertility?”

G-d, I wish I could tell you that.

But from the moment our clinic called us with the good news, my immediate thought was: “Awesome. Let’s hope this pregnancy lasts.” And so while it might outwardly appear cute that I’ve got my weekly change date in my calendar, it’s not in any attempt to be cute or to savor this experience. For the first 12 weeks, it was an important countdown to the beginning of the second trimester, of knowing that I was in the “safe” zone. And yet, at 18 weeks along already (I know – this has flown by), I have my sights set on week 28: viability.

We bought a fetal Doppler monitor from CraigsList a few weeks ago. I was stuck in this weird limbo of official release from my clinic and the stark reality that no, you don’t really go to the OB or midwife every week like you do at the RE clinic. And since this is my first pregnancy and I have absolutely ZERO context to what I should be feeling physically at any given moment, I was constantly worried about every twinge and symptom and headache and hip pain.

And there’s this void between that last ultrasound at about 14 weeks where you know you have something the size of I dunno, a plum? inside of you – the fact that you’ve seen it twitch and move on the ultrasound screen – and yet, you can’t feel it move. There’s a dissonance between what you know because you’ve seen it with your eyes and what you can feel with your body.

Up until very recently, I was terrified that my baby could be dead inside me at any moment and I wouldn’t know because I couldn’t see or feel anything in between appointments. So we bought a used Doppler. And I used it nightly for over a week. And every time I heard that fast running choo choo choo choo sound on the Doppler speaker, this Little Engine That Will, I let out a sigh of relief.

And yet, even now, as I feel the Knish moving a little, I still panic in those still moments when it’s very likely the Knish is just taking a nap, always wondering: “Is he/she okay?”

This is what infertility does to you, even once you make your way to “the other side.”

I am not resolved – in a lot of contexts, but for now, I’ll leave it at infertility – I am not resolved. But I’m in transition. And transition and change are never comfortable places to be in. The last six years of my life have been marked by a substantial amount of change and transition: moving from Maryland to Massachusetts; getting married; working for two different schools then forging ahead to work for myself; buying a house; and in just a little over six months – a baby.

In a lot of ways, I wish life could just chill the fuck out for a few minutes, but then I suppose it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

I’m hoping a trip to Disney World in two weeks (our last vacation and in celebration of our five-year anniversary at the end of the month; revisiting our honeymoon haunts) and the NLC Institute will give me the break and kick in the ass I need right now. My post infrequency has not been for lack of believing in and caring about each of you; rather, it’s more of a lack of believing in and caring about myself right now.

I know, I know – classic “it’s not you, it’s me” syndrome.

I so desperately wanted to make it to the “other side” – but I don’t know that I could ever really be prepared for it, even as I march closer and closer to resolution, week by week. I’m haunted by the doubt that infertility paints like a mask on your heart; every day is colored by this doubt. Even when you’re pregnant, there’s just no shaking the ghost of infertility that lurks in the back of every thought.

I hope you’ll bear with me as I work my way through this transition.

One last random thing: my first #IFchat Twitter chat was a bit of a flop due to Tweet Chat issues, but I’m firing up my infertility social media chat again this Friday at 12:30pm EST on Facebook. Join me over at The Infertility Voice Facebook page this Friday at 12:30pm to talk about what the hell is up, infertility, the Kardashians, and gasp! Anne Hathaway.

Join me every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month!

My goals in organizing these chats are so that you can: a) get to hang out with me twice a month, beyond my website; b) connect with and meet other readers of The Infertility Voice; c) find valuable resources from other folks; d) tune in for a biweekly, global support group of people who get infertility.

Sounds neat, right?

To that end, I’ll need your help – because the first Twitter chat is tomorrow at 12:30pm EDT!

How to Participate in the Monthly #IFchat Twitter Chat

1. Mark your calendars for the first Friday of every month at 12:30pm EDT (US).
2. Make sure you follow me on Twitter @KeikoZoll.
3. When it’s time for the chat to start, head to the Tweet Chat room here or make sure you’re following the hashtag #IFchat.
4. Get tweetin’ and enjoy!

The first Facebook chat will be on Friday, January 18th at 12:30pm EDT (US).

How to Participate in the Monthly Infertility Voice Facebook Chat

1. Mark your calendars for the third Friday of every month at 12:30pm EDT (US).
2. Make sure you Like The Infertility Voice on Facebook.
3. When it’s time for the chat to start, head to my Facebook page and look for the status announcing the Facebook chat has begun.
4. Get commenting, hit refresh and enjoy!

So… what are we going to chat about, anyway?

In a nutshell: infertility. I’m hoping to have a theme or guiding topic to each month’s chat. I’m also hoping, that if these chats get particularly popular, to be able to add in some guest speakers, moderators and resources. Think of these social media chats as part support group, part resource gathering/sharing, part hanging out and letting off some steam.

Also, I can’t stress this enough: these chats are open to men, women, LGBTQA, folks with primary or secondary infertility, infertility survivors, folks who are pursuing fertility treatments, adoption, donor gametes, surrogacy, natural/complementary treatments, those who have chosen to resolve without parenting – the sky’s the limit. Our commonality lies in our experience with infertility. I hope that we can all learn something from this panorama of experiences from one another.

The first Twitter chat tomorrow will be focused mainly on getting to know who’s participating, where folks are coming from, and what some thoughts about heading into 2013 and what that means for your journey – and more importantly, where you can find support. I’m hoping the first Facebook chat will build off of that, but I’ve got two weeks, so that might shift a little

If you’re interested in joining me on Twitter tomorrow at 12:30pm EDT (US), let me know in the comments! If you have ideas for chat topics and speakers, let me know in the comments!

And if you want this to be huge, spread the word: share this on Facebook, pin the graphic above to Pinterest, tweet this post on Facebook. Let’s make these #IFchats the new hotness in social media for the online infertility community!

I’ve reflected on 2012 through my blog posts, but it’s hard to encapsulate and reflect on my year just in the words I’ve written here. There’s so much that happens beyond the blog, beyond these words, those little moments that might not be captured in paragraphs or even photos – those memories that stay in our hearts. 2012, by all accounts, was a momentous year. There were good moments. There were great moments. And there were dark, awful moments too.

And on this precipice of tomorrow, I look forward to 2013 with an open heart full of excitement at the possibilities and changes to come in my life.

I’m in New York City right now, my husband napping next to me. We’re doing the Times Square extravaganza, but from the rooftop of one of the buildings in Times Square with one of the best views of the spectacle that is the Times Square ball drop at midnight. (He’s here for work; I’m just tagging along for fun.) We had such a great night last night: dinner with his sister and her boyfriend, then just hanging out around the city. Checking out the ice skaters at Rockefeller Plaza. Pressing our noses against the glass windows of SNY Studios to watch the last quarter of the NFC East Championship Game (GO REDSKINS! NFC East CHAMPS! What a way to end 2012!) and getting a slice of cheesecake at a posh bistro and bar in the Upper East Side.

As I dragged my bite of creamy cheesecake through the strawberry sauce on the plate, I looked at Larry and said, “Ya know, a year from now, our lives are going to be very different. Let’s savor this, shall we?” He smiled. I can’t wait for tonight, as freezing cold as it might be.

These are the small moments to savor before life changes in bold new ways in 2013.

Commit to one act that will change something about the world, that will change you and other people for the better in the long term, that is difficult for you, that will take effort… Give yourself a year to do it. Remember the love of Newtown for a year. Make it something more than a New Years’ Resolution; commit to it for long term, for the teachers and staff and 6 year olds who smile at us, gap-toothed and hopeful, from their school photos, and for the sake of fostering a fierce and relentless love in the world. Be in solidarity with those grieving families for a year. Not just for an Instagram moment.

This beautiful, inspiring call to action is from the lovely Justine at A Half Baked Life. I encourage you to take a few minutes, head over to her place and reflect on her powerful words. She talks about the fleeting temporariness of the #26Acts movement and instead challenges us all to focus on something singular, positive and powerful going into 2013.

Her post in no way diminishes the significance and power of the #26Acts movement, but raises valid questions on the lasting potency of such an effort. Her words have challenged me to rethink the way I do about New Years’ resolutions, and to commit to acts of purpose and change in the coming year. “This kind of work – this deep soul-work – is difficult,” Justine reminds us.

For my One Act this year, I’m focusing on answering a single question for this community:

What is the tipping point for the infertility community?

My plan to answer this question is still evolving. One key part of helping me answer this will be my participation in the Boston chapter of the New Leaders Council Institute, of which I am very proud to say that I’ve been accepted into the 2013 class. I’m giving myself a year to dive fully into this question, to explore all of the resources, research and initiatives out there and I can’t wait to share that journey with you here.

I feel like our community – so many individual parts of our community – are out there spinning our wheels competing for dollars, research and general understanding and compassion. I look at disease communities like breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease and I wonder not just where’s our ribbon… I ask myself, where’s our momentum?

It’s been growing for sure. But the infertility community has yet to reach that “moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” as Malcolm Gladwell describes it in The Tipping Point. I’ll need to hear from you, from thought-leaders, from legislators and reproductive endocrinologists and mental health professionals and would-be grandmothers. I want to open up the conversation to anyone and everyone to help me answer this question: and then I’ll work to have this conversation heard.

