Someone once had one of those horoscope books where you could look up your specific birthday and learn so many interesting facts about yourself (facts that apparently the book knows and you don’t). So, we were passing this book around the room and it comes to me so I naturally look up my birthday and read that while I take care of everything else in my life way before it is necessary, I always put off going to the doctor.

Which is true.

Scary book. If we were in a movie, we would then gather around the ouija board and it would spell out i-n-f-e-r-t-i-l-i-t-y and then the planchette would spin wildly out of our hands and then come to an abrupt stop pointing at…ME ME ME.

It is true. I start planning for Halloween in June. I sent out my graduate school applications in October. I don’t leave things to the last minute. Except when it comes to doctors.

I wait on all health problems just in case they mysteriously go away on their own. With the exception of infertility. For the first time in my life I was like, “get me to the doctor…NOW.” Fertility seems to time sensitive. My swollen ankle, on the other hand, does not.

Last night, my ankle began swelling and taking on a purplish hue. I don’t remember twisting it. I had a bug bite last week in the same area that hasn’t quite gone away. And my instinct is to still sit here at the computer working while my ankle throbs. Since getting married, my husband has done his best to override my fate of being born on a day that includes doctor procrastination. He pestered me all morning to make an appointment with the general practioner. I have one for this afternoon because he always wins.

He has to work hard to get me to allow a doctor to LOOK at my ankle, yet I was eager to jump into the stirrups and allow them to slide a cathetar into my hoo-haa. Maybe because the ankle is just a physical pain and the infertility was an emotional pain. And I think we all know which one wins out if the two kinds of pain got into a superhero fist-fight.

And speaking of intense pain, I just posted Carolyn’s third (yes, you SQ slackers, her THIRD) write-up for Operation Heads Up. It’s for the HSG, which was, hands down, the most pain I have ever experienced in my life. I know that makes me sound like an enormous wimp, but remember that I am the woman limping around on a swollen, painful ankle who would have had no intentions of fixing it if not for her husband.

When I was in labour, the doctor asked how the pain was on a scale from one to ten. I told her that the numbers were arbitrary because she had no idea how painful my 10 was to me. She asked me what I considered a 10 and I answered, “an HSG.” She then asked me how labour fell on that scale and I said…a 6. Maybe getting up to an 8. That HSG was so painful.

Ouch.

Ouch.

Just thinking about it. Ouch.

This comparison and subsequent question came to mind after a recent email exchange with Tertia at So Close (http://www.tertia.org/so_close/). As a side note, Tertia recently published a book about her journey with infertility. She’s working on getting it distributed internationally, but for the time being, you can go to her website and purchase it through a supplier in South Africa. Great work and I can’t wait to read it.

There are many comparisons between waiting for a baby and waiting to get married. The uncertainty (though everyone tells you to relax and it will happen. Or, even worse, they insist that it will happen for you even though you know enough about life to know that sometimes it doesn’t). The lack of control: you can’t force someone to be your soul mate, and it’s out of your hands when you meet them. The happy couples around you that remind you of what you don’t have.

But here’s the question–when singlehood ends, you’re married and unless you’re longing for the single-life again, you never look back. I don’t call myself formerly single. I don’t identify with that life anymore though I can certainly empathize because I went through the dating, the longing, the waiting. People who get married at 40 are not considered in a different category from people who married at 20. They’re just…married. You may still carry your own personal baggage or insecurities or unhappiness about the journey, but for the most part, people don’t still check the singles boards or feel stung by comments about being single. They leave it at the door when they step over the threshold on their honeymoon.

So why do people who went through infertility continue to identify as infertile even after they’ve had children? Why is there a division (however subtle) in motherhood between those who have used A.R.T./adoption/surrogacy and those who have had their children without assistance? It’s not a division that exists amongst good friends, but one that rears its head in the casual talks on the playground. And sometimes it’s a division you feel when you are speaking to a mother who stands on the opposite side of the chasm. When you feel like the motherhood bond should be enough, but at the same time, you know that while she says she understands, she really doesn’t. Even close sisters, like Tertia and her sister, experience this when the other one truly can’t understand why things didn’t bounce immediately onto a different plane once they were both ensconced in motherhood.

