I love babies. I love it when a new parent asks if I want to hold their baby (why, yes, I do). I like celebrating with people and baking cakes and sending cards. 9 out of 10 days, this is the state-of-mind where you’ll find me.

Unfortunately, you never know if you’re hitting me on that 1 day out of 10, therefore I encourage all people wishing to tell me their happy news to use my SQ method for passing on information that is Potentially Heartbreaking for the Listener (otherwise known as a PHL). The thing is knowing when something may be a PHL or when something is considered ordinary news. And that’s the thing about SQs and SPJs–every person has a different threshold AND that threshold changes based on the relationship to the person.

I don’t want people to walk around on eggshells around me. I’m not a china doll. I won’t break if you tell me your good news. In fact, once I process the information, I will be very very happy for you. But the mantra of the non-infertile (and all people in this world) should match the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors: first, do no harm. And the comments on this blog have spoken–face to face communication is not the best way to break the news.

When we were trying to conceive, we knew some people were also definitely trying and others fell into the possibly-trying-because-I’m-making-assumptions camp. We warned some people in both categories that the best way to tell us would be to send it in an email or letter. It may not have the warmth and energy that comes with telling your happy news face-to-face, but it allowed us time to process our feelings, set them aside, and jump into the celebration. I didn’t do very well when confronted with the news (especially in a group) and expected to instantly jump over the processing part into the celebrating part.

I still prefer to receive news about pregnancies in this fashion. My one exception to the rule is when the news comes from SQs and SPJs. Is that totally biased and hypocritical? Of course. But we all have a sliding scale of happiness.

Other things I prefer not to know: that it was an accident. That it happened on your first try. That you didn’t even know you were pregnant for the first two months. These things may all be true, but you don’t need me to know them in order for me to be happy for you.

Other things I prefer not to hear/read: how you hope I one day get to experience motherhood. How I’m “next” (because y’all know that G-d has a pregnancy roster and he’s just calling down from Heaven: “get in the bed and baby dance because you’re neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeext!”). How I’m so lucky that I’m not pregnant because you already feel fat.

Things I do like to hear: “I understand that this may be hard for you to hear so take your time with the news and let me know how much you want me to share with you.” “I’m going to be sending out email updates about my pregnancy and wanted to let you know about it so you could read it if you wanted. But I won’t be offended if you ask to be taken off the list.” “When the baby is born, how do you want to be told?”

And this is just me, but once a SQ always a SQ. Yes, I want to celebrate with you. Yes, I’m happy you’re having children. But tell me my way if you want my first interaction with you to be one of big hugs and laughter rather than stunned silence. The rest of the pregnancy will be all-about-you. Just let this one piece of your happiness take into account my situation too. After all, you wouldn’t call someone recently widowed to crow about your engagement…

Keep those comments coming.

Because the myth that all artists are starving should be replaced with the seemingly more accurate “all artists are infertile” (last I checked, Da Vinci wasn’t actually starving. But have you seen him reproducing lately? I think not! Take that, art historians!), we’d like to put a plug in for a reader’s film about infertility.

Andrei Kirilenko (local filmmaker) made a film called Technostorks that chronicles the journey of three IF couples (all local as well). I watched the trailer this afternoon and it looks amazing. Very emotional. Especially the woman who admits that she fears her infertility is the result of something terrible she once said or did. I think we’ve all had the “what am I being punished for” thoughts. You can read more about the film, view the trailer, and purchase the DVD on the website www.technostorks.com.

Support a fellow SPJ who is mapping the emotional geography of Infertility Land.

(Sniff…sniff) That is so great! (sniff…give what you hope is a silent, choked-back sob) How far along are you? (low moan that you muffle by placing your hand over the phone) Yeah, I imagine it would suck to be 8 months pregnant during the summer (make clicking noises to simulate call waiting) I really have to go now, but we need to get together so I can hear ALL THE GODDAMN DETAILS.

Click.

Sob.

Run into bathroom and sit on the floor next to the toilet. Try not to look in the garbage can and see the wrappers from the last two BFN pregnancy tests. Check caller-ID next time the phone rings.

Question Four–how do you prefer to be told when someone has pregnancy news? By the happy couple? By a mutual friend? Over the phone? In person? At the beginning of a long car ride up I-95 on 4th of July weekend when you’ll be trapped in traffic with the pregnant woman (who will be complaining about how she has to pee and how you can’t imagine how badly she has to go to the bathroom and how you are sooooooooooooooo lucky that you’re not pregnant during the summer because morning sickness when it’s hot outside is the woooooooooooorst) for the next 6 hours?

And it’s okay to answer that your ideal situation would include the hypothetical pregnant couple bringing you all the booze from their liquor cabinet since they won’t need it for the next 9 months (woohoo! Free alcohol for the SQs and SPJs). Check back Friday afternoon to hear how we prefer people to break the happy news.