I believe in myself to do my One Act this year. And I believe in you to do yours. I hope you’ll join me.

Every hour on the 10′s from noon until midnight tonight, I’m asking a reflective question on my Facebook page about 2012. I hope you’ll join me in the conversation as we look back at 2012 before heading confidently and empowered into 2013.

Go here to join in the fun all day today.

As I stand on the brink of one year into the next, I’m reminded of another post from this year written from standing on the precipice. No matter where you’re standing as you head into 2013 – if you’re ready to light a fire and watch 2012 burn into nothingness or you’re just chomping at the bit for what’s next in 2013: wishing you much health, love and light in this New Year.

Cheers.

It’s hard to believe that we’re ready to kiss 2012 goodbye and ring in the new year in just a week. Even though it hasn’t yet been a full year here at this website, it’s been an incredible ten months here all the same, and I have each of you to thank for that!

2012 has been a year of experimenting: finding out what works here and what doesn’t, what you want and what you need. Come 2013, I’m hoping to hone that even further with some new events and services to offer to you here… but mum’s the word until I get those plans finalized. My goal for 2013 is to get you even more connected to one another as readers and get you the support and empowerment you need along your infertility journeys.

Before we say goodbye to 2012, I wanted to revisit some of biggest hits of the last ten months here at The Infertility Voice. Google Analytics has spoken, and here are some of the top ten posts at The Infertility Voice this year! Let’s take a look back through the year, shall we?

The Infertility Voice: Top 10 Posts of 2012

1. An Announcement, a Proposal, a Prayer and a Promise

October 2012: The post I both longed to write and never believed I would finally get to write.

2. How NOT to Do a Talk Show on Infertility

October 2012: Seriously, Ricki Lake… that show was a trainwreck. The comments to this post also spawned some interesting discussions, with actual guests from that episode of the Ricki Lake Show adding their insight into the production process.

3. Sorry Disney, Wishing a Child Into Existence Doesn’t Cure Infertility

July 2012: My pre-emptive review of Disney’s magical infertili-tale, “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” and a plea for realistic portrayals of infertility in film and media.

4. Don’t Ignore Someone You Know

April 2012: My National Infertility Awareness Week Bloggers Unite contribution illustrating the prevalence of infertility in American society.

5. To Mom or Not to Mom

October 2012: The first of the five-part open salon I wrote with Pamela of Silent Sorority on the culture of “mommyhood” in America.

6. Buy, Buy Baby

May 2012: In which I get down to brass tacks about the disparity of cost and access for infertility treatments, and some of the unconventional ways to help offset those costs.

7. My Infertility Playlist

January 2012: While still technically a post from my old website, this post clocked up a ton of views as I shared some of my favorite tunes that have inspired or been cathartic for me on my infertility journey.

8. Voices of PCOS: Melissa’s Story

September 2012: A guest post from Melissa of With Every Heartbeat, my second annual Voices of PCOS series was a hit. (PS: Want to be be featured in September 2013? Shoot me an email!

9. Seeing Pink, Blue and Green

October 2012: A candid, terrified admission about the perilous, largely unsupported territory that is pregnancy after infertility.

10. Eat, Drink and Be Merry – Or Don’t: An Infertility Holiday Survival Guide

November 2012: My round up of the 8 best pieces of holiday coping advice, from 8 trusted resources.

11. Bonus! Keiko’s Favorite Post: Pulling in the Oars

October 2012: The night before beta, when literally everything was out of my control. This post was one of my most profoundly humbling spiritual moments and I am grateful to have shared that with you.

What was your favorite post here at The Infertility Voice in 2012?

The 2013 Call for Suggestions!

Here’s my challenge for you, in the comments. Between now and December 31st, I’d love to hear from you about post ideas you have or topics that you’d like me to write about in 2013. Whether it’s a family building option, more information about my own journey, interviews with specific people (if I can get them, of course), specific book/resource/website/product reviews – I want to hear it! Leave your ideas in the comments.

One Last Fun Thing

A week ago, I posted a status on The Infertility Voice Facebook page to find out where folks were coming from. The responses were overwhelming and it’s so neat to see just how global you all are! If you ever think for a second that you’re alone in this journey, this map proves you otherwise:

Zoom in, scroll around – you’ll see that this website has reached people all over the globe! If you don’t see your city on here, leave me a little note in the comments and I’ll add it. I’d love to see this map grow as we close out 2012 and welcome 2013.

Wishing everyone who celebrates a wonderful Christmas holiday this week!

But really, when you REALLY come down to it: it’s just another Friday.

The end of the Mayan long form calendar is exactly that: the end of the calendar. Not the end of the world. Does the world end every December 31st? No, no it doesn’t. I mean, if you have a bad enough hangover from New Year’s Eve, sure – it might feel like the end of the world. But on January 1st, we do the same thing we’ve done for thousands of years since we instituted the Julian calendar: we put up a new calendar.

The only difference here is that the Mayans’ calendar goes way longer than our regular 365-day jaunts around the sun. Each of these cycles is called a “bak’tun.” Tomorrow marks the end of the 13th bak’tun… which means, hey – Ancient Mayans should high tail it to the Bak’tun Outlet kiosk in the mall and pick up a new desk bak’tun. The quandary of course, is do you go cute kittens or puppies?

But what about this galactic planetary alignment?

I’ll let my favorite scientist of all time, Neil deGrasse Tyson, take this one. *Sorry Bill Nye, I grew up with you, but NDGT is the new hotness.

Yeah. This happens every December 21st. Tomorrow will be no different than the thousands of December 21sts before it.

But what about Planet X?

I saw that movie. It was spectacularly depressing and Kirsten Dunst got snubbed at the Oscars for it.

Also? Planet X is bullshit.

I want to take a moment to talk about this concept of “the end of the world.”

Folks: worlds end every day.

Mine ended on March 18, 2009: a very specific world that I thought I would build with my husband got smashed to pieces like some kind of rogue planet into Earth. In the ashes, I rebuilt. I healed. Every day has been a step farther from that world-upending day. And in June, my world will be rebuilt, albeit very differently from the way I first imagined it.

For families in Newtown, CT – their world ended a week ago. For the families affected by 9/11, by the Haitian earthquake, by the Joplin tornadoes and all the other global tragedies we’ve witnessed: their worlds ended on those days. Hell, even for the fish and creatures of the Gulf, their world ended on the day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

There may have been moments in your own family building journey: a pregnancy loss, an adoption fall through, or even just another BFN – those days may have felt like your own personal End Times. We don’t need prophets and wackadoos telling us the world is going to end when many of us have lived through a monthly apocalypse of our own.

And yet: here you are, a phoenix among the ashes – rebuilding, healing, and recovering whatever semblance of normalcy you can it the apocalyptic aftermath.

Infertility makes you a lot of things: bitter, angry, depressed, jealous…

But infertility also makes you disaster-ready. It can make you resilient, resourceful, determined and courageous.

The end is only nigh when we say it is.

This seems an appropriate way to close this post.

See you in the 14th bak’tun, folks.

Friday morning, Larry and I drove down to New Jersey to attend his sister’s college graduation. Shortly before 1pm, his iPhone dinged. He has a distinctive alert tone for the AP Breaking News Alerts app, for which he gets push notifications.

“Who died?” I chuckled. We’ve joked many times in the past that 90% of these breaking news alerts are about so-and-so famous person is dead.

He got very quiet.

“What happened?” I said, glancing over to see the sober look on his face.

“Um… somewhere between 18 and 20 children in Connecticut,” he said quietly. “Someone shot up an elementary school.”

We had just crossed the Connecticut border. I switched off Pandora and turned on NPR as special coverage began.

We listened to the awful news unfold for most of the ride to New Jersey. There was a lot of either one of us beginning with a “can you even imagine” that trailed off into silence, met with a silent, shaking head in response.

At some point in the drive, I wondered aloud:

“I wonder if any of those children were adopted or conceived via ART.”

I was a junior in high school when Columbine happened. I distinctly remember sitting in my study hall period just a few days after it happened, cautiously eyeing my classmates, speculating of this group, who would take us out. I eyeballed at least two points of egress.

I knew I could safely get outside if I took the fire exit house right in our auditorium (where my study hall was held) and hide within the residential neighborhood just across the street. There were no windows from which someone could fire at us. If I took the regular exit to house left, down the hallway and out the doors to the bus loop, I’d have a much longer open distance to cover, but it would be through a parking lot so I could duck and hide behind cars.

But of course, depending on the weapon, a car body might not protect me.

I knew in a pinch, if I had to hide, I could run backstage left, climb the rickety staircase that led to the catwalks above the auditorium seating. Or I could lock myself in one of the two greenrooms. If there was little time, I could run and jump into the orchestra pit.

At 17, I devised a crisis escape plan for every room in my class schedule during my 40 minute study hall in the days after Columbine.

“Can you imagine,” I began again to Larry in the car, “trying to explain to your six-year old to always know two points of egress wherever they are, even if they’re unconventional like a window?”

Another silent head shake.

