LFCA Latest Issue: Wednesday, October 29, 2008.

Latest Posts on Bridges: Bridges.

My Status: Considering making popovers. I have never been a fan of the popover, but the idea of a popover with pumpkin butter struck me on the ride home.

I’m just going to say it. I don’t care if I get twenty nasty comments from lactation consultants (mostly because I can delete every one of them from the comments section). I have to say it. I hate National Breastfeeding Week.

And not just for the obvious reasons–who wants to be accosted by story after story about babies on boobs when you can’t even get a baby into your uterus? I hate it for many other reasons that are all tied to infertility. Because…my dears…I can ALWAYS tie it back to infertility.

I have nothing against breastfeeding–just National Breastfeeding Week. In fact, I tried to breastfeed my children. I took the class when I was pregnant and practiced holding a doll to my breast in order to experience the different holds. I purchased a twin breastfeeding pillow. I spoke to countless women about breastfeeding. I was gung-ho, raring to go. Get sucking!

And then the kids were born and the milk never showed. I would pump eight times a day in order to get one ounce. Total. From both breasts. A man could probably produce that. Come on–go send your husband over to the hospital and test this for me. Let them hook him up to a Medela Lactina and see how much comes out. Probably the same amount. At the same time, my children were being fed with a nasogastric tube and the lactation consultant was telling me that we were making a terrible mistake by allowing the hospital to feed my children formula. She thought jabbing a two-pound baby with needles and keeping him on an IV was a better idea. Until my milk came in. Because it was going to show.

Because that’s the message of National Breastfeeding Week. Your milk will show and breastfeeding will happen if you don’t quit. Breast is best (and in case you can’t remember that catchy slogan, the hospital has helpful posters in the maternity ward every few feet). Except…

At what cost?

Truly, is breast best if the child gets breastmilk but the mother is depressed? Or the child gets breastmilk but the mother feels ill and can’t take care of him? Or the child gets breastmilk, but the marriage crumbles because of the stress of trying to push something that isn’t working?

In our case, breast wasn’t best. It wasn’t even an option. Bloodwork finally revealed that I fit into a tiny category of people who had normal prolactin levels prior to A.R.T. but whose pituitary gland shut off during the subsequent pregnancy. I could have pumped forty times a day and I still would have never expressed a useable amount of milk.

The message given by the three lactation consultants we tried–just relax. The same maddening advice we received during fertility treatments was doled out for a problem that was equally unfixable with rest and relaxation. I was told to sleep more, rest more, eat more. With the blame always on me–it was something that I wasn’t doing that was affecting my breastmilk supply. I obviously couldn’t get pregnant because I was a stress-case and I couldn’t breastfeed because I wasn’t sleeping enough. There was room in my OB’s world to say, “something doesn’t seem right here” and send me along for testing. But there was no room in the lactation consultants’ message for “wrong.” There was the sole goal of “don’t give up.”

In the end, the reason I hate National Breastfeeding Week the most is the message slammed into the listener–natural is better. Not, natural is preferred, but synthetic formula is just as good and may be your only option. It isn’t presented like directions to the store–you can take either this route or that route: both will get you to the store, but this one is probably easier. Instead the formula container is looked at as if it were filled with rat poison. I mean, you can feed that to your child. If that’s how you feel about him.

And take that one step further. Natural is better. So are my children, who are far from naturally conceived, not as good as an easy breeder’s children? Are my children inferior to Katie Holmes’ Suri (um…just for the record, let’s check at age two if Suri can add to four. Because my children can–shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhdamn!)?

It all goes back to the twins question I mentioned a few weeks ago, the subtle message that is given when someone asks, “do twins run in your family?” More interesting is the phenomenon in the multiples community. People will add, “mine are natural” into the conversation just to let you know that they didn’t use some backhanded way to get their twins. Their twins are the result of a freak-of-nature, thank you very much, and not some skanky unnatural fertility treatment that involves multiple embryos. As if it makes a difference. Because aren’t we all just twin parents with multiples to love? Does it really matter how they were made?

My mother likens it to my sister’s wedding dress, which was immortalized in a series of famous perfume ads by Elizabeth Hurley. Or…I should say that the original Vera Wang dress was immortalized in the ads. My sister’s dress was a designer knockoff that cost a fraction of the price for essentially the same look. If Elizabeth Hurley was ever out on the town, dressed up in her designer wedding gown and bumped into my sister who was also dressed in her wedding gown (my sister is far prettier than Elizabeth Hurley, so Elizabeth would probably become extremely jealous instantly and bitch-slap her), Elizabeth would probably want to point out how hers was the real deal. Or purses from carts in New York City. It may look like a Prada bag and it may smell like a Prada bag. But people who really have Prada bags want you to know that yours isn’t a Prada bag.

