Category — Creme de la Creme

Creme de la Creme of 2012

by Mel

For the seventh year running, the ALI community kicks off the new year by celebrating our best posts of the last year.

So what is the Creme de la Creme list if this is your first time here? It was started as a response to the many blogging awards that are given out each winter. I expanded the idea of presenting “the best” to include a post from every blog in the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) world*. Every blogger has a personal best that deserves recognition. As editor of the list, I create the small blurbs after the title which serve as a doorway to the post. I hope they will help you find what you are seeking to read as well as show definitively the diversity of experience and emotion within the ALI community.

In the past, the list has been open for a bit after January 1st, but this year, submissions were only accepted from October 15 — December 15th. If you would like to be on the 2013 list, make sure you look for the opening post in October 2013.

Listed below are the best posts of 2012. As always, happy reading! And leaving a comment on these older posts is not a “may I?” but a “please do.” Comments are how an author knows their words are appreciated. Comments about the Creme de la Creme in general can be left on this post.

The Creme de la Creme of 2012

Our Invisible Travel Companion (from Stirrup Queens): A tribute to her ghost child, an amalgamation of babies-not-born and not-yet children, that follows the author through the streets of London on her trip; an almost corporal being constructed out of ideas, hopes, and disappointments.
Tension Release: From Cranky to Compassionate (from Lavender Luz): A very powerful reminder to never lower yourself to another person’s standards as well as to remember that we all carry with us a story that no one else knows.
Finding Peace in Our Only (from Bio Girl): Finding joy instead of sadness in the number three and being grateful for the son she has rather than focusing on the children she hasn’t.
Grief (from Growing Griswolds): A post about allowing yourself to go through all the stages of the grieving process when dealing with infertility, for recognizing all the losses inherent in the diagnosis.
Perfect Moment Monday: In a Blue Moon (from The Infertility Voice): A beautiful post about the perfect weekend, a time when the author was able to set down all of her troubles and be in the moment, enjoying life and her friends. Her troubles waited patiently to be picked up during the ride home.
The Truth (from Serenity Now!): An incredibly truthful post about simultaneously feeling happiness and pain from someone else’s good news, and whether we can (or should) deny ourselves our real feelings.
God’s Plan (from Our Pathway to Parenthood): A post about how G-d has enriched her life throughout infertility; how the subsequent pregnancy is neither the end of the story nor the beginning but merely a continuation.
The Streak (from The Maybe Baby (Babies)): A very moving post about her father’s death as well as what we do to feel in control of an out-of-control situation. The author weaves running into the fabric of the story as she contemplates the things we do that defy reason and yet take root in our heart.
On Friendship (from MRKH Musings): A very moving post about the author’s inability to form a new female friendship since her diagnosis with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, which changed her whole world and the way she relates to other women.
When, Not If (from BattleFish): Moving back to describing her life in terms of “whens” instead of the “ifs” that have been prevalent in her mind due to her journey through infertility.
Don’t Feel Sorry For Me (from Me… Plus One): A beautiful post giving a more accurate portrayal of single motherhood by choice than that provided in the literature of a family building site. It is about taking happiness into your own hands, cherishing what you can do when you stop waiting and instead take life by storm.
Telling and Talking about Donor Conception (from The Question Now Becomes…): Newly pregnant, a meeting at the Donor Conception Network gives the author the space to think through the baby growing inside, how they’ll speak about the conception with others, as well as finding peace in knowing a support system exists that will help them to celebrate this new life.
(Not) An Old Fashioned Love Song (from Donating Hope): From a broken marriage and a broken heart comes a story of love and change as well as the courage to keep walking even when you don’t know where the path will lead you.
Mental/Emotional Infertility and Its Impact on the Adoption, Loss, and Infertility Community (from The Smartness): The author defines what she calls “emotional infertility” and explains how our mental state determines the support we are capable of giving in the moment.
To Be, Not To Be (from Magpie Musing): A stunning post on how all that came before her daughter made her family into the threesome they are now. Any one element out of place, even the saddest ones, would mean that she wouldn’t have the little girl she has.
Twisted Comfort (from Genuine Greavu): The author finds peace with the way she handled her miscarriage from the Bodies exhibit, especially within the reproduction room.
