283rd Friday Blog Roundup
So…Project IF has been brewing for about five months. I am so relieved we can all actually talk about it finally.
When we started planning Project IF, I was so focused on the logistics that I didn’t think about how hard I would cry reading down the list. Reading other people’s fears. Stating my own. Reliving some that are past. Thinking about ones I hadn’t considered. It is a really powerful list. I am incredibly moved by everyone’s participation.
The project has been a long time coming, though it has taken various incarnations over the last few months. Some more expensive than others (um…sorry, Resolve, for suggesting that we lease elephants and parade them down to the Capitol with clever slogans about IVF coverage painted onto their hide. I can see now that requesting that Independence Avenue be closed for the elephant parade just isn’t feasible). And the ever brilliant and ever patient Rebecca Flick talked out each idea, helping this one come to fruition.
My hope is that–more with the second part (which will start April 21st, in time for NIAW)–that it changes the way the outside world thinks about infertility. That they understand that there is a very real human with very large emotions on the other end of this situation. Which is not to say that the obnoxious comments that run beneath every New York Times online story connected to infertility will instantly change to supportive and nurturing, but hopefully, it will help those who wish to understand have a window into the experience. It will be a doorway for lawmakers, a doorway for friends and family, and a doorway for the newly diagnosed. I cannot even tell you how moved I was by TexasHeather’s beautiful comment. And hopefully, everyone will walk away feeling more connected with the realization that no one needs to be alone during this fight.
There are others out there who have your back. Who understand as far as someone who has not lived your particular life can understand.
And I’m excited that they’re using Project IF to determine the Hope Award for Best Blog. It was an amazing experience to get to go to the Night of Hope and receive that last year and I’m honoured to get to pass the accolades onto someone else.
You are definitely encouraged to add more than one “what if” if you are moved to do so. The “what ifs” for the second part of this project will be chosen from those left in the comment section on the post. So spread word; encourage others to place down their what ifs. The list will remain open indefinitely, but the what ifs will be chosen from those left between the 7th and the 16th.
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I have been going through boxes at my parent’s house and in addition to a series of Ann Landers booklets and a stack of Onions from 1992–1996, I found three Guild report cards. This one was the first one, from age 5. I showed it to my mother and said, “this was the time I urinated in my underpants on the stage and started crying.”
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemories…
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The Weekly What If: What if you could relive a single day of your life? You couldn’t change a thing about it–you would simply be playing out the script of what occurred that day. Which day would you experience again? Would you go for a random, ordinary day or something traditionally special such as a wedding day?
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Adventures in Infertility-Land has one of the most heartbreaking posts I’ve ever read. It is a beautiful tribute to the child she was about to lose. It begins, “I am not sure how to write you this letter, but I could not let you go without making sure you know how I feel about you.” This is about a mother’s intense love; doing the only things she can for her child. I was so moved by these lines: “Please, my little baby, never doubt my love for you and love of your daddy. I know he cannot talk to you like I can and cannot carry you around like me, but his love for you is just as strong. Right now, I feel like I need to speak for both of us, as I am not sure if feels ready to yet or knows what to say.” Please go read the full post, but be prepared to cry with CGD. And while you are there, please give her support.
Alex’s Adventures has a post about mouse IVF and it’s $138 price tag. Seriously, isn’t it making you wonder if you could be rodentized?
I got all weepy reading this post by Creating Motherhood on W’s first birthday. Maybe it’s because I’ve read Cali for years, back before W was conceived and now he is a year old. W, for me, has stepped through the screen (okay, it’s more like he crawled through the screen), but even before that point, his birth was such a celebration. So raising a glass to W, on the first anniversary of his birth.
Lastly, Fertility Challenged in Florida has a post about a girl at work who says crappy, judgmental things. I love Barb’s take on whether gaining the empathy balances out the terribleness of going through infertility and depression.
The roundup to the Roundup: more on Project IF. Darling little peeing Melissa’s piano report card. Answer the Weekly What If about what day you would relive. And lots of great blogs to read.
