Bloggers Unite: Project IF
Beyond the book news, the other exciting thing I’ve been sitting on is a project I’m working on with Resolve that actually involves all of you.
Since I was honoured last year with their first best blog award at Resolve’s Night of Hope, I get to introduce and help organize Resolve’s spring advocacy project, which will choose this year’s winner of the Hope Award for Best Blog at the 2010 Night of Hope.
Did that get your attention?
Good.
Participating in the newly created Project IF is quite simple and will be held in two parts. Today kicks off the first part and the second part will go up on April 21st, just in time for NIAW, National Infertility Awareness Week (April 24–May 1).
All you have to do to participate in the first part is leave a comment below stating your biggest “what if” in regards to infertility: what if I never get to experience pregnancy? What if we can’t gather enough money to fund another adoption? What if we didn’t choose the best clinic? What if my child feels strange about being created via IVF?
In other words, take out one of the “what ifs” that keep knocking around inside your heart, keeping you awake at night, and allow the larger community to commiserate, empathize and help you carry your burden by reading your words.
The What IF List (in other words, this post and the comment section below) is open from now until April 16th. On the 16th, the list will close and 10 what ifs will be chosen to be used in part two of Project IF and directions will be given on April 21st to explain how to participate in the second part.
All blogs and bloggers who participate in Project IF will be eligible to be considered for the Hope Award for Best Blog, presented at the 2010 Night of Hope.
Let the what ifs begin, and may this project bring strength in numbers; in the commonalities that run throughout the community despite our unique diagnoses, experiences, and circumstances.
Please help spread word about this project via your own blog. If you use Twitter, the hashtag is #projectIF. Unlike last year’s Advocacy Day which necessitated a trip to Washington, D.C., this project can be completed in the comfort of your home and will hopefully have an effect on changing the way the general public thinks about infertility as well as bringing together our community.
456 comments
What if I’m never a mother?
Very cool project, Mel! Excited to help spread the word.
What if we can never give O-man a sibling? Im being limited by my body, funds, and all the other unknowns.
What if you’re faced with a choice between your husband and the possiblity of a future child?
What if they never find a cause for our unexplained infertility?
What if the hole in my heart never goes away?
what if my mom dies before i’m ever a mother? DH’s mom died during our TTC trials.. and my mom needs a new liver. how many more years will go by, how many more people will go before we are parents and our child gets to meet his/her family?
Oh, this is AWESOME. Thanks for all you do for the community.
What if I regret buying the larger car because the empty seats remind me of the child we might not have?
What if I’m never able to let go? I find myself being overprotective of Lexi because we went through so much to have her.
What if I can never just be happy with what I have and stop being angry, bitter, and sad about what I do not?
What if our lives are predestined and no matter what we do (ie: pray, beg, steal, IVF, Clomid, Injections, IUI) the outcome isn’t going to change. What if we invest all of this time and money and it’s still really out of our control?
What if we exhaust all efforts and in the end are still left childless and jaded? Not to mention totally broke.
What if I keep getting pregnant but never see a heartbeat on the ultrasound screen?
What if we’re old and gray (I’m halfway there already) and it’s Christmas or Thanksgiving and it’s just the two of us and the dog — no kids, no grandkids, no family?
What if I never get to be part of a family again?
What if I miscarry again, and I”m never able to make my parents into grandparents?
What if despite my ultimate success I never let go of the resentment at and jealousy of the women who got to do this the “normal” way and who never experienced pregnancy loss.
what if my anger and my grief never go away?
What if Izzie never gets a sibling and she has to grow up without a sibling and she has no one to lean on after I am gone.
What if it’s never meant to happen with my body, and we’re wasting time not switching to my wife’s?
What if I turn 70 and regret that I didn’t insist that we had a second child?
What if, after years of dreaming and trying and hoping and hurting, I can finally be healthy because I gave up the dream of ever being being pregnant and giving birth?
What if I can’t ever experience pregnancy?
What if my son ends up hating me because he was conceived through DI? What if all we’ve gone through to have him and to bring us so much happiness ends up bringing him enormous pain?
What if I punch the next person who tells me I’m so lucky to be finally pregnant and “wasn’t it all worth it?”
What if we adopt again and that upsets the balance in our family and negatively impacts all of us?
What IF we can’t ever come up with the funds to adopt and don’t get pregnant?
What if all the people who tell me I will be able to get pregnant again, despite my 3 years of infertility, are wrong and the baby that we just lost was my only chance of motherhood and pregnancy?
What if I always feel like less of a person because I wasn’t able to reproduce?
What if IVF works and then K thinks that we did IVF instead of adopting again because we made a mistake adopting him?
What if the reason I’m infertile is because I wasn’t meant to be a mother?
Even w/ my Tweedles, what IF all the pain and heartache endured never scars up and stays an open-wound forever? – What IF I will always feel a stab at the non-chalantness of pregnancy for someone who didn’t have IF issues, therefore don’t consider ‘our’ side of things? What IF I feel I’ll always want to punch those that think I’m “cured” b/c I was able to have babies after all?
{thank you for doing this Mel. It brought a knot to my throat to read all the comments above mine. How I love this community and wish I could just fix it all}
What if I can never get over the feeling that my body has failed me?
What if I am forever bitter about women who get pregnant “naturally” and then treat their kids like shit?
what if giving birth to twins at 20 weeks and the 30 seconds before one of them died is the closest i will ever become to enjoying the glow of being a new mother?
What if I never stop feeling like a murderer because my body keeps “spontaneously aborting” our babies?
What if…..IVF doesn’t work? Will I be able to hold on to my sanity?
What if my daughter is “an only” forever?
What if every state passed a law that would require insuance companies to coverFertility Treatments and A.R.T. so that people like me and my husband wouldn’t have to choose between their mortgage or having a family?
What if my son is alone in this world (I will have failed him)?
What if I had seen a different OB, would I have my twins with me today?
What if my health is compromised by treatment and we have to leave the remaining embryos sitting there?
What if the ALI online community didn’t exist? I shudder to think about how this journey would have been even more painful and isolating.
What if we go through all this trouble to conceive and my baby has/babies have developmental problems?
What if my friend never gets her baby?
What if I never can move on from IF?
What if I have a second miscarriage during my second IVF attempt and fall into a deep depression again?
What IF my husband can’t ever truly connect with our DI babies? What IF we never even get to have them?
What IF I never manage to be truly content with being childless?
What if my baby and I never meet on this earth and I have to wait for heaven?