The National Rifle Association has deactivated their Facebook page as of Friday afternoon. They were promoting some kind of holiday giveaway at the time the news broke and as the hours went by, they quietly deactivated the page entirely, despite recently celebrating reaching 1.7 million followers on Facebook.

There are already asshats publicly discussing the need for more guns. Because clearly, what we need is more guns.

And yet, the largest financial investor of the largest gun conglomerate is backing out and selling their entire gun portfolio, including the brand that made the assault rifle used in Friday’s shooting. Even Walmart and Dick’s have put a temporary moratorium on the sale of that same rifle.

Sometime I wish the right to “bear arms” was more about tank tops and less about our ability to indiscriminately kill one another.

When I heard that the first funeral was being held yesterday, I immediately knew his family must be Jewish. I had read that the medical examiner had finished with the bodies of the children sometime on Sunday; the earliest that little boy could be buried was Monday, as is Jewish custom.

Parents should not have to sit shiva for their children.

My first instinct, upon hearing the news, was to do something. It’s the same impetus I feel in the wake of natural disasters: collect goods, funds, and if I can – help a community rebuild. I know I’m no good with a hammer but my checkbook is just as vital. I contribute. I donate. I send my dollars as a way to say, “I’m thinking of you and I want to help in the best way I can for your community right now.”

It makes sense in the wake of hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunami.

But how can dollars help in the wake of such a man-made disaster like this?

There is no amount of money that will bring back the dead.

It has been rainy and grey since Sunday morning. The rain pounded so loud on the roof last night it kept me up.

Despite my current Jewishness, I grew up with Christmas, so my body and heart instinctually get into the festive groove this time of year. I felt that way last week, as I dropped off a huge stack of homemade holiday cards at the post office. I could feel that joyous uptick with Christmas approaching.

It’s been cut off prematurely and the rain only seeks to dampen my mood further.

My heart aches to comprehend such senselessness.

There’s been a lot of talk about the shooter’s mother. About the disparity of access to mental health care in America. About second amendment “rights” versus “gun control.” About school security. About Asperger’s syndrome. About video games and briefcases and taking college courses at 16. About the demonization of children who are “different.”

I would like to hear stories about those six- and seven-year olds. Did they play with Barbies or GI Joes? Did they have imaginary friends? What did they want for Christmas or Hanukkah this year? Who did they look up to most in the world? Who was their favorite cartoon character?

I want to hear stories about the teachers and administrators. About the work they’ve done. About their lesson plans and craft projects and book report assignments.

I want their stories to live on in blessed memory, a light to outshine the dark, media-hyped infamy of the shooter.

I want to remember their names.

Not his.

I keep coming back to something I heard on a panel at the Massachusetts Women’s Conference last week. Charley Johnson, President of the Pay it Forward Foundation, talked about the work he does. He talked about how there at 7 billion people on this planet.

“Imagine what one-seventh of the world could do,” he said. “Imagine if just one billion people did something different today, a little more today, put some good out today more than they did yesterday. Imagine if just one billion people did this today.”

He paused.

“Imagine what tomorrow would look like.”

It seems trite, almost, in the wake of what just one person could do on Friday to make the world a massively more cynical, darker place.

And yet, this idea of doing better today than yesterday drives me forward. It keeps me going. And perhaps now, it’s an idea I cling to in desperation.

And of course, my half-Japanese* self gets the fancy Hashimoto’s variation, where my body slowly eats away at my thyroid, leaving an endocrinological nightmare in its wake.

*Being half-Japanese has nothing to do with whether or not one gets Hashimoto’s – I just think it’s ironically clever given my ethnicity.

Let’s take a look at my updated Thyroid Rollercoaster™, shall we?

That nice little valley that touches the zero line all the way to the right? Yeah, that would be my TSH value from November 8th: a whopping 0.09. Technically, I was so hyperthyroid that I had Grave’s disease (Hashimoto’s polar opposite). It would also explain why I’ve probably lost as much weight as I have instead of gaining yet in this pregnancy.

And that super high peak just before the chart ends? That was my TSH two days ago. Wait for it, wait for it: 7.51. That’s officially the highest TSH I’ve ever had since I’ve been keeping track of it in early 2009. So, in a span of just 33 days, I managed to go from barely detectable TSH levels (meaning super hyperthyroid) to TSH levels that are through the roof (meaning super hypothyroid).

(And yes, I know 7.51 is actually super low compared to other folks with Hashi’s but still… it’s the extreme high end of my own personal set of values.)

All those little peaks and valleys that are getting closer and closer together? Those have been the last 4 months of my life. Pregnancy and the addition of extra hormones like Crinone, Prometrium and estradiol pills and estrogen patches? Yeah. Tends to throw everything off on top of it all. My TSH was golden in early September, before our cycle: a comfortable 0.50. Symptomatically, I felt great. Everything was on its A game.

And every month since then, it’s been a TSH crapshoot.

And as such, I feel like poo. That’s putting it mildly, actually. It’s either I can’t get out of bed or I can’t fall asleep. My bowels have achieved every stage of regularity – or complete lack thereof (again, pregnancy isn’t exactly helping in this department). My appetite continues to wax and wane from periods of ravenous hunger to a complete disinterest in food. (Thankfully, the nausea is finally at bay.) My hair, which has grown like weeds, has begun shedding heavily again. Nothing like brushing your hair and seeing a handful of it still stuck to your brush. There’s the hormonally-driven crying jags (seriously, anything will set me off) but sometimes it’s hard to tell when it’s The Knish and when it’s the soul-crushing endocrinological depression that thrives off skyrocketing TSH values. Which, once that realization sinks in, causes – you guessed it – more crying jags.

Oh, and seasonal affective disorder. Let’s just throw that into the mix while we’re at it.

Some small relief: no more Prometrium, estradiol pills or patches as of two days ago. It’s the first time both ass cheeks will get to breathe fresh air for the first time in four months. And I get to stop the Crinone on Monday. Too bad douching is out of the question because if I could shoot a firehose up there and purge out the leftover goop for good, I would.

So… there you have it. I am (once again) at the mercy of my thyroid. I am (once again) posting after a long stretch of radio silence bitching about said thyroid. I am (once again) woefully unproductive due to said thyroid and have a huge pile of things I need to do, both here and outside of this space. Let’s not talk about the disaster that is my house, let alone the 5 or 6 blog posts I have sitting my drafts queue waiting to be finished. And, as I’ve been coyly hinting for a couple of weeks, I’ve got big plans in 2013 for The Infertility Voice.

But right now, all I want to do is sleep and not feel like poo 24 hours a day. Well, 22 hours a day. I usually get two solid hours each day where everything feels like rainbows and unicorns.

I will continue to fight through this as best I can. I’m trying to post at least once daily at my Facebook page if you’re looking for a little more frequency from me.

And tomorrow, I’m going to join Kathy’s Time Warp Tuesday a whole three days late and show off something entirely “non-pregnancy, non-infertility let’s just have some fun already” related. Hint: it will include a musical instrument, hopefully with a short video. Because I need to cheer the fuck up and I’m sure you’d like to read something a little cheery from me as well.

Peace.

I was never Asian enough. I was never white enough. For a long time, I felt these two halves of myself were constantly at war with each other. When I converted to Judaism, I had another label to throw into the bag: Jewish. But not just any kind of Jewish; I was Jewish-by-choice. And with that all of the same identity dilemmas, wondering, am I Jewish enough?

I had a boyfriend who became my fiance and then my husband. Throw “wife” into the mix. And now, with our first child due next year, I’ll finally have “mom” to add in there.

But there are other labels: Gemini, INFP, foodie, traveler, writer, designer, gamer.

Infertile.

My identity is hardly single-faceted and with each passing year, evolves as new labels come to the forefront and others fade into the background.

Sometimes my sense of identity can shift over the course of a day. As I answer emails in my inbox, I might be Keiko the Writer, the Designer, the Professional. And when 7pm rolls around and Larry and I wrap up for the day, I’m Keiko the Wife, the Best Friend, the Lover.

For the last nearly four years, my identity has largely been driven by this absence in my life, this empty womb and wanting, waiting heart. It took a little while to get there, but I accepted my infertility as an intrinsic part of who I am. And yet now, I face another turning point in my journey, another shift in my identity. I may go on to parent, but just how much of my infertility is still a part of my identity, of what makes me, well – me?

Last year, I went to the Massachusetts Conference for Women. It was there that the idea for The Infertility Voice was born. I went to this conference again yesterday and I’ve come out of it more reinvigorated in the work I do here more than ever. I’ve realized, that though my identity may be one that’s shifting right now, in a transitional state, really – my purpose remains the same.

Through the pain of my own journey, I know that my life’s passion and purpose is to serve the infertility community.

Working with each of you is my calling.

Resolved or not, infertility then remains a part of who I am because I define myself by the work I do.

I am what I put out into this world.

I love this time of year as we close another annual chapter and turn the page for a New Year. I feel like the transition of December into January is a mini-rebirth, a chance to reset the clock. Sometimes the New Year is like a clean slate and other times, it’s a perfect turning point for reinvention.

In any event, there’s a transformative energy and excitement around this time of year. We make peace with the last eleven months and plan for the next twelve. I love that.