Sometimes I’m Not Very Positive. . . (from The Redhead Files): A very raw and honest post giving insight into the emotional landscape of a failed cycle after her third IUI.
That Dr. Seuss… He Was on to Something (from Can I Get Some Sugar with These Lemons?): The author tearfully realizes that she “made it to the end. I moved my mountain” as she reads aloud a Dr. Suess book to her son.
Last Friday Night (from Bébé Suisse): A powerful piece about what is truly going on inside the mind of a woman as she graciously congratulations the couple in the room after they announce their accidental pregnancy.
The Vantage Point of Hindsight (from The Destiny Manifest): A must-read post for anyone pregnant that takes the middle road after her child is born still, reminding people that choices need to be made on a case-by-case basis and not to get sucked in to either side of the natural childbirth/hospital birth rhetoric.
When Bloggers Lie About Loss (from OnceAMother…): A gorgeous post that states an important point: “I would rather show compassion and support to someone who turns out to be a troll, than have to live with having compounded someone’s grief with accusations.”
A Year With You in My Life (from Dear Finley): A moving post on the one-year anniversary of discovering her son’s conception, mourning the fact that time is continuing and taking her further from the days when she had Finley with her.
Overjoyed (from Finding My New Normal): The author captures the extreme joy she feels now that her daughter is here, crying the good cries that express the happiness in her heart.
The Mothers (from Lessons from an Infertile Social Worker): A moving post about two mothers — one who has given birth and one who is raising the child, summarizing the pain and joy, peace and anguish in adoption.
Home (from Return to Go): A gorgeous example of how home isn’t necessarily a physical place; it is sometimes a space that we manifest inside or with the people we love, where we can be ourselves, comfortable and safe.
Seven Years (from Not Undecided): The truth of how miscarriages affected the author’s marriage; laying bare the fact that making it through seven years of marriage was not always pretty, but it was always filled with love.
Conversations I Must have with My Daughters (from The Rumour Mill): I got teary reading this perfect post of advice from a mother to her daughters.
Three Years On (from Adventures for Four): Processing a loss three years down the line, the author realizes what she couldn’t in the moment: that after all the sadness would come a different but equal happiness.
Beyond the PAIL (from Family Building with a Twist): A post about how the author doesn’t feel as if she belongs in the infertility community anymore now that she is a mother but also feels an otherness as she navigates the world of parents who have conceived without issue.
I Am Childless, Hear Me Roar (from The Road Less Travelled): The growing and powerful voice of women living child-free after infertility, and the important ways they’re letting out a mighty roar.
Simple When It’s Anything But (from Life From Here: Musings from the Edge): A mother navigates a question from her daughter over dinner: why didn’t I grow in your belly? She gracefully unfolds the answer in small increments, giving her child what she can understand in the moment.
Where There’s Tea, There’s Hope (from Sunnydaytodaymama): The author’s hope may have disappeared for a bit, but it returns in a new form within this post.
It Shouldn’t Have Been So Hard (from Production, Not Reproduction): A post about taking that first step to treat post-adoption depression; the deep breath that was taken at the doctor’s office when the author circled the answer to the question, asking for help.
How I Cope with Pregnant Women (from Non Sequitur Chica): The author explains the very healthy ways she has of thinking and processing pregnancies happening around her as she experiences infertility.
Wanted for Robbery (from No Baby Ruth): Until she can leave the limbo of infertility, the author feels the situation suffocating her passion. She mourns the loss of excitement and energy from her life.
Fading Away (from A Single Journey): A haunting post realizing that in the same way that the memories of a friend who died have faded from her mind, so is the dream of becoming a mother one day.
The Pregnancy Factory (from Little Chicken Nuggets): Now that the situation is different, now that she is the one sitting in the ultrasound waiting room rather than visiting the pregnancy loss clinic down the hall, the author wonders about the other patients and realizes that perhaps their journeys were not as blissful as she assumed.
The Deets! Part 1 (from Knocked up by Another Man): The author is chosen by another blogger to be the recipient of her frozen embryos, and she tells the story of how she went from despair to hope.
An Adoptee’s Perspective: 10 Things Adoptive Parents Should Know (from Diary of a Not-So-Angry Asian Adoptee): A fabulous post of advice for adoptive parents given by an adoptee.
