Friday Blog Roundup

In regards to torturing the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC on Halloween, we need to aim for things that cannot fly through my front window. This punk wouldn’t help a hysterical middle-aged (am I middle-aged yet?) lady with a cricket. He’s not above throwing a potato through a window (by the way, I love the idea of a potato. One sprouting things). We still have a box of Christmas candy canes in the pantry that can be put to good use. And a half-eaten dum-dum…

Can you believe how much energy I’m putting into thinking about this?

Ba-blogs-ba-blogs-ba-blogs…

Domesticated has officially turned into an adoption journal. As you know, I am deeply indebted to JJ for introducing me to the beautiful world of IM this week. In addition, I love her recent post on her MIL. Okay, so I don’t love it in the sense that I love how much stress she brings. But JJ writes so eloquently. I think it was A Few Good Eggs that had a chapter about cutting out the stress in your life. And treating IF like the crisis it is and cocooning yourself for optimal relaxation during a cycle. And it’s an interesting idea–especially once everyone starts coming out of the closet about who is causing the most stress in their lives. Obviously, there are friends that you can avoid for a cycle or two. And there are friendships that don’t survive the crisis. But what do you do with the relationships that can’t be shut off (like a familial one) but are the straws that break the camel’s back–those moments of stress that are more than you can endure in an already grueling cycle? And do we have a right to hold certain people (like you own parents or a sibling) at arm’s length for the sake of self-preservation? It’s an interesting idea–I’d love to hear your thoughts. In a little over two weeks, her home study begins! Good luck 🙂

In other adoption news, Steph over at Mommy’s Adoption Journal proved my point again that you’re a mother long before you start the actual process of recognized mothering. She was read a post about a category 4 hurricane headed right towards Vietnam. And her son, Dylan, who is currently 6 months old, is still in an orphanage in Vietnam, one mile from the coast. The story has a mostly happy ending. The children were evacuated farther inland and the babies were fine. The orphanage itself is a different story. The roof and windows are gone. Her post felt like one of those slow-motion scenes where the mother is watching her child in danger and is helpless to reach him in time. It was a maddening experience, with your child halfway across the world and unable to cradle him close. I hope he’s in your arms soon, Steph and Chris.

The Muriels has a great post about being your own advocate. And this new wave of patients that know more than the doctors. Okay, at least more than the GP. Here’s where the frustration lies–you know just enough that you can’t walk away from the possibility, but you don’t know enough to interpret results or assign treatment. By being thorough, she got her GP to test her NK cells with a Lymphocyte Subsets Test. But now she’s waiting for the immunologist to interpret the results. It’s such a different world from even our parent’s generation. People don’t blindly follow their doctor–they research, they request, they know. And you know that I’m all for passing along information and using the Internet to our advantage. Sometimes I feel like if you don’t know the right questions to ask or you’re not pushy enough with your health care, you can end up taking this meandering path through the fields of Infertility. And I’m all for anything that shaves even a few months off the process.

The Anonymous Infertile at Random Ramblings has a lovely post about weddings. Which seems fitting considering the two posts this week comparing break-ups to infertility/pregnancy loss. Her frustration with weddings comes from looking at the couple and thinking back to that time when she thought everything would be easy and parenthood would follow soon after marriage. The wedding couple is still inside that fairytale, whereas Kel has moved into a nightmare that involves ovulating only three times in the past two years (by the way, sweetie, I love how you look at it–“Even normal ‘fertiles’ sometimes don’t get pregnant in 3 cycles so the way I see we just have to keep trying“). Regardless, it’s a bittersweet post and one worth reading.

Murray at Remaining Products of Conception is obsessing about the environment after watching “An Inconvenient Truth” and muses about the state we’re leaving things in for our children (not to mention that this is all about mothering Mother Earth). She ends the post with a great list of small things she is doing that will make a big difference. And it is true–you can’t wait to have things dictated to you. You need to take action into your own hands. So bring your own bags with you to the grocery store instead of taking plastic ones. Plant a garden. Walk or bike to work. And join Murray in her quest to start Mothers Against Global Warming 🙂