And boy howdy, 2013 is going to bring lots of changes to The Infertility Voice. Change is never easy. Stepping out of our comfort zone feels icky and strange and foreign. But as I crafted and experimented with this space over the course of this year, I realized there are bolder directions in which I want to take this blog.

In fact, in 2013, I’m going to stop referring to this as my blog. The Infertility Voice isn’t just a blog. It’s my brand. It’s my website. It’s my work.

It’s my passion.

It’s my calling.

I was so worried when I got my BFP that I would stop caring about this community, that I would lose interest in maintaining this space. I’ve seen it happen time and time again with so many bloggers who go on to parent. And yet, I can’t fault them: such is the transitional and evolutionary nature of one’s identity. One day we are infertile and then one day, we might not be anymore. For some people, it’s a distinct leap from one identity category into another, like flipping a light switch.

I think because of my own cultural diversity growing up, I could never just flip the switch on who I am. I have to ease into things, feel things out, and name who I am on my own terms.

I’ll be honest: for a little while, I wasn’t sure what to do, what to call myself. Could I really continue to be The Infertility Voice and still go on to parent? Would I still be relevant, valid? For the last month or so, I had this horrible feeling like people were going around whispering, “Infertility Voice? Please! She’s a phony now.” (I know this is a COMPLETE fabrication and have no indication that any of you have said that. This is what my paranoid, irrational inner monologue was saying to me.)

And then, infertility touched two more people about whom I care deeply.

It was like a wake up call, like the Universe was shaking me by the shoulders, saying: “Keiko, you have a LOT more work to do. It’s time to get your shit together and DO IT already.”

And so here we are.

I created my fluffy Team Zoll blog to get out the junk in my head. To play the role of “mommyblogger” when it suits me. That’s going to be my “real” blog, where I can write about all the random fluff like food and travel and baby things.

Because in 2013, I’ve got big plans to make The Infertility Voice an inclusive resource for the entire infertility community. To keep the posts and resources you see here focused on one thing:

To empower women through their infertility journeys toward healing, hope and authentic living.

Infertility, for better or for worse, will always be a part of who I am. It may ebb and flow, but it drives my work and will always be carried on my heart.

Tell me: how has infertility shaped your identity? How has it changed over time?

Due to its extremely sensitive nature, you can find my inaugural Perfect Moment Monday post there. Please note that this describes a rather intimate moment of my pregnancy, so if you’re not at a space to read it, you might want to click around and read some nofollow">non-baby related amazing moments over there instead.

What perfect moments have you noticed in your life recently?

I’ve been contemplating starting a new blog for some time now, as I’ve felt uncomfortable about posting anything related very specifically to my pregnancy here at The Infertility Voice, because I know how hard it can be to read. It’s been getting cumbersome to maintain them on a separate page here in my blog and folks have complained because any posts tagged “My Pregnancy” don’t automatically appear in people’s RSS feeds anymore. So, to make life easier, I’ve transferred all of those posts to my new blog and will do all of my detailed pregnancy and eventual parenting updates over there.

The #GoTeamZoll Updates on my right sidebar will now pull from the new blog’s RSS feed, so you’ll see the 5 most recent updates at my new space over there at any given time. And when you click on #GoTeamZoll above, it’ll now take you to the new blog. Make sense? Awesome.

Starting a new blog is exciting… I’ve been itching to have a place that’s largely infertility-free for the most part, where I can let my verbal diarrhea fly with abandon!

Okay, kind of a gross metaphor, but hopefully you catch my drift.

Enter my third blog: TeamZoll.com.

(“Wait a minute, third blog?” Yup. This one’s number two.)

The wonderful thing about all of this? Well, there are several.

1. New WordPress blog! Yay! *geeks out all over herself*
2. Freedom to write about food, travel, geek living and the occasional non-reproductive health related political rant!
3. More focused infertility content for you here!

I don’t intend to update any less frequently here. If anything, the content you see here will be even more focused towards empowerment on your infertility journey. I’ve got LOTS of ideas for 2013 about things I’d like to do here at this space and how I want to add even more resources for you.

Random: You have not missed me on the Katie Show, by the by. Because of Hurricane Sandy, the production schedule got all facakta, so my airdate has been pushed back. I still don’t have it yet, so please don’t ask… BUT. I promise I will announce with bells and whistles when my airdate is a go so you don’t miss it!

Right, so back to 2013…

Folks, I want to hear from you. What do YOU want at The Infertility Voice? Leave your suggestions in the comments! (And feel free to comment anonymously. I totes understand if you want to sound off on some things you’d like to see changed around here.)

And, if you have a sec, I’m asking the same question about what you’d like to see specifically at The Infertility Facebook page.

So, swing by my new digs at TeamZoll.com and let me know what you think! And don’t forget to tell me what you’d like to see here at The Infertility Voice in 2013!

“But Keiko,” I hear you saying, “It’s a lame duck session.”

True. But just because a good chunk of these folks might be on their way out at the end of the year doesn’t mean they still don’t have a TON of work to do before then. Like, yanno – that whole fiscal cliff thing. But there are also two very important other items on their agenda before these lame ducks quack goodbye to 2012: The Family Act and the Adoption Tax Credit. And with the end of this legislative session looming closer and closer, the time to act is now.

I’ve written at length about The Family Act before. Basically, The Family Act would provide a tax credit for out-of-pocket costs associated with IVF. Modeled after the very popular and successful Adoption Tax Credit, The Family Act could provide huge financial relief for millions of Americans paying out-of-pocket for their IVF treatments. There are caveats and limits, like any tax credit bill, but that’s the gist of it.

I’ve not written a lot about the Adoption Tax Credit, however. For this, I’m going to hand off basic “tell it like it is” duties to RESOLVE New England, who had a comprehensive post on the current status of the Adoption Tax Credit a couple of months ago here: 10 Things You Need to Know About the Adoption Tax Credit and How You Can Help Save It.

In a nutshell, the Adoption Tax Credit, which has provided financial relief to adoptive families for FIFTEEN years now, is set to expire on December 31st of this year (like many of the other laws, credits and tax cuts contributing to that whole fiscal cliff issue). Currently, there are both House and Senate bills in the works that would save the Adoption Tax Credit by extending its benefits beyond the end of this year.

How You Can Help In Just 10 Minutes, Right Now

I get asked this question a lot: “How can I become an infertility advocate?” The answer is shockingly simple.

Speak up. Be heard. Don’t wait for someone else to advocate for you. Advocate for yourself.

Tuesday through Thursday of this week, RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association is hosting a Congressional Call Week. Helping to support The Family Act and saving the Adoption Tax Credit is as easy as picking up the phone.

Infertility advocacy is literally as simple as four steps:

1. Know who to call. Look up your House Representatives and Senators in one place right here by popping in your zip code. Voila! Your elected officials.
2. Call 202-225-3121, the main switchboard. Ask to be transferred to your House Representative.
3. Say hello and your name, city and state and follow RESOLVE’s handy script here.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat steps 2 and 3 for each of your Senators. BAM! Infertility advocacy. *drops mic*

They really can’t make this any easier and it takes about 10-15 minutes, tops.

Time is of the essence. RESOLVE is pushing for calls to be made through tomorrow. At work? No biggie. Just take 10-15 minutes of your lunch break to make a difference. Feeling like earning extra credit points? Follow up with an email to your elected officials tomorrow.

The only way legislation like this happens is when your elected officials hear from their constituents about issues that matter to them. So if The Family Act and the Adoption Tax Credit matter to you, if you want Congress to know that infertility matters to you…

Pick up the phone. Make the calls. Do your part to make a difference.

Bonus: Did you call your Representative and Senators? How did it go? Let me know here and definitely share your progress with RESOLVE at their Facebook page. Let’s do this!

Today is Giving Tuesday. Following on the heels of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday seeks to turn that holiday spending power into holiday giving power by focusing on organizations and non-profits making a difference in our communities.

For this Giving Tuesday, I’m highlighting infertility-related non-profits all day today who are doing incredible work for this community and could use your financial help. Whether you can give $5 or $50, every dollar helps.

I’ll be announcing a new organization every hour between now and 9pm tonight on my Facebook page. So swing on by and if you’re feeling generous or want to honor a milestone in your infertility journey, head on over and click and donate away!

Don’t have time to head over to Facebook? No worries. Here’s a list of the nine very worthy organizations that could use your support this Giving Tuesday. Click the organization name to give today!

#GivingTuesday Featured Organizations

1. RESOLVE New England: Providing infertility support, education and advocacy to the New England region since 1974. Obviously, an organization near and dear to my heart.
2. RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association: As one of the most powerful family building lobbying organizations in the nation, supporting RESOLVE is vital to ensuring that infertility patients get the access to the care they need in this country.
3. Parenthood for Me: Providing financial and emotional assistance, along with educational tools for those starting families through adoption and medical intervention.
4. The American Fertility Association: A national, inclusive organization committed to helping people create their families of choice by providing leading-edge outreach programs and timely educational information.
5. Parents Via Egg Donation (PVED): Created to provide an informational and supportive environment where parents and parents-to-be can learn and share information about all facets of the egg donation process, PVED was an invaluable resource to me during our donor egg IVF cycle this year.
6. The Broken Brown Egg: A leading resource for the African-American community on infertility and reproductive health issues.
7. BabyQuest Foundation: Granting financial help for infertility treatments, fulfilling dreams and building families.
8. The Tinina Q Cade Foundation (Cade Foundation): Started in 2005 to provide information support and financial assistance to help needy infertile families OVERCOME infertility.
9. The Dave Thomas Foundation: Helping find forever families for children in foster care.