Is it because everyone is single until they’re married? And once you’re married, you’re just…married. There isn’t a heirarchy of marriage. Someone who eloped to Vegas and someone who had the big, white wedding are both still just married. Our ways of getting to marriage are different, but in the end, are we all on the same playing field? But journeys to parenthood lead us to stand on different platforms when we emerge on the other side? At least in the eyes of general society vs. the people who love us. I’m making generalizations.

I’m not sure. I’d love to hear other opinions. Am I totally off–is there a heirarchy of marriage? People who carry their scars of singlehood over into marriage?

Who came up with the phrase “happy ending”? I use it all the time, but was thinking about it today. Endings aren’t happy–unless you’re talking about the end of an illness, torture situation, prison sentence. Marriage isn’t an ending–it’s a continuance–so why do fairy tales mention the happy ending when the prince and the princess get married? And I used it recently in terms of children–I’m glad your story has a happy ending. But children aren’t an ending. They’re a chapter. They’re a happy chapter tucked into the long book of life.

Endings seem to be a theme today. We had a big family party this weekend and the last people went home about an hour ago. I’m not great with endings. I end up mourning the ending a long time before it arrives. And then afterwards, I feel a bit lost. So the idea of endings was already on my mind.

I just finished sending an email back to someone who wrote to me about the figuring-out-a-due-date entry. I’m sure there were therapists (um…like maybe my sister) who read that entry and said, “damn, that’s quite unhealthy.” But I once received great advice from a fertility counselor when I was pregnant who asked why I wasn’t buying things or setting up the room. And I told her that I was scared to do anything because I was scared that we would lose the babies.

The point she made was that losing those babies would be terrible even if we didn’t have a crib to return. It’s not like we would look at each other and say, “okay, I can deal with this loss. Thank G-d we didn’t buy a glider because returning that would push me over the edge.” It is painful to fold up those maternity clothes after a pregnancy loss or to return the crib after a stillbirth, but it would be painful regardless. Even without those tasks.

I think of that type of dreaming–the dreaming about due dates and how you’re going to tell people you’re pregnant–is the hope that gets you through the ending. Because a cycle ending is painful. It’s the end of this hope that was building up inside of you for an entire month, growing and expanding and filling every crevice of your body. Even if I didn’t know the due date, the sight of that blood wouldn’t be easier to see. I’ve always struggled with the concept that my period starts CD1. CD1 sounds like it should be a happy day, the start of a journey. And it is such a terrible ending when you’ve been hoping with all your being that you’re pregnant.

I use that phrase, “I’m glad your story has a happy ending” and yet I don’t really believe that infertility has an ending. My mother certainly is finished having children, and yet I can still see this expression come over her face sometimes when I’m describing something I’m going through emotionally. And it’s the expression of someone who still has infertility scars etched into her being. Is infertility something she thinks about daily? I’m pretty certain it’s not. But it is something that shaped her vision of parenthood. So when is the ending?

And what about something that is an end for you because it is a beginning for others? I went through two trying-to-conceive groups. Both times I left because I was the only person who didn’t get pregnant. Everyone wanted to talk about their pregnancy, and I was still stuck in infertility. I think that experience is what made me want to create a blog without end. Something that didn’t have to change because it was covering infertility in general and not my own personal journey (though my personal journey obviously guides my thoughts). I received a few comments about the blogroll and how to handle the pregnancy/parenting after IF factor. One day that list will be huge. And the people whose journey you read to get you through your endings will continue (hopefully) and leave infertility behind. At least as a major topic in the forefront of the mind. I think it will always colour their vision of parenthood, no matter how much they rationalize to themselves that they’ve left it behind. Blog without end. It sounds like it belongs in a funeral service.

Sorry to be so dreary today. I really am terrible with goodbyes. I hope my siblings have safe trips home.

I just baked a cake.

And when I say, “baked a cake” I don’t mean I ripped open a box of Duncan Hines. I mean I hauled out the professional cake-making equipment and made a cake with four sticks of butter–which is okay because my professional cake pan feeds 60 people. And by okay I mean that you’re only getting several hundred grams of fat in each bite.

Welcome to my new series on DIY channel–infertility-induced hobby collecting.

Come on, you know you have strange equipment stashed somewhere in your house. Is it quilt making? Knitting? Bread-baking?