Family Building (from Blawnde’s Blawg): How does one know when they’re ready to try for a child again? The author muses about what she thought her family was going to look like and holds that against the reality of what family building is like for them.
Fear (from With Just a Little Help): A post about the fears inherent in infertility; the fear of another BFN, the fear of a positive and all the worrying that entails, and mostly a fear of living with all of that fear day in and day out.
Can You Imagine Not Having a Child? (from Baptism by Fire): The author leads the reader through imagining life without a child, bringing understanding to what it is like to live child-free after infertility.
A Response From A Childless Friend (from If You Don’t Stand For Something): After an advice columnist answers the question of what mothers do all day, the author pens her own response of how childless women hear and process the work description of being a mother, begging for understanding for the other side too.
1000 Oceans (from A Thousand Oceans): A powerful post reflecting on the final days as a family of four before her water broke and Naava and Aminadav were gone; how time split into two parallel universes, one where she still has her babies and one where she is 1000 oceans away.
I Will Never Move On (from Happiness at the Core): The author explains the problem with the term “move on” when it comes to continuing after the loss of a baby, and she instead uses the more accurate term, “live on.”
Uncomfortable Thoughts (from The Misadventures of Missohkay): A both amusing and enlightening post about a conversation the author never expected to have with an unkempt man on the train in regards to her daughter.
High Risk (from Breathe Gently): The author learns that her pregnancy has become high risk and there is a chance that something is wrong with her baby, but she opts to not continue with screening or diagnostic tests because she knows their answers will not change her path.
The Half Full Cup: Three Years (from Mama On The Fly ): A moving post about trying to find a way to celebrate a very complicated birthday for a child she inadvertently carried for another couple, a child who she is still parenting with her heart. This post highlights the complex formations of love: sometimes it takes the shape of a straight line, and sometimes it becomes a jagged, twisting shape, ensnaring or cradling us.
Intangibles (from MoJo Working): The author discusses a mental shift, away from coveting babyhood to seeing the bigger scope of all the stages of life without children. She touches on an important distinction of wanting a baby but wanting a family more.
Bereaved Moms Club (from BH Mom): With her daughter born still, all she has are her dreams to imagine a life that would now include the teenage years. It’s about acknowledging the what ifs for a moment.
What Makes the Elephant Charge His Tusk in the Misty Mist, or the Dusky Dusk (from A Passage to Baby): A post about finding courage and dipping back into a time when she felt braver as she embarks on part of her cycle alone in India.
Now You See Me, Part 2 (from Dragondreamer’s Lair): An attempt to bring comfort to a friend who lost her child brings the author her own lifeline to get through her own losses down the road, one stitch at a time.
What Dreams May Come (from The Elusive Second Line): Dreams of her future first-born son fill her mind, keeping at bay other options to parenthood because they do not match the little boy that visits her when she sleeps, the boy she knows she is meant to parent.
Once Upon a Visit, Every Time a Visit (from My Lady of the Lantern): A moving post about returning to the hospital where her child died for a doctor’s appointment for her second born. Seeing the doorway to the NICU fills her with thoughts about the child she never got to cuddle close and where her wishes land as she blows them into the air.
Forget (from Kmina’s Blog): As much as we want to remember, our brains cannot hold on to the reality of caring for a new baby, and so we are surprised anew with each child as we become the center of their universe.
Stronger, Braver, Smarter… (from Fertility Lab Insider): A must-read post if you are struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel that promises you that within infertility, “you are stronger than you seem, braver than you feel, and smarter than you think.”
Dawn Warblings (from Aerotropolitan Comitissa): Two perfect parables that will bring you comfort and understanding.
No and It is OK (from Musings of a Hormonal Egg Basket): Discovering that it is the stomach flu and not a miraculous natural pregnancy causing her nausea makes the author think about her frozen embryos and how she both wants to be reunited with them as well as fears the process of attempting pregnancy again.
Lessons My Toddler Teaches Me (from Destined To Be An Old Woman With No Regrets): A great post about how without many words, the author comes to an agreement with her toddler that allows them both to have what they need, even if it takes double the amount of time to get where they’re going.