Thank you for helping these organizations continue their important work by supporting them for Giving Tuesday today! And please help me spread the word by liking, sharing and tweeting this post today Let’s spread the #GivingTuesday love!

Photo by skippyjon via Flickr.

In case you missed it, the rush for the end of year holidays has begun. I find, that for the life of the infertile, that dash begins right around Hallowe’en, although Back to School season has begun creeping in on this territory, too. From Hallowe’en it’s practically light warp speed straight to Christmas. Forget Thanksgiving. That poor bastard of a holiday’s been left in the dust.

And Hanukkah? Well… we get our seasonal endcaps filled with gelt, blue and silver decorations, and cheap menorot (pl. of menorah) made in China. For like a week.

The holidays are tough when living with infertility. I remember how I was feeling this time last year all too clearly. And even so, even with our own holiday joy to celebrate, that first trimester graduation into the second trimester falls at a precarious time of the year. (As ever, we remain cautiously optimistic.)

There have been many excellent things written throughout the ALI blogosphere on coping with and surviving the holidays. I’ve rounded up 8 of the most salient points into one big survival guide.

What you see here is much like your Thanksgiving buffet: lots of delicious bites and if you want more, head to the kitchen and grab yourself a second helping by clicking on their source links.

1. Brace Yourself: Winter Is Coming.

Source: Caring for Yourself During the Holiday Season, from Dr. Ali Domar at The Domar Center for Mind/Body Health

I think that Mother’s Day and the December holidays are the two toughest times for anyone going through infertility. The only good thing about Mother’s Day is that it is for one day only, and most people have some kind of mother to honor, which can take a bit of the edge off of not being a mother yourself. But Thanksgiving through New Year’s is a long time to be exposed to all that joy and festivity, much of which is focused on kids. Or family gatherings which feature kids. Or friends’ parties. Which include kids.

2. Reward Yourself

Source: How to Get Through the Holidays When You Don’t Feel Like Celebrating, from Mel at Stirrup Queens.

Create your own incentives and treat getting through the holiday season as your job. Pay yourself in whatever will make you happy. For instance, after a trip to the local mall to have your picture taken with your niece and Santa, pay yourself with a manicure. Attending the holiday party from hell may win you an entire bar of chocolate. It’s worth setting up small incentives and budgeting for your own happiness because it can be something to focus on during the task at hand.

3. Regretfully Decline

Source: Coping with the Holidays – Again, RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.

It is okay to say NO to some invitations. You may not be able to handle too many babies, children and pregnant women, too much effort to dress up, too many wellintentioned queries about your own “status” can all equal too much pain! True friends and close family will understand. Acquaintances will not notice or care. If it is a command performance and you MUST attend the event, or an event you are ambivalent about as you truly think you will enjoy yourself, it is always helpful to make a safety-net plan.

4. Dodge the “So When Are You Having Kids?” Bullet

Source: Giving Thanks, from Attain Fertility.

Be prepared with answers to the kid questions: Most are truly well intentioned; however, people have a way of surprising us especially after a couple glasses of the spiked eggnog. Keep the answer short and simple, “When we have news to share, we’ll let you know” or “Sometimes it isn’t a choice” and switch the subject.

5. Be Ready to Cope with Pregnancy Announcements

Source: Coping with Infertility During Family Holiday Gatherings, from Rachel at infertility.about.com.

Family gatherings are the place for pregnancy announcements, whether direct (literally announcing the pregnancy) or indirect (walking into the house in maternity clothes and a big tummy). It is far from easy to cope with pregnancy announcements when you’re trying to get pregnant. Even if you are happy for your friend or family member, it can still hurt. More than once, an unexpected pregnancy announcement had me giving strained congratulations and fighting a growing lump in my throat. Don’t feel guilty for your feelings of sadness, but do be prepared for the possibility.

6. Do – or Don’t – Hold Babies

Source: Infertility: How to Cope During The Holidays, from Mary Hinckley, M.D. at The Huffington Post.

Decide whether or not to hold any babies before you arrive. For some, holding a baby can bring hope while for others it can be incredibly painful. Well-meaning relatives may want to share the joy of a new family member with you, but it’s important to put your needs first.

7. Call on Your Support System

Source: Top 5 Ways to Cope with Infertility over the Holidays, from Fertility Authority.

You may feel like you’re sailing through the holidays one day, only to feel bogged down into a funk the next. It’s important to recognize your feelings as a completely normal reaction. Don’t feel like you have to squash them in order to put on a show of holiday cheer for the important people in your life. “If you’re having a bad day, call up a friend or family member,” Dr. Rinehart says. “Say that you’re feeling low, and ask for an electronic hug or a real hug, however you do it.”

8. Tell Friends & Family How They Can Support You

Source: Practical Advice for Friends & Family Members: How You Can Help, from RESOLVE New England.

If your daughter or sister offers information that she just got bad news from a failed procedure or suffered a pregnancy loss, tell her that you are very sorry for her loss, sad for her and her partner, and ask her if she’d like to tell you about it. It’s best not to offer solutions or look to the future because right now, she just needs to grieve this bad news or this particular loss. Let her be in the moment with her pain and her frustration. She probably needs a hug and a shoulder to cry on.

9. Coping with Loss Around the Holidays

Source: Remembering Molly (8 Months), from Kathy at Bereaved & Blessed.

Whether I was conscious of it at the time or not, gratitude was a huge factor in my being able to be positive and optimistic for so much of our journey with Molly. I intend to keep that concept and attitude in mind in the days and weeks to come. Bob, Sean and I do have so much to be grateful for. It is really sad that Molly died and unfortunate that we don’t get to celebrate Molly’s first Christmas here with our family on earth, as we hoped and dreamed we would get to this year. However, we learned so much from having our baby girl in our lives this year and I believe we are all better for it.

What advice do you have for coping with the holidays? What works and doesn’t work for you? Share your coping lifesaver tips in the comments.

Photo by Keiko Zoll

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

It’s true: I am both grateful and thankful for my infertility. Not exactly something you’d expect to hear just two days before Thanksgiving, but there it is.

For all the pain, the mental and physical anguish of the past three and a half years, I wouldn’t take it back. My life has been changed in such remarkable ways that, without our infertility battle, without the deep wounds of my infertility diagnosis – I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. I truly believe that these last few, long years have inspired more growth and compassion within me than through any other trial in my life.

And for that, I’m grateful.

Would my life have been easier without my infertility? Probably. It would probably be a heck of a lot more affordable, too. But without my infertility, Larry and I wouldn’t have this amazing origin story we hope to share with our child in a few years from now. We wouldn’t have had this child, who in my mind, embodies so much love it’s set to burst my own heart when I think about it for more than a few minutes.

I am deeply, deeply grateful and thankful for this moment in time, for the love of our family and friends that surround us.

I know how hard it is to be thankful and grateful when you’re hurting all the time. When you’re not only convinced that life is unfair, but bitterly jaded by it. Thanksgiving has been a holiday that for me, for the last twelve years, has always been tinged by loss when in 2000, my left ovary was removed over Thanksgiving weekend. I was a college freshmen and so wide-eyed and bushy tailed, then. For 11 years, that loss (an event which I believe began the downward spiral of my own dwindling fertility) has haunted me as we pass the gravy and turkey.

Except this year.

This year was the first year until this weekend that I remembered: “Oh yeah. I had my surgery 12 years ago.” I’m not sure if it’s because of the pregnancy or simply because I’ve reached a point in my personal growth where I’ve made peace with this part of my past. But it’s a nice place to be in. And thanks to this blog, I can see that growth, too:

And I remind myself: I live a life of abundance. I have to be the one to stop and recognize the grace given to me rather than feeling sorry for myself. My life is full. My womb may not be. But I have a life of abundance and grace. I do. And today, I remind myself of this. We all have to remind ourselves of this once in a while. (Written November 2011.)

I am grateful for the growing.

And I hope you know, that through all the pain, the heartache and the stress – you’re growing too. Infertility changes us, for better and for worse. My glasses aren’t so rosy anymore but at the same time: I discovered the woman at my core. I found a passion, purpose and drive that I honestly never knew existed within me.

In that same post from last year, you can read my pain of facing another Thanksgiving table with an empty womb. Reading that post now, I wish I could reach through my screen and time and tell November 2011 Keiko: “It’ll be different next year, I promise. Just hang on to that gratitude of abundance because abundance IS coming.”

Whatever your moments of gratitude as you pass the turkey and stuffing on Thursday: hang on to them. Let them fill your heart and wash over your soul with grace and peace.

Tell me: what are you grateful for this year? What fills your life with abundance in this moment?

To which I’ve replied, “Substantially better, thank you very much” just about every time.

