The first interview answers have started trickling back to my inbox. I am so grateful that so many people are willing to share their stories. Without your experiences, this book would be limited by our own IF journey. The diversity in answer is incredible.

Thank you.

I am so moved by your stories. By the strength that flows through the Land of If. It’s such a hard chapter to write. I find myself carrying the folder that contains the stories as delicately as if it contained our actual lost babies. I promise I will care for them. I promise when writing this chapter that I will not only do my best to educate others on how to be helpful (or, the inverse, what not to say or do), but I will honour all the babies that are not here on earth. Your angels.

Currently you reside at (or have a timeshare)…

Name that Infertility Land! Sometimes we feel like we’re living in a foreign country. People who enter don’t speak our language or understand our customs.

Let’s stick our flag in the ground and name this country. The person who comes up with a name for this barren land (ha, ha, ha, that’s IF humour…sigh) will get a big thank you in the book. So write us with your suggestions for what we can call Infertility Land. That is better than Infertility Land…

We are currently beginning work on a chapter about pregnancy loss. If you have ever had a miscarriage, stillbirth, or pregnancy termination due to medical reasons and would be willing to talk to us, please write us directly at thetowncriers@gmail.com. We will then send you a set of questions to answer and send back to us.

Thank you–please pass along this interview request to anyone you think would be helpful for our research.

There are Stirrup Queens out there who bitterly add up the money they spent on birth control pills and other contraceptives back when they were trying not to get pregnant. Hmmm…little did I know that I didn’t need to be quite so careful. But I’m not sad about the money I spent on birth control–after all, it did its job. I never got pregnant. I see it in the same way as insurance–you spend all that money on it whether or not you need it.

The money I would like back are from those damn pee sticks.

There are many urban legends–some true, some false–concerning how cigarette manufacturers place chemicals in their cigarettes to make them more addictive. Though not yet proven, I believe that pregnancy test manufacturers somehow imbue their pee sticks with siren songs that call out to hormone-crazed women as they near the middle of the two-week-wait. My older sister once told me that all grates in Washington, D.C. were programmed to break when I stepped on them–somehow they were constantly updated with my exact weight, height, walking stride. Therefore, being the trusting little sister, I avoided stepping on any grate. I believe that pee stick manufacturers have somehow figured out a way to set their siren songs to only be sung when a woman with certain hormones and hopes coursing through her body steps within a few feet of that bathroom cabinet where the aforementioned pee stick is residing. Unlikely, you say? Well, I never stepped on a grate so I’m not sure if my sister was correct about how I would fall to my death. But I have walked near that cabinet when brushing my teeth and I have heard the siren song…

And I have peed.

Even when it was NOT the first urine of the day.

Yes, I would try to wait, but I sometimes I couldn’t. There was a particularly terrible evening when we were having dinner at a friend’s house and I was being very mindful of First Response’s Early Detection’s (affectionately referred to as FRED in our house) rule about evening pee needing to be held for four hours in order to contain enough hcG to tip the test. I drank sips of water, telling myself that I would not be able to urinate until I got home. I am ready to go, my bladder bursting, determined not to pee until I had my pee stick in hand. And then the friend suggests a walk. And my husband agrees!–agrees even though he knows about that siren song (when it is particularly loud, he can hear it too) because he can’t figure out a way to tell this friend why we have to go home (next time, sweetheart, just try the “we’re tired, but thank you dinner” excuse). I am walking through his neighbourhood, my knees clenched together, pausing on corners while I mentally willed messages back to the pee stick at home. Wait for me. I’m coming. Give me a positive message.

All that bladder pain and the damn test was negative.

I have tested even when I KNEW I was getting my period that day. Even when I was having a beta later that day and would have the results in hand by the afternoon. Why did I waste this money? Because of those evil pee stick manufacturers who forced me to take their tests. Made them addictive to hormone-stressed women.

I once flew out to Detroit to visit my other lady-when-waiting. I did not bring a pee stick with me, but became certain at 5 a.m. that I was pregnant. Only I couldn’t go out to get the pee stick because I had to pee so badly. My lady-when-waiting walked to CVS (bless her heart) and bought one for me. She then sat on the bathroom floor and watched the second line not appear. So much for intuition. And, yes, I am well aware that this trip to CVS goes well beyond the normal bounds of friendship.