Because this is what happens to a Stirrup Queen when she gets that infertility label. She cries a lot. She avoids places with babies. She realizes that people who are pregnant are rarely starting huge new projects so she throws herself into one of these huge new projects. She takes a quilting class to distract herself. Or joins a knitting circle. Or has her desperate husband buy her a bread stone and a bread-baking cookbook and say, “here, here, distract yourself. Just stop peeing on those sticks, for the love of G-d!”

(clears throat, glances at the bread stone, mutters, “I’m not that crazy.”)

Which is how I ended up with professional cake-decorating equipment (as well as the bread stone). I started taking decorating classes because they were a good distraction and because I secretly thought I would need these skills once I had a child because I would be making birthday cakes. And then I became crazy about cake decorating because I was pouring all of my making-a-baby energies into cake decorating. If I couldn’t make a baby, I would instead be the best little cake decorating woman the world had ever seen. My cakes would be my babies. I would only lock myself in the classroom bathroom once each lesson to cry for a few minutes.

I dropped out of this class after wedding cakes but before the final fondant lessons. A classmate became pregnant and loudly discussed her pregnancy. And I started spending more time in the bathroom crying because she was ruining my child-free space. For the sake of self-preservation, I dropped the class. And turned to bread baking.

It’s nice to have these skills. I mean, there is a silver lining that can come from throwing yourself into a new hobby or drowning yourself in work. It just always gives me pause when I take out the cake pans and remember why I have them.

Three days into Operation Heads Up and we already have three write-ups! I’ve been changing the post dates in order to group them together. So check the sidebar when you read the blog to see if there are new write-ups. And comment on them! Give additional tips, warnings, recommendations.

Before I go to the blogs, I just want to give a HUGE congratulations to someone I posted about last week. Carrie, the Soup Chickie, got her big, fat, beta-doubling positive this week after three years of IF. She has an amazing story. When we say “it takes a village to make a child” we’re usually talking about all the REs and nurses involved. But her baby (or babies–they won’t know until the ultrasound) is literally created out of a world of love–a friend donated the egg, her husband gave the sperm, Soupy gave the womb, and now their families are joined together forever. All of the good energy you guys sent her way paid off. So now it’s time to look at some other people’s stories and send them good energy too…

Starting on a sad note, Shazz over in Australia (http://shazzambabyquest.blogspot.com/) remembered her daughter, Chloe, this week with a beautiful tribute as her due date passed. She wrote after the delivery: “We held you for a while, cuddled you, kissed you and cried over you and didn’t want to give back.” And I had a heartbreaking image of this moment–when you let your little girl go knowing that she won’t be coming back into your arms. And how do you do that? How is it ever the right minute to give her back to the doctor? I cried and cried over this entry because no parent should ever have to say a permanent goodbye to their own child. Sending many good thoughts and a lot of strength to Shazz this week.

The ladies at Maybe Expectant (http://childing.blogspot.com/) illustrate perfectly pregnancy after IF and the inner workings of the mind of a Stirrup Queen. They had to decide this week which genetic tests, if any, to run. Most pregnant couples have this hard decision to make, but infertility really makes you see the whole world through If-coloured glasses. What if they received bad news–what would they do with that information knowing that this was their final cycle with her partner’s eggs? When you’ve worked so hard to get pregnant, how could you possibly take a test that could even possibly (no matter how small the chance) lead to a miscarriage? Hard decisions at Maybe Expectant. Hang in there…

I would write a catchy title such as “Losing My Religion” but I’m pretty sure that means something more akin to “falling in love.” So instead I will jump right in to talking about Journeywoman’s (http://journeywoman.typepad.com/motherhood_has_been_a_jou/) interesting post this week about faith and IF. It’s a heady mix–continuing faith you’ve had since childhood, losing faith because you can’t believe a G-d would do this to you (or not step in to help), absorbing the constant comments of “this is G-d’s plan” or “G-d is trying to teach you something.” And then there is the whole Biblical theme of being barren. Sigh. Hard questions. Interesting post. Go read and discuss.

Lastly, Carolyn over at This Sort of Fairytale (http://thissortafairytale.blogspot.com/) has butterflies as she goes in for a first appointment with a new ob/gyn. It’s a hard decision–you need someone who wants you to be pregnant as much as you want to be pregnant. Who will be assertive, a good listener, accessible. Calling all med students–come here for the Stirrup Queen’s Good Doctor boot camp. I’ll whip you into shape. Send some good doctor energy her way. After encountering many crappy doctors/nurses on your journey, I hope it’s a great appointment.