I finally broke down and called my OB practice to see if they could get me in before the Monday after Thanksgiving. My nausea was literally debilitating and I just wanted to talk to someone in person. Sadly, because of the holiday, all of their available appointments were taken so they transferred me instead to their nurses’ line.

“25mg of Vitamin B6 three times a day and half a Unisom tablet daily,” she said, like it was the most obvious answer in the world to my question.

I called my OB’s office on my way over to acupuncture that day. In my session, she drove the needles in intensely to provide some immediate relief to my nausea for the first time in five days of uninterrupted distress. While the needles hurt like hell for a few minutes, the calm stomach was worth it. She even managed to give me my appetite back.

On my way home, I stopped at a CVS and bought a bottle of B6 supplements and a box of Unisom. And then I stopped by the grocery store and bought a box of TGI Friday’s potato skins because all of a sudden, my appetite was back LIKE WHOA and I wanted potato skins NOW. It was pretty intense.

Since taking the B6 and Unisom, I’ve slowly started feeling human again. I can get up in the morning without panicking about whether or not I’m going to make it to the bathroom (still haven’t barfed yet) and the nausea for the most part, seems to have chilled the fuck out – finally. And don’t take my word for it: science agrees this is a one-two punch to help take the edge off of severe morning sickness.

My appetite has come back and my diet now consists of the following:

• Nonfat chocolate milk
• Nonfat Greek yogurt
• Vermont cheddar like it’s going out of style (notice a trend?)
• Quaker seriously cannot make enough Life cereal to keep up with my consumption
• Beef. ALL THE BEEF.
• A relentless obsession with orange juice as my beverage of choice.

In fact, when I saw this crazy-ass video on Reddit last night, I found myself nodding along like, Yeah man, ORANGE JUICE:

So yeah, finally feeling human again while, yanno, making a human of my own inside of me. Good times, good times

I have always been a fan of self-discovery activities, something I picked up in my early days of college. My Life Map is one of dozens upon dozens of self-discovery books out there. What sets the Marshalls’ journal out from the crowd is its use of left brain/right brain strategies. There are plenty of writing prompts to help you reflect on your past and present while envisioning your future life plans and goals. At the same time, there are many clever icons, symbols and charts to visually lay out the important plot points of your life.

It’s this combination of written and visual narrative in My Life Map that manages to infuse a standard self-discovery activity such as life mapping with a fresh take.

My Life Map opens with these words:

Our job in life is not so much to find ourselves as it is to create ourselves. What will you create? How do you want to be remembered? What will your legacy be?

That is some seriously loaded language, especially if you’re trying to figure out what your life will look like in the context of infertility. (I’ve said before: “what I can’t create in biology, I create in words instead.”) But the great thing about really taking apart your past and analyzing the present moment, when all you can think about for your future is “will I have the family I’ve always desired?” is that you give that future context. Have your life experiences in the past always been colored by having children, as they might be now? The journal further explores your life’s ever-evolving development through specific 10-year subject maps such as family, friends, learning, work, service and playing.

This is one of those books I would have appreciated as a college sophomore or even in the months leading up to my wedding. As I mentioned before, as our family is about to transition from just Larry and I to Larry, the Knish and I – it’s well-timed. I’m looking forward to taking a deeper dive into its exploration activities and charts in the coming months.

My Life Map is a necessary prompting to stop and take stock of everything right now, in this moment and contextualize your future around the life you’ve lived thus far.

(And, if I do say so myself, it’s a great companion to my own eBook, THE YOU PROJECT.)

Join me over at this month’s BlogHer Book Club as we discuss and explore the issues and concepts raised in My Life Map.

What do you think about life mapping exercises? Do you love them, hate them, or just meh? And how do you think life mapping has changed or evolved in the era of blogs?

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you Larry, for this amazing photo.

So, I was really hoping to avoid any “let’s bitch about pregnancy symptoms” posts but, that’s going to be impossible. And enter: The Guilt, with a capitol G.

When you hear about morning sickness, you might think: “Oh! How splendid! Just a few hours of unpleasantness in the mornings! How delightful!”

FUCK THAT.

There was the middle of the day episode where I’m literally hugging a toilet in the bathroom of Whole Foods, completely overwhelmed by the panorama of smells assaulting me from every corner of the store. Then there’s the “Hooray! I’m finally about to get busy with my husband for the first time in a week!” moment just before bed and then I feel my stomach lurch. Nope, no nookie tonight hun – I might barf on you. There’s the nausea that wakes me up at 5am, the nausea before meals, after meals, in between meals… it’s just *relentless*.

And yet, I have not vomited once. I’ve had two rounds of dry heaves (Whole Foods and now today), but no actual barf. I have this strange hope that if I can just produce one round of barfing, it will magically make my nausea disappear. I’ve tried sour, mint, ginger, fruit, water, smaller meals, larger meals, eating more frequently, eating less frequently, going for a walk, laying down, trying to distract myself and yet – NOTHING.

Back to The Guilt.

I lamented on Facebook today about my pregnant predicament and got lots of sympathetic responses and advice. All well intentioned, as usual. Many folks seem to believe I’m carrying a girl based on my parade of nausea, but I’m not so sure: I’m taking 0.1mg of transdermal estradiol, 4 mg of oral estradiol, 300 mg of oral progesterone and 2 doses of Crinone – DAILY. I imagine all these extra hormones are only exacerbating the situation. And I’ll be on these for another 3 weeks *sob*

And then I got a comment from someone telling me to “enjoy every minute of it – I know I did.”

Yes, I enjoy working half the time I normally do every day because I spend half of it in bed, wishing for the nausea to let up for just a half hour and thus losing the potential to earn more money as a freelancer. I enjoy laying on the floor of my bathroom (sweet Jesus I need to mop) while my cats pussyfoot around my moaning, crying body. I enjoy taking two bites of food in a restaurant only to carefully set my fork down and begin belching into my napkin as my stomach turns. I enjoy the perpetual worry about whether or not my baby is getting enough nutrients because I can barely eat and when I do, it’s usually easily digestible junk food or feeling bad that I skip my prenatal vitamins every few days or so because I just want to wake up one morning without feeling like I’m going to throw up my stomach through my mouth. I enjoy panicking that it’s almost week 9 (or may already be week 9 – I still technically don’t have a due date yet) and that I’m down almost 10 lbs and come 3 weeks from now, I should be gaining.

I get that I asked for this, that we wanted this.

BUT.

That does not make my perpetual nausea suck any less.

AND.

I do *not* have to enjoy it. I do not have to be graceful about this.

(Grateful, yes. But hardly graceful. Or pleasant for that matter.)

AND.

I refuse to feel guilty about this. Even though… I totally feel guilty about how I feel.

I’m going to go back to playing games on my phone as I try to distract myself from the fact that I all I want to do right now is hurl all the way up from the bottoms of my feet and all over this bathroom floor – and yet *nothing* comes.

My thyroid is a shitshow right now. Just got my TSH panel back from yesterday’s bloodwork and it’s officially the lowest it’s ever been: 0.09. Even though we like my TSH to be low, that’s not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it’s way too low. Remember how this summer, I felt like I was losing my mind a little bit? Yeah, it’s all back with a vengeance – now with early pregnancy symptoms to boot! And, simultaneously exacerbating those symptoms as well. Good times, folks, good times.

For visual reference:

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: worst amusement park ride ever.

Symptoms include: spacing out, racing heart, feeling hot/cold when everyone around you feels the opposite, nausea (SO helpful right now), anxiety, depression, weight loss… Did I mention the anxiety, nausea and spacing out part? Sweet Jiminy crickets, you’d think I’ve been on meth this past week.

My TSH is so low, in fact, my PCP has asked me to stop taking ALL thyroid medications for four days and then to start taking half my weekly dose after the four-day break so I can give my thyroid a rest. Considering this is the first time I’ve ever taken a break from daily thyroid medications since I began taking them in 2002, I guess he’s a little concerned.

Which leaves me in Symptomatic Dosage Adjustment Limbo-Land. I will continue to remain a basketcase until my levels even out again. If I wasn’t pregnant, I would seriously consider talking about a thyroidectomy just so I can stop with all of this dosage adjustment bullshit. Unfortunately, it’s some pretty serious surgery that really isn’t recommended for Hashi patients.

As such, I can’t keep up with NaBloPoMo (you may have noticed the lack of posting this week) and I haven’t touched “In Shambles” since last Friday for NaNoWriMo. I have a lot of ground to cover this weekend (a minimum of about 12,000 words).

That said: in the spirit of catching up some ground in my NaNo novel, I’m taking your suggestions for scenes, lines, or plot elements to include in my novel. Always wanted to write a relationship novel set against the zombie apocalypse but never had the time? Here, let me do it for you

Just leave me your ideas for story or character development in the comments

Transition is such a loaded term in the infertility community, whether you’ve resolved or not. Moving from one stage of your cycle to the next, entering a new stage in your adoption process, or even in your own diagnostic journey of just trying to figure out what’s wrong: the landscape of trying to build our families is one of constant change. I feel like half the time, just as we get comfortable, we have to get up and shift gears, change plans and regroup.

