Posts from — April 2010

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.

Beyond the book news, the other exciting thing I’ve been sitting on is a project I’m working on with Resolve that actually involves all of you.

Since I was honoured last year with their first best blog award at Resolve’s Night of Hope, I get to introduce and help organize Resolve’s spring advocacy project, which will choose this year’s winner of the Hope Award for Best Blog at the 2010 Night of Hope.

Did that get your attention?

Good.

Participating in the newly created Project IF is quite simple and will be held in two parts.  Today kicks off the first part and the second part will go up on April 21st, just in time for NIAW, National Infertility Awareness Week (April 24–May 1).

All you have to do to participate in the first part is leave a comment below stating your biggest “what if” in regards to infertility: what if I never get to experience pregnancy? What if we can’t gather enough money to fund another adoption?  What if we didn’t choose the best clinic?  What if my child feels strange about being created via IVF?

In other words, take out one of the “what ifs” that keep knocking around inside your heart, keeping you awake at night, and allow the larger community to commiserate, empathize and help you carry your burden by reading your words.

The What IF List (in other words, this post and the comment section below) is open from now until April 16th.  On the 16th, the list will close and 10 what ifs will be chosen to be used in part two of Project IF and directions will be given on April 21st to explain how to participate in the second part.

All blogs and bloggers who participate in Project IF will be eligible to be considered for the Hope Award for Best Blog, presented at the 2010 Night of Hope.

Let the what ifs begin, and may this project bring strength in numbers; in the commonalities that run throughout the community despite our unique diagnoses, experiences, and circumstances.

Please help spread word about this project via your own blog.  If you use Twitter, the hashtag is #projectIF.  Unlike last year’s Advocacy Day which necessitated a trip to Washington, D.C., this project can be completed in the comfort of your home and will hopefully have an effect on changing the way the general public thinks about infertility as well as bringing together our community.

As many of you know, Susan at Toddler Planet, is going in for surgery tomorrow to remove lymph nodes under her arm where her breast cancer has recurred.  Instead of talking about Susan’s cancer, we’re going to talk about Susan herself, and her favourite thing–science–as part of Team WhyMommy’s Virtual Science Fair.

Which is easy for her because she is a brilliant astrophysicist.  But I am a lowly MFA who still insists that Pluto is a planet because the new categorization breaks up my mnemonic device (“My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine” doesn’t quite work and sounds as if my very educated mother has whipped out a sexy Rob Marshall film).  How was I going to celebrate science in a way that honoured Susan instead of embarrassed her with my complete planetary ignorance?

Josh gave me a special day (do you do that in your family?  Declare a certain day your special day where you get to choose everything?) to celebrate the book (thank you, by the way.  More news is coming soon, I promise.  I’m just waiting for some things to be set).  So I picked going to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  My intention was to go out tonight and look at the stars, but I realized that I could combine hiking in Harpers Ferry with a nature talk.  And turtles and rapids, while not up in the sky, are certainly part of science.

We spent the day talking about why rapids occur in the river, and why water levels are higher in spring than at the end of summer, and facts about bees (did you know that they fly close to the ground when they are about to die?).  And that’s how we celebrated Susan and sent out love to her and a lot of hope that she recovers quickly from surgery, that the cancer never comes back, and that she can go back to inspiring us to be women who embrace science rather than run screaming from it for many many many years to come (many more years of inspiring us; not many years of us running screaming).

And I think my day is best captured in pictures since I couldn’t bring all of you with me.  So a slice of West Virginia…

Remember how I bought myself a ring a few months back?  Um…this one?

And I said that whenever I complete a big project or have a major life change, Josh buys me a ring or a necklace to mark the moment?

So I sort of completed a project and had a major life change last week.

I sold another book–this time fiction.

It’s somewhere resting between women’s fiction and really delicious chicklit.  It’s coming out next winter (hopefully before Christmas), though details like the date are still being set.  It’s about a blogger, rebuilding her life in the year after her divorce and can be summed up with one sentence: it’s the story of a woman who stops waiting for happiness to find her and starts cooking it herself.

More details coming soon…

You’re going to read it, right?

Armed with your additional car suggestions and a print out of Allison’s ultra-informative Mazda email, we hit the car dealerships on Saturday to do a few test drives.  We loaded the kids’ car seats into the back of the Mazda5 and sat down with the salesman to do the paperwork.

When I gave him my name, which is, as you know, a pretty ordinary name, he gave this half-smile and said, “you know there’s another woman named Melissa Ford.”

I nodded and he continued, “damn, that woman wrote the book!”

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “how is Mel such a strange magnet for other infertile people that she has managed to find a car salesman who has read Navigating the Land of If?”

Um…that wasn’t what he meant.

Allow me to translate since the salesman seemed to continuously drop the risque ends of his sentences: “damn, that woman wrote the book on stone cold sexiness.”

I was not familiar with the other Melissa Ford’s body of work until I noticed one day that my MFA program’s page on Wikipedia had me listed as one of their alumni.  How nice, I thought, and clicked on my linked name to take me to what I thought would be my own personal Wikipedia entry, one that would list Navigating the Land of If and be a receptacle in the future for all my personal accomplishments including getting a one-woman show on Broadway called Jazz Hands (I’m predicting around 2015).

Instead, it took me to a very different Melissa Ford.

Strangely enough, waxing lyrical about soft core porn and music videos (“she’s the video vixen, you know!  Damn!”) with a woman sitting across from you in overalls and clogs does not make for a car sale.

“Yes,” I said dryly.  “I know the other Melyssa Ford.  I believe she makes music videos and porn.”

“It’s not porn!” the man admonished.  “It’s adult entertainment.”  Then he paused for a moment, perhaps remembering his favourite picture and said, “naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, you’re right, it’s poooooooooooooooooooorn.  Damn!”

You know how else I’m really sure that the salesman wasn’t infertile?

As we drove down the highway, talking about fuel economy and ABS brakes, the man called out from the back seat, “you guys going to have any more kids?”

And when he got crickets, he didn’t drop the topic, but instead kept drilling it home with his observations about our family, their genders, our size.

And then switched to talking about meat.

Three favourite topics to cover during car shopping: porn, family building, and meat.

Um…Happy Easter!