When I presented this idea to someone recently, she countered that in this analogy our children (her twins were also the product of A.R.T.) were really the Prada bag or the Vera Wang gown. Our kids were the ones that cost thousands of dollars vs. co-payment cost kids (which is what I’ve decided to call all naturally created children from now on–CPCBs or co-payment cost babies). Of course I feel like my children are the designer children. They were created with super-sperm and super-eggs that were carefully coaxed and coddled with drugs and love. But I don’t think many parents of CPCBs would agree that I got the designer children. Not just because it would mean that their own children were the inferior ones. Because if you start in a place of natural is better, there isn’t room on the same plateau for A.R.T. babies and CPCBs to stand together.

Which is why I recommend throwing out that whole notion and start from this place: natural is nice. But any method that helps you reach your goal is best.

I found out about a great site tonight–XYandMe. They create children’s books that explain A.R.T. to kids–a where did I come from for kids who…er…may not have come from the average cabbage patch. They are fantastic because (1) they are written by a nurse who works at a fertility clinic–who tried IVF herself (she also has a personal blog that she keeps that I’ve listed under general infertility in the blogroll: Wishing for a Baby). So an insider and a professional perspective in one. (2) They are written for every imaginable combination–FET, single mum and donor sperm, surrogacy, etc. My only wish…um…Janice (if you’re reading this) is that you had an IUI one (without donor sperm). And maybe one for some less invasive things too–Clomid, for instance, or injectible drugs.

We’ve been speaking to our kids from birth about their conception. Do they understand right now? No. But we never wanted them to have a moment where they learned about how they were conceived. I discuss it freely in front of them with other people because I want them to know that there is nothing shameful about A.R.T. If we adopt, we will take the same approach.

I like these books because I like my children finding stories that reflect their own experience. The lack of books on this topic in the picture book section at Barnes and Noble speaks volumes about how the non-infertile world views A.R.T. and adoption. We can talk about different jobs, countries, and medical situations–but ask for recommendations on books written for children to explain family building and you’re likely to get a blank stare from the woman behind the information desk. American authors can write books about a girl living in China. A woman can write an award-winning series from the point-of-view of a boy. But ask a non-infertile to broach the topic of infertility in their children’s book and they’d probably ask, “why?” Because. Because there’s a need. Because I want my children to know that there are multiple paths towards parenthood. Because I want my children to understand even the paths that we don’t take because they may have friends created through those means. Stories are how children learn at this age. And I want my children to see a story that talks about their reality. I feel the same way about purchasing them books about twins in a sea of books about singletons. Or books about being Jewish. Or living in America.

I was also contacted by a woman who wrote a book about pregnancy loss called Forever Our Angels. It is not strictly about pregnancy loss after infertility, but there are stories contained in the book that reflect this experience. I have read a sample chapter and it’s another venue for information if you are looking for personal stories.

Other books out there that you love? Especially those off the beaten path?

Looking down at my pomegranate-coloured string and smiling… Spread the word. I can’t wait for the first time I bump into someone I don’t know and they’re wearing a purple thread.

Many more links for Operation Heads Up are in the sidebar. I need to start putting this list in alphabetical order. Keep them coming!

And now, down to the blogs…

Wander on over to Jenny’s blog, Jenny from the Infertility Block, and offer her congratulations. She got her BFP on an unmedicated FET cycle. It’s pretty interesting to also go back and read the other posts from the cycle. It was the first time I had heard of doing a cycle unmedicated and it made perfect sense. It wouldn’t work for everyone, but it’s an interesting idea that I had never encountered before. And isn’t that the whole point to reading each other’s stories beyond not feeling quite so alone? Gathering information that you can apply to your own journey? So congratulations, Jenny!

I’m fairly certain than my nightmare last weekend was a direct result of Hanazono’s series of posts about friendship. I’m just going to tell you enough to entice you over to this blog because it’s a very interesting series of posts. But this first one begins with a friend announcing her pregnancy. This friend’s previous pregnancy came on the heels of Hanazono losing her baby, and this news was dropped on her right before they were meeting up with another person for a night-out. The friend was trying to be sensitive by telling her alone and admitting how difficult she knew this must be. BUT. There’s no ideal way to tell this information without causing some hurt because…this information hurts. It hurts to think about how you’ll watch your friend’s belly grow while you’re still waiting. And it hurts to think about other people getting what you want so desperately. Hanazono’s initial reaction is implied in this first post of the series–she’ll pull away a bit, give herself some space with that friendship. But in later posts, she bravely discusses how she’s going to slap that saucy bitch, Infertilia, in the face and remain friends with this person. And why. And how. Take that, infertility. I think it’s very brave. And keep scrolling up through the posts because she has a very interesting point about “doing okay” vs. “feeling okay.”