Today I shared my thoughts on transition through the metaphor of travel. Infertility so lends itself to this metaphor, as evidenced by the title Melissa Ford’s book, Navigating the Land of IF. She opens her book with such a clear description of this journey that resonated so strongly with me three years ago when I first read it:

“Welcome to the Land of IF. I know, those are probably six words you never particularly wanted to hear. You don’t want to be here on this strange island… It’s hard to ignore one of the worst parts about this island: It’s situated so close to the mainland – you can see it over the horizon on a clear day. But even though there are daily departures, and even though it’s easy enough to end up here, it takes plenty of effort to get out.”

I followed up with my own thoughts on this idea of traveling through infertility, as my plane rumbles down the runway and toward lands unfamiliar:

I have always had a bit of wanderlust. I blame the Gemini in me and the Sagittarius at my side. Larry and I are wanderers, travelers, explorers. We don’t really do relaxing vacations: we hoof it, we hike it, we bike it – we want to see and do everything.

We’re also the folks who have their shoes in hand and liquids out in a bag ready to go at airport security. No fanny packs for us. Most of our maps are discreet, either on our phones or iPads or tucked into our single travel guidebook.

We’re travelers, not tourists.

And yet, I can’t shake this touristy feeling every time I engage in activities and feelings that “normal” pregnant women have.

Like I’m some kind of a phony.

Like I don’t belong here.

Like I’m the woman the locals keep casting sideways, disapproving glances at.

Part of me wishes I sported a visual cue, like, “See! Yes, I belong here! I’ve got a bump too!”

…As the locals snicker.

You can read the rest of the post, The Infertility Tourist and Getting My Pregnancy Citizenship, over at PAIL Bloggers.

NaNoWriMo continues: 4055 words, first and last chapters written, save for the final line. Got a lame placeholder there right now.

Random: I’m in the process of “collecting” birth stories, that is, if you feel so inclined to share your birth story, if you have one to share, I would be honored to hold that in my heart space. It’s really helpful for me to hear a panorama of birth experiences as I continually weigh the midwife/OB debate right now. I have to decide soon; I graduate this week from my RE.

Also random: really into turquoise and teal right now.

Crap! Only 5 minutes left for today. Need to cut this short and go get a post up at Words Empowered!

Something of substance tomorrow, promise.

I’m in a good place with this novel and now the biggest task is simply making it to that 50,000-word finish line by midnight on November 30th. I haven’t yet clocked in my 1700 words for today (my daily target) but I’m hoping to get a solid hour of writing done tonight before bed.

So, let me introduce you to my novel, the other baby I’ve got right now.

In Shambles: A Bad Day of Apocalyptic Proportions

Here’s my hook:

Jane* just got laid off, found out she’s pregnant, discovered her husband in bed with her best friend, it’s the advent of the zombie apocalypse – and it’s not even 10 o’clock in the morning. Could this day get ANY worse?

(I have not yet firmly decided on character names yet. For all intents and purposes, we’re just going to keep referring to our protagonist as Jane until I find a better name. “Find and Replace” is my friend.)

My characters include Jane, our plucky (and pregnant) protagonist; Peter, her unfaithful husband; Maggie, Jane’s bumbling best friend; and Alain, the enigmatic French Canadian sculptor. It will take place in Boston’s Financial District; an as-yet-to-be-determined Bostonian suburb; Burlington, Vermont; the US/Canadian border crossing in St. Albans; and Montreal-ish parts of Canada.

I haven’t yet figured out if my zombies will be shamblers (think Night of the Living Dead), runners (think 28 Days Later) or a mix of the two. And I haven’t decided just how deep we’re going to get into the whole “how did this particular zombie apocalypse begin” thing. If I’m desperate to meet my word count, expect the pseudo-science to start flowing like water.

Here’s my teaser excerpt I wrote to get myself psyched:

The zombie shuffled toward them, faster now, his flannel shirt torn and ragged. He opened his rotting mouth and hissed out only one word: “Cerveuuuuuux….”

Peter looked at Jane, confused. “What? What’s it saying?”

“I think it’s saying brains… in French,” she replied. She picked up the baseball bat and squarely cut off the zombie mid-groan as the bat made contact with its cheek with a loud, gelatinous crack.

“Fucking Canucks,” she muttered under her breath.

Canadian readers: I mean no disrespect! It’s all in good zombie fun. And here’s a lil teaser from the first chapter:

The October air sent Jane shivering as she stood on her front stoop, locking up the house. Probably should have grabbed a coat, she thought as she locked the front door. She could feel the bolt get stuck in the lock. “The joys of owning a historic home,” she muttered under her breath, fumbling to turn the lock fully with her key. She could feel the key at the point it was ready to break or bend so she relented.

Good enough.

As she turned, she jumped when she saw their neighbor Roger across from her driveway, standing in the middle of his driveway staring at her.

“Jesus! Roger, you scared the shit out of me.”

Roger didn’t respond. He only stood there in a striped robe, briefs and socks. His face looked slack, his eyes half closed, his hair disheveled. He didn’t move.

Jane had seen this before.

Boy howdy I can’t wait to work on this some more tonight!

NANOWRIMO, beeyotch! (For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.)

This is my fourth year making a for reals, honest to goodness attempt to “win.” The prize? The bragging rights to say I have written a 50,000 word novel. In just 30 days. Also, some nice swag if I do in fact, “win.”

November is also NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month over at BlogHer. So I figured hey – I’m already writing a minimum of 1700 words daily, what’s a few hundred more?

And then I thought: HEY! I have ANOTHER blog too. Why don’t I do NaBloPoMo at BOTH blogs?!

*cue maniacal laughter*

Because folks: I have apparently lost my g-ddamn mind.

My friend Carrie shared with me her November plans: she’s participating in NO!vember, that is – for 30 days, she’s saying NO! to any new projects. I kind of like her idea better

Thankfully, this year should go a lot better than years past where I’ve tried to do all of this at once. BlogHer has some great NaBloPoMo prompts and I’m really, really, really excited about my novel for NaNoWriMo. Tomorrow, I’ll give you a little taste. But what makes this year different than others? I have an outline. AND AN ENDING. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.

So check back here and at my other blog, Words Empowered, every day this month for tons of writing fun. In fact, I’m hosting a fun giveaway during the month of November over at Words Empowered, so if you’re looking for a little blog makeover worth over $400 – head on over for your chance to win!

It’s gonna be one crazy month.

I hope you’ll join me every day this month for the madness.

In addition to my lovely mini-mani and the opportunity to connect with other area parenting bloggers, I got to take home my very own Graco SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 car seat!

Here’s what I know about car seats: [ conspicuous empty white space ]

Over the last two Graco events, I’ve learned a lot about car seats and boy howdy, are things different from when I was a wee one myself 30 years ago. I wasn’t necessarily one of those kids who sat in her mom’s lap while she drove (at least, I don’t think I was – I hope not!) but I certainly don’t ever remember having a booster seat, which is apparently a thing. And now, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children up to two years should be rear-facing in their car seats. Enter: Graco’s new car seat.

Here are the important things I learned about Graco’s SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 and why I’m super psyched that we now have our own:

• It’s the only infant car seat that provides rear-facing protection for babies from
  birth to 2 years old, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Word!
• It fits children up to 2 years and 40 lbs. I know nothing about how babies scale in size as they grow, so yay?
• The base adjusts with 8 reclining positions to give your baby the most leg room as they grow. This already sounds like more leg room than most planes provide.
• The new Click Connect™ attachment allows parents to easily transition their babies from the car seat to the stroller through a simple, but secure, one-step “click.” I have seen this clicking in action and it’s pretty damn awesome. Especially since I’m not what one would ever call “graceful.

Ours is currently sitting in my husband’s office because we haven’t really figured out where baby things should go yet. It comes in two colors and we got the pink one – here’s hoping we have a girl (despite what the psychic may have told me this past weekend). I’m looking forward to getting the matching stroller at some point: reasonably priced and pretty damn schwanky looking.

For those of you parenting, what are your must-have baby items? What baby-wrangling tips do you have for getting your child in and out of their car seat?

The Graco SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 – the first and only newborn to two-year infant car seat that actually grows with your baby from four pounds all the way up to 40 pounds. The car seat is designed for a parent on the go. The infant car seat can be easily removed from the base and used as a carrier when the infant is small, providing portability and convenience so you can easily move your infant in and out of the car without disturbing them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently made the recommendation to keep all children in rear-facing car seats until the age of 2. Graco set out to make this product so parents can keep infants rear facing longer while still keeping them comfortable.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Graco. The opinions and text are all mine.

I just feel so bad for anyone who’s been on the receiving end of my hormones – namely, my husband.

Love you, honey

Wordless Wednesday, Part 2: Halloween Edition tonight. Stay tuned. I’m quite excited about my costume this year.

For the past three years, I have attended their Annual Fertility Treatment, Donor Choices & Adoption Conference. It’s been interesting to see how my role is shifted: first as wide-eyed newly diagnosed attendee to Board member and volunteer to staff member last year. I’m headed back again this Saturday, November 3rd for my fourth year in a row. And while yes, I’m working the event: I’d be back there even if I wasn’t. That’s how important and how much of an impact this Conference has had on me.