At $8 a pop (that was about the average based on the numerous brands I tried), with 7 used during the first cycle and 1 or 2 used in each additional cycle, I figured out that I spent about $328 on pee sticks. This does not count the numerous ovulation predictor kits I also purchased (with often came with a free pee stick–one more piece of evidence that the manufactuers WANT us to be addicted. That’s like throwing in an ounce of cocaine with the purchase of some chocolate chips!).

And that’s probably a low figure.

Add it up and then write and tell us what you would do if you could have your pee stick money back. I would be currently spending it on a roundtrip ticket to the Bahamas. Thanks, First Reponse, for robbing me of my Caribbean vacation.

There is a tradition in IF chat rooms and bulletin boards to mention in the subject line of a post whether or not the post contains certain information. You will often see people post things such as “pregnancy mentioned” or “miscarriage mentioned” with the understanding that if you are not in a good mental space to read about these things, you should skip the entry. It’s a courtesy that recognizes that sometimes there is a time and place for information–and the speaker recognizes not only their own need to speak, but also the listener’s state to hear. This is an IF blog. But the repercussions of IF do not necessarily end with pregnancy or birth. There is parenting after IF. There is secondary IF. So sometimes I will discuss these things in the blog and I will place a note in the subject line. Feel free to skip. Or skip the entry now and come back later. Because some of these things are ideas that I wish people had discussed prior to this point in my journey.

This is something I was never told in any of the dozens of IF books I have read: parenting after IF is such a balance between the bitter and the sweet. I’m sure that there are similar emotions that breakforth for any couple when they know they are parenting their last child. But I think that people who parent after IF find themselves struggling with those transitions on the first child. Perhaps because you never know if you will get to hold another one.

I can’t give up the bottle.

My children can give up the bottle. My son, in fact, waved at his bottle tonight and said, “bye bye ba-ba.” And I looked at him in horror and said, “no, no, there’s still one more bottle! Tomorrow night! This was not the last bottle.”

I truly can’t give up the bottle.

It could be the simple idea that we don’t know if we will be able to have more children. There are the medical considerations and the financial considerations and they come together to create the perfect storm of childlessness. Even if we were to have more children, they may come into our lives at an older age since many international adoptions do not take place at the moment of the child’s birth. There are waiting periods. And we may choose in the end to adopt a child that is closer in age to our existing children. In which case, we would miss their babyhood all together.

So no more bottles.

My mother was over two weeks ago when we mentioned that she should really enjoy the bottle she would give the following weekend. It would probably be the last bottle she would get to give. She looked wistfully at them playing and told me how she couldn’t give up my crib. She had such a stumbling block when it came to moving me into a toddler bed. I think many parents who haven’t gone through IF would have heard me talking about giving up the bottle and would have focused on the fears of the average parent–that the children would refuse to give it up, that bedtime would become difficult, that they would stop sleeping through the night. But my mother, a fellow Stirrup Queen, heard the catch in my voice when I mentioned the last bottle and she immediately knew what I was thinking. That it could be the last bottle I ever give since I don’t know if there will be more children. It was the same struggle my mother faced when she had to move me to the toddler bed. There may not be another child no matter how badly she wants one. She was lucky and had my brother. She got to go through those milestones one more time.

I’ve had trouble with other transitions from babyhood to toddlerhood, but this one is the hardest. Maybe it’s because it’s tied to cuddle time. Or because it was so hard to get them to take a bottle in the beginning (our premature babies took 45 minutes to finish one ounce of milk) that it seems most unfair that we have to give up the skill once we’ve gotten really good at it. Maybe it’s residual hurt from the fact that I couldn’t breastfeed–a reminder that we had to do formula and bottles because the fertility drugs damaged my ability to produce prolactin. They gave me two babies and no ability to feed them–how is that for irony? Anyway, I’m not sure why I’m having such trouble with the bottle. All I know is that we need to give them up tomorrow night.

People who are parenting their last child, but who haven’t gone through IF, may think they feel the same way. They may be holding onto their last child’s babyhood. It’s probably similar. I have a feeling that it’s still slightly different.

Any other people parenting after IF out there? Do the transitions get easier? Does it just become more bittersweet?