A Surprise from the Universe & the Slippery Slope (from Glitter & Rainbows): One of the most original posts I’ve read all year comparing leaving family building to quitting smoking.
Believing in the Unbelievable (from From IF to When): A post that captures the amazement of the author who didn’t know if she’d ever become a mother and now, a month after having that thought, is writing about her daughter.
Waves Crashing (from Metholic’s Blog): The memory of getting hit by a giant wave when the author was younger becomes an analogy for navigating pregnancy after infertility, as she discusses how one continues to enter the ocean even knowing all the possible dangers.
Infertiles of the World Unite (from The Barren Librarian): The Pain Olympics become a source of sadness for the author who is simply looking for comfort and not competition as she navigates infertility.
Flicker (from Ana Begins): The bitter and the sweet of your children growing up, becoming more independent and capable of doing fun things, and yet also no longer being the sweet, cuddly babies they once were.
Unhappy Birthday (from Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms): A dark post for a dark birthday. The author doesn’t want to celebrate her 35th birthday and reflects on where she thought her life would be at 35.
I Licked Him (from My Foxy Family): A fabulous post of trying to discern what is real and what is a dream when the author is finally holding her child in her arms.
This Is It (from Kate in Monet’s Garden): The author sums up a loss perfectly by saying, “We’ll try again. Obviously. But I’ll always have this one with me, in the back of my mind.” A moving post about a baby who should be here.
The Women I Respect The Most (from The Brooding Woman): The author reflects on the two other infertile women in her family — her mother and her aunt — one of whom went on to have children and the other who remained child-free.
A Journey (from Monkey Soup): The author comments that when they chose adoption to grow their family, they didn’t realize how much their outlook on life would be changed by the experience, but happily it was.
Rebellion (from Unexplained Rantings): For years and many miscarriages, the author has not been herself, squelching all of her favourite things in an effort to control the uncontrollable. This is a post about letting go, with gorgeous red locks.
Order (from This was Supposed to be My Symphony): The author’s neatly organized life is turned upside down by infertility, and she explains how painful it is to stand there, waiting your turn, and be left five years later still without a child.
Peeing on Schrödinger’s Cat (from Ova Achiever): An ode to Schrödinger’s pee stick, as the author debates whether or not to test before the beta, worrying that testing early will somehow create the negative, whereas currently she is both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time.
I Am (from Thought Provoking Moments): A poem is created as the author fills out a series of questions answering who she is, what her heart wants in this fight.
Social Media and the Modern Family (from Manapan’s Space): An amazing story about how social media — namely, Facebook — brought the author together with her biological father and half-siblings.
Turning Sour into Sweet (from Searching for Our Silver Lining): Instead of being sour for what went wrong, the author is making life sweet again by taking control of how she views her infertility.
Bigness, Mercy, Unicorns, and Babies (from I Can’t Whistle): An awesome post in the true sense of the word — capturing the awe the author feels watching her child, understanding that time is marching on whether she is ready or not.
Falling While Thinking of Squirrels (from Eighteenyears): A fall during a run drives home an important lesson of never knowing what will come next, hence why we need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Good Grief… Why Do I Feel Guilty? (from Mommyhood After Fertility Frustration): A post exploring the guilt that is inherent in infertility — guilt over the way the author emotionally reacted to their lot, guilt over reaching parenthood when others didn’t, guilt over all the haves and have nots.
Things I Would Say (from Julie’s Junk Drawer): 10 wonderful pieces of advice the author wishes she could go back in time and tell the version of herself from three years ago who was just setting out on her family building journey.
Heaven Will Hold Them (from Teach Me To Braid): A very moving post about the loss of her son; of waiting to tell the nurse he had been born because it brought them closer to the moment when he would be taken away, of viewing the pictures they took and realizing they could never capture the moment.
Overworking It (from My Lazy Ovaries): The author stands at the crossroads, needing to make a decision. Will she go in one direction which includes attempting IVF with donor eggs or will she choose to live child-free? This post unpacks the decision.
A Little Bitter (from Life Of An Army Wife): The author expresses her frustration at learning that a fellow blogger kept her pregnancy a secret for 14 weeks, but then realizes that the lack of support from the blogosphere at times feeds that situation.