Why I Went in 2009 –

Within days of finding out I had premature ovarian failure and that my family building options were indeed limited, I found the RNE website and save the date information about their Annual Conference. By the time November rolled around, Larry and I had become members of the organization and were registered for the Conference. I devoured the info on their old website, eagerly waiting for the Conference to finally get here.

It’s really hard to put into words how much of a positive impact that RNE Conference had on me. Dr. Ali Domar was the keynote speaker that year and I remember so much of her keynote address left me just speechless. “For many of you, this is the first crisis you’ve ever faced in your marriage.” She talked about the amount of stress we might be feeling at that moment, the onslaught of relentless emotional guilt, shame and defeat. “Look around you,” she said. “Everyone in this room understands.”

In that moment, 200+ attendees all became connected in our moment of pain and grief – and more importantly, our resolve to get through this. It was an incredibly empowering day. I won’t lie – it was exhausting, too. We felt like we had a bit of information overload but in the days and weeks following the conference, little gems of wisdom would pop up in conversation between us, and thankfully, we had the vocabulary to talk about these things intelligently because we had gone to the RNE Conference.

- And Why I Go Back Every Year.

To say that RNE means a lot to me is an understatement. I go back because I want to be a part of that connective energy that takes place for 8 hours on a Saturday in the middle of Massachusetts. To meet other people, shake their hand, flash them a smile and simply say: “Hey. You’re not alone. RNE can help. Here’s how.” Because that’s what we do as an organization. Our peer support groups are the bedrock of that face-to-face support and in many ways, the Annual Conference feels like one big support group where everyone there is looking out for each other. And you watch that energy happening in the halls, as couples begin to open up to other couples sitting at their table. You start to watch the shame melt away to be replaced by supportive encouragement.

It’s not just that we’re all friends here; we’ve all been through it too. Every single staff member, every single Board member – we get it because RNE was there for us too, once. We all do what we can for this organization and ultimately, its members and supporters because it’s our way to give back to this community.

I wish we didn’t have to, in that, I wish every day another person wasn’t diagnosed with infertility in some way. But until we find some magical cure-all for every infertility diagnosis there is, I will keep working with this community. I will continue to support RNE. I will continue to be at their Annual Conference.

Register today.

Online registration is available until this Thursday, Nov. 1st at 5pm. If you’re in the New England area and you’ve lost power because of the hurricane? No worries: you can register by text or email and complete your registration in person on Saturday morning at the Conference.

Also, RNE has received generous funding from the TJX Foundation which allows them to provide full and partial scholarships to anyone who can’t afford registration costs. The first year I went, Larry was still laid off. We used a full scholarship to attend AND pay for our membership to RNE, with no regrets and only deep gratitude. Click here to register with a full or partial scholarship for the Conference.

I’ll be there bright and early this Saturday, November 3rd in Marlborough, Mass. If you’re in the New England region and looking for education and support on your own path to parenthood, I hope you’ll join me.

Halloween is kind of a big deal where I live. Salem, Massachusetts is dubbed the Halloween Capitol of the World… and they aren’t kidding.

For the last three years, I’ve gone to Salem’s Annual Psychic Fair. A dozen or so of Salem’s best psychics gather in our (sad little) mall and nearly every day in October, they offer 18 and 30 minute readings to all who are interested, for a reasonable price. The last two have been pretty intense readings, but a lot of vagueness without a whole lot of specifics.

Um, until this past Saturday.

I sat down with my psychic and shook her hand. I said a polite hello and my name.

“What type of reading are you looking for today?” she asked.

“I’m open to energy work,” I began. “But really, I’m just looking to get a snapshot of how things are right now and what the forecast for the next year looks like.”

She handed me a deck of Tarot cards to shuffle as I focused my energy on them.

“While you shuffle, I’m just going to channel my spirit guides. Sound good?” she said before closing her eyes and lowering her head.

“Sure!” I shuffled the worn navy-blue backed cards three times, cutting them once and placing them in front of me. We never did get to the cards.

She opened her eyes and looked right at me. “You’re grandmother’s here,” she said, smiling.

“Oh?”

“Yes… your mother’s mother, right?”

I felt the hair stand up on my neck.

“Um, yes. That’s right.”

“Your grandmother is around you a lot,” she went on. “And she’s going like this…” The psychic began making a cradling rocking motion with her arms, like rocking a baby.

“Who’s pregnant?”

I felt the color drain from my face.

“Um… I am,” I volunteered. Prior to this moment, neither she nor I had ever met.

“Congratulations!” she smiled. “Your grandmother is very happy for you. She knows how badly you wanted this baby.”

Cue: my rapt attention.

The psychic proceeds to tell me about how my grandmother lived a long life, a fierce woman who fought for everything she ever wanted. She mentioned how my grandmother was the mother to 7 children and even managed to divine that my Granny was a seamstress. At one point, she began touching the side of her head.

“She had a stroke, didn’t she,” she said.

Spot on again.

“She’s mentioning a wedding dress… who just got married?”

“My aunt… last weekend.”

“She’s very happy for her and for that union,” she said brightly.

What she said next nearly knocked me out of my chair.

“June 20th – does that date mean anything to you?”

“That’s my due date,” I said quietly.

“Oh okay. Well, your grandmother says you’ll go a few days past it, so don’t worry. Also, she says she can’t wait for you to meet your son.”

Our time was up. I thanked her profusely and walked out of there in a daze.

Definitely the spookiest thing I’ve ever had happen to me in a good long while.

To make matters spookier?

Coming home to this:

This was over my house.

What you’re looking at is an atmospheric phenomenon where sunlight passes through ice crystals in cirrus clouds. While not terribly uncommon, it is rare to see such a display at latitudes this far south of the arctic.

For the nerds playing along with me at home: the top bow is a circumzenith arc. Below it is a supralateral arc. Below that is a Parry arc and the weird W looking thing is an upper tangent arc and below THAT is a 22° halo. Not captured in this shot: a very faint heliac arc around the whole thing. It was spectacular, beautiful and eerie.

Also? Just as psychic as the lady I saw this weekend. These halos and arcs are harbingers of bad weather.

Stay safe, folks.

This post is part of Perfect Moment Mondays at Write Mind, Open Heart. Check out all the other Perfect Moments over at Lori’s place and add your own.

I headed out to the Braintree, MA BRU store and was joined by Hayley of Planet Mommy as our event hostess. It was great to meet her and we chatted all things baby: she has a younger son and her next baby due in December.

I confessed that I knew next to nothing about car seats given than I’m only 6 weeks pregnant (well, just past 5 at the time of the event!). Hayley was so sweet and gave me lots of seasoned mom advice

We ran two sessions demo-ing the car seat. As someone with zero upper body strength, I was amazed at how light the Graco car seat was. And the stroller that it literally clicks into is pretty damn neat, too. You pull on one strap and the whole thing folds in half and you can just throw it over your shoulder!

We went over some of the key features. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children two and under sit rear-facing in their car seats. The new Click Connect 40 has 8 expandable settings to slide forward (towards the front of your car as they’re rear-facing) as your child grows to allow room for their little legs.

We ran a short trivia game about celebrity moms. Then, the most exciting part: we gave away two car seats! One at each session. The winning moms were super grateful

It was a busy day; that morning I had my second beta and I was waiting for my results. In between sessions, I got the good news: beta doubling exactly as it should. My first ultrasound would be the following week. I signed this huge sigh of relief. For the first time since finding out I was pregnant, I started to relax- just a teensy weensy bit. Another milestone, another sense that yes: this is really happening.

At the end of the day, I did something I’ve wanted to do for years. I bought my first baby item.

I’ll confess here: when I first got to the store and walked around for a few minutes, I had to dash back to my car. I felt like the world was tipping over out from under me; I was lightheaded and overwhelmed. I had a small breakdown in the car, wondering if I’d gotten myself into something I wasn’t really emotionally ready to handle. After emailing a close group of friends, they flooded me with messages of support: “You DO belong there, Keiko” they told me.

I just hadn’t yet told myself that.

After so many years of wanting, of waiting – it felt so strange to walk around this store that I avoided like the plague for three years and tell myself that yes, I belonged there. In many ways, I felt like a tourist, but after both car seat demo sessions, I felt more at ease with being around all these baby items and women walking around with full bellies in various stages of pregnancy. After a while, I saw everything around me less as triggers and emotional landmines to be avoided and more as the token items of membership in a long-established club – of which I was now a member.

While it took me the whole day to warm up, I actually felt excited for the first time. Our betas were good. Our first ultrasound was lined up. Everything began to feel more real.

And I’m so glad that I had such a special opportunity with Graco and Babies R Us to help me begin the transition from nervous infertility patient to excited mom-to-be.

The Graco SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 – the first and only newborn to two-year infant car seat that actually grows with your baby from four pounds all the way up to 40 pounds. The car seat is designed for a parent on the go. The infant car seat can be easily removed from the base and used as a carrier when the infant is small, providing portability and convenience so you can easily move your infant in and out of the car without disturbing them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently made the recommendation to keep all children in rear-facing car seats until the age of 2. Graco set out to make this product so parents can keep infants rear facing longer while still keeping them comfortable.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Graco. The opinions and text are all mine.