12 comments
I would really like to go back to the day that Jack was diagnosed with CP. It was sure not a good day, and I know I will never be able to change anything…
But, I don’t remember anything about the doctor’s words. I remember the words “cerebral palsy” and then nothing else. I can’t tell you the color of his tie. I can’t tell you if he was looking at me, or Jack, or Sebi. I want to remember the little things. For Jack. Because…someday, I don’t want to have to tell him I flaked out and became a zombie for 24 hours. I want to tell him the details of his life with love and honor…not with questions.
I would go back to the day my twins were born. Everything about the delivery was rushed and so sudden. I would love to go back knowing what I know now, that everything would turn out ok. I wouldn’t mind having a second chance to hold their little bodies and smell their new baby smells either. I would love to be able to remember everything, my memory of the event is scattered and incomplete.
Assuming also that I would go back and relive a day knowing what I know today?
I would go back to the day that I found out I was pregnant with O. I was so scared, so terrified that it wasn’t going to work out. That was my overriding fear for my whole pregnancy, in fact.
I’d like to go back and relive that day, to allow myself the sheer joy of knowing that there was life growing inside me – the life that would be my amazing O.
xxx
I would go back to the day the TwinkieBoos were born. Everything about it just seemed so right for us that day. I was so concerned about the C/S – once on the table – that I might have missed taking it in just a bit more. The moment they arrived and my 3 men were huddled over me for the first time to take that momentous picture is exactly what I had been praying and hoping for years to be. I’d gladly take away the vomitting and 3 hours of recovery – but even w/ that, it made my reunion w/ my 3 men even more special.
Funny about perfomance pee-pants! {like in Ricky Bobby’s Talladega, “And I stayed in my pee-pants!”} Is that the day you’d re-live?
Texas Heather’s comment moved me to tears and restored my faith in people. I am so grateful for her comment and wish so many more people could come to the same realization!
This is lame, but the first day that came to my mind that I’d like to relive… was a day in college when I thought/believed for the first and probably last time that the guy I was dating actually loved me. In retrospect, I know that day and that feeling were nothing but a soap bubble shining in the sun – ephemeral, unreal, based on nothing solid or lasting. But maybe it was just that element of fantasy and unreality that made it unforgettable and unreplicable. The love I share with my husband now is real, solid, lasting, and reliable, but it precisely for that reason will never have that quality of magical euphoria I experienced that day in college.
This is a bit cheesy. But I think I would go back and relive the first day I met my now-husband (during my first year of college). He insists that we met earlier than I remember meeting him, so I want to settle that score. But I also want to relive my first impressions of him and what he was like back then, how he acted around people, how he acted when introduced to me.
I think I would go back to the first day we started TTC (since I have the exact date) and reset my expectations on the experience. I know that’s a weird choice, to re-live the horrors of IF, but I would try to handle the experience with more grace and dignity than I did originally. I would also use the experience to channel a more positive light and energy in my life.
I would re-live one of the days when DH and I were falling in love and talked for hours, feeling completely alive and exhilarated.
I think I would relieve a day last August, when my husband and I were walking along the beach in Galveston – we were there for our 10th anniversary. We had gone though a really rough patch earlier that year, and I had given him back my wedding ring…LONG STORY, but we had gotten back together, counseling, meds, etc…Well, I never had the guts to ask for that ring back…that day on the beach, he suddenly pulled a new ring from his pocket…once that he had designed himself using the stones from the old ring. I will never forget how happy I was that day…and how much that new ring represented our “new” marriage, and that we were truly going to be able to face anything, no matter what.
I have an idea for NIAW that I do not have the skills to execute, but figure you may know someone who does, or have the network to find someone who does. It is built on the stat that IF affects 1 in 6 couples. Create a facebook app that calculates how many friends you have with IF based on your friend count.
aw man, you made me all weepy with your sweet comment about W.
I was actually surprised that a day popped into my mind so fast that it gave me mental whiplash- but I simply must relive the day that I was able to introduce W to my Grandmother. I have been visiting photos from that day all weekend.