July Poem (from Something Out of Nothing): A gorgeous poem about making a child, about making a father out of her husband in the process, about interconnected life.
An Open Letter To Embryo 9B (from Play It All Night Long): This note from mother to embryo will make you laugh, as well as tear up knowing the outcome of the cycle. It’s a post that makes you want to add your voice to the chorus stating: “please, stay.”
So, You Had You a Donor Egg Baby (from Roccie Road): Pretty much the post she expected to write: her child is here, a product of donor eggs, and like his sister before him, he is so busy simply being that the details we fret over rarely enter the day to day world.
Plagiarizing Frankenstein (from A Chick and Eggs): A post that is both tongue-in-cheek and serious as the author ties together her donor egg cycle with Shelley’s Frankenstein.
A Season of Letting Go (from My Unfolding Truth): A message from G-d telling the author to let go becomes an extinguishing of her passionate desire for a second child, and by the end of the post, she realizes that the message has always been to live life in balance, even family building.
A Not-So Fairy Tale Ending (from Emma in Mommyland): Facebook is the catalyst for revisiting the grief the author felt after the birth of her child, when she struggled to hold it together while experiencing postpartum depression and the social media site became a place reminding her of her struggles rather than bringing comfort.
Balance (from Compromised Fertility): A wonderful post about trying to find balance, especially in a situation where there are so many numbers to obsess over and new pieces of information filling the author’s brain daily.
What You Wanted (from Project Progeny): Four simple words — “it’s what you wanted” — become a minefield as the author navigates daily stresses with two children and the voices in her head in tow.
2 DPO – Filling The Slooooooooowness (from Infertility Can Suck It): A random string of amusing thoughts (ghost farts!) filling her brain instead of focusing on the fact that she is once again in the two week wait.
Emotional Thursday (from Lil M’s Adventures): The author reflects on how hard it was to bring her son into the world, the literal and figurative fights, and how sad she feels leaving him during the week when she goes to work.
I’m Not A Failure, Just Infertile (from Ready To Be A Mom): A powerful post explaining how the author feels about IVF, a procedure that helped her create her child, and how she feels when she hears other people claim they would never utilize the science.
How Infertility Has Effed Up My Head (from An Engineer Becomes A Mom): A very thought-provoking take on why the author doesn’t want to get pregnant now, and the steps she is consciously taking to continue to build their family through adoption even if it may end up being the harder path. It’s a complicated thought that ends up making perfect sense.
How to Survive (from Four Plus an Angel): The author explains exactly how she survived the loss of her child, something she believed she would never be able to make it through before it happened, but then realized exactly how to get to the other side with her grief.
The Yellow Blanket Revelation (from Queen of the Slipstream): A wonderful post, the sort that one takes out and reads over and over again to remember the strength they felt on a single day when the author ran the gamut from accepting the idea of living child-free to deciding to move forward with adoption and realizing this was about something so much larger than the two people in the couple.
Happy (from R. Sativus): The author worries that she isn’t explaining herself well in her post, but the reader can immediately understand her relief of leaving a path that wasn’t working and finding herself on a happier road that will hopefully take her where she wants to go.
The Day The Rowing Machine Turned On Me. Along With Everything Else (from Ladyblogalot): The author becomes stuck on her rowing machine after she goes to workout in order to release some of the pent-up emotions she feels about infertility. The way she becomes unstuck feels like a metaphor for how she can navigate the emotional side of infertility.
Birth Part Two: First Week Freak Out (from Survive and Thrive): The author discovers that how she imagined motherhood is not exactly how her first week of trying to feed her baby turned out. The analogy for parenthood that begins the post is spot-on; absolutely perfect.
IF Is Like a Video Game (from Brave IVF Girl): Gamers of the world, listen up: an analogy for infertility that begins, “Infertility is like a video game where no skill is involved, just luck.”
IVF Etiquette (from Journey to Motherhood – My IVF story): Know someone going through infertility? This is a fantastic list of what to NOT say and do.
The Big Announcement (and It’s Not What You Think) (from Altered Type): A powerful post about announcing to friends and family, in no uncertain terms, that family building attempts are done and the couple is now consciously entering a state of being child-free after infertility.
Healthy Scan, Heartfelt Wedding, Hum-dinger Of A Honeymoon (from Becoming