And by “prefer” we mean the only way you’re going to get the response you crave from us.

Lest someone believe that all Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (SQs and SPJs to you) know the right thing to say, we experience the same lack of words when confronted by someone else’s fertility loss. Our book will have many ideas of what NOT to say/do, but since comfort is subjective, I’m not sure we can make the inverse list–the right thing to say, the right hug to give, the right phone call to make. I think if we keep the mantra: it’s all about (fill in name here) and not about me, we do okay. Not great. Not wonderful. Okay. But, then again, I’m come from the mindset that the only thing that will completely assuage the pain is to not be experiencing it at all. Therefore, nothing said or done will completely take it away.

Last night, a friend revealed that she had recently had a miscarriage. And I, a Stirrup Queen through and through, could not come up with anything comforting to say. Beyond listening. And a hug. The magical me wanted to conjure a parade of elephants into the living room, marching over the gorgeously shiny hardwood floors to deposit her baby back into her tummy to cook for many more months.

It’s hard when you realize that you are no more magical than anyone else you encountered during your IF experience.

I’m so sorry, sweetie. I wish there was something I could do for you. Something to help the healing move even faster. I can’t–and I’m so sorry about that too. I’m here with information if you need it. I’m here with an open ear if you want to talk. I’m here with a car that can drive downtown and pick you up for some extremely mindless female bonding that includes alcohol. Or…at the very least…chocolate and coffee (wait, chocolate and coffee? I mean, we will sit down and eat an entire chocolate cake IN ONE SITTING). I can’t put the baby back in your belly no matter how tightly I hug you. I’m sorry about that too. Hang in there. Know that the entire self-aware portion of womanhood has your back.

I’m currently pausing from reading through the stories submitted for question three to put down some thoughts. I was struck by the person who said that people don’t understand that the tears are not self-pity but rather an expression of pain. I’m reading Joan Didion’s book at the moment–The Year of Magical Thinking–which chronicles the loss of her husband and daughter. She has a wonderful passage in the book about self-pity and the American contempt for anything construed as “self-pity.” That people are complimented for holding it together (another person wrote us directly with a message straight out of the non-infertile world: you handle your infertility better than another couple because you can attend these events when they can’t) rather than publically grieving. For getting on with their lives. For putting others first. She talks about the words used in conjunction with self-pity. Wallowing. Boo hoo poor me. Indulging.

There are some who would say that you can’t compare the loss of the ability to reproduce to the loss of a spouse. Certainly the emptiness of someone who was there and is now not vs. something that was never there except in the form of hope is difficult to compare. But for me–and I think for many of us–that loss is so huge, so real, so tangible that we really do go through a mourning period. My cousin died close to when another cousin was getting married. The wedding couple offered to postpone the wedding for the sake of family. The parents of the child who died said the celebration must go on. When the time came for the wedding, the sister of the child who died asked her parents to dance. I remember her father rubbing her arm and saying in this soft, sad voice: “I can’t dance right now, sweetie. My heart hurts too much.”

You would never ask a mourner to dance or think they were engaging in self-pity if they declined to get down to “Brick House.” But women who are going through IF are expected to muster the enthusiasm and happiness required at a baby shower. Or a bris. They are expected to traipse down the aisles at Buy Buy Baby picking out the cutest frilly dress for a newborn girl. We are expected to put our own experience and sadness on the back burner in order to celebrate with another person who is getting exactly what we want.

We did a mix: skipped some events and attended others based on where I was in my cycle and the closeness of the friend. But I don’t think there was one event that we entered into light-hearted, with our own pain on the back burner. We cried getting ready for the party. I sometimes ducked into the bathroom while we were there to pull it together. And we cried on the way home.

At the same time, there were non-infertiles who thought they were saving my feelings by not inviting me to the first-birthday parties or other child-centered events. In the end, that just made me feel like a pariah–cast out of the community of womanhood because I couldn’t reproduce like all the other women.

So how can the non-infertile world win? They’re damned if they do invite this over-emotional self-pitying freak to their parties and they damned if they don’t. I guess it’s the fact that there is no way to win because there is nothing to win. You can’t assuage the pain of a person going through IF by inviting them to a party or having them hold a child or even patting their back and being a good listener. If you start from that understanding–that you will not possibly be able to say the “right thing” and fix the problem, then you already are helping. Because lower expectations of how I should be handling things or when it’s time to stop mourning or stop crying or extend happiness to another couple are needed because these things can’t be forced.

And don’t even get me started on the method I like used when told by pregnant people that they’re expecting. THAT is for a different entry.

A loooooong entry.

Because, yes, I do have a method.

Does it make me a small, self-pitying person? Feel free to respond. In fact, please do–I think I’ll hold off on posting another question until tomorrow since question three is still getting comments.