Kris and her Baby Proof Uterus have a great post about wishing your life away during infertility. You start living from point to point in your cycle, wishing the days forward so you can find out how you’re responding to drugs, how you ovulated, and whether you have the BFP that month. No other time in my life have I wished days away. I was sometimes anxious to find out information–I called the hours of the afternoon after the mail came my “mailbox narcolepsy” time because I was so anxious to hear from grad schools that I would get myself to the point of heart-pounding tension, go to the mailbox, find it void of letters, and then go collapse on the sofa to take a nap. But I never wished away a day because it was also my senior year of college and I wanted it to go slower–not faster. Waiting for a proposal, waiting for the wedding, waiting for…anything–I never wished away a day like I did with infertility. Not that those days actually disappeared, but the point is that you’re so focused on the future that you’re ignoring the present. Kris makes a beautiful list of other times when she’ll be impatient and how she’ll never wish a day away then. Mid-post is this wonderful statement: “I need some patience. I need to live in the present. I need to make the following promise to my children who are probably too scared to come to my uterus out of fear I will wish their lives away as well. And I need to keep this promise to them whenever they get here, even if it means I have to post it on my fridge and read it 30 times a day.” Head over there and you’ll look at your cycle in a completely different way.

Sophia at Journey to an Ewok had a great post about her New Yorker heart longing to make a connection to another woman in the waiting room. Just catch eyes, pass along information, support each other. Because, as she points out, it is such a battle. And we need each other to get through this. It’s interesting–we have this gift of support that other people need. Desperately. We have information they could use. When we don’t speak to each other, when we don’t share our stories, when we don’t make those connections, we’re really withholding this gift. Does that make sense? I know that I am more open about my experience than the average person, but the only way to remove the stigma is to open up the discussion and let each other into our journey. We wouldn’t withhold our experience with another disease if we thought we could help support/inform another person. Nor should we shut ourselves into small islands when we’re battling something as consuming as infertility. Just my opinion. Which doesn’t count for much. But I’m just throwing it out there.

Off to enjoy a burrito. New question of the week when I get a chance to blog again this weekend…

The CEO and President of RESOLVE is currently wearing a pomegranate-coloured thread on his right wrist. It’s the must-have fashion accessory for all SQs and SPJs this season.

Of course.

Because RESOLVE rocks in general, and I’m not just saying that because they took two hours out of their busy schedules to meet with me today. I put the organization up there on the same level as my RE and ladies-when-waiting as people-who-are-trying-to-get-me-pregnant. Oh…and my husband. He’s on that list too.

And these are the reasons why you should click on their name and go straight to their website and join if you are not already a member. Because the $55 you invest in a membership may save you thousands down the road. RESOLVE lobbies to get fertility treatments covered by insurance. They are fighting the good fight to get treatments accessible to every American. So, the $55 I spend today may in turn save me thousands when insurance companies are mandated to cover a few rounds of IVF. And even if they don’t change the coverage during my family-building years, they are sure to have been successful by the time our children are of age. Since certain conditions that cause infertility are hereditary, I consider it an insurance plan for my children.

And because they’re on our side. And they get it. And they are there with emotional support. And fantastic articles in their magazine. And they have great bulletin boards and chat rooms for online support.

So that was my personal plug for RESOLVE. Please support them because they actually make a huge difference in your life without you even realizing the extent of their work.

The meeting was fantastic. I was there to talk about the book and they gave me great advice. But they also listened to our idea for Infertility’s Common Thread, took a skein of thread for the office, and took our write-up. They’re going to figure out how they can get involved and get back to me so I’ll keep everyone posted. Even if it turns out that they can’t help get the word out there, I was very touched that the President ripped off a length of thread (with his bare hands! No scissor! He gives my karate-chopping nurse practioner a run for her money. Especially since the NP didn’t actually do anything physically impressive–just deliver a huge emotionally impressive karate-chop of a statement) during the meeting and had me tie it to his wrist.

One cheap bracelet for man. One huge statement about infertility for mankind. Womenkind. For people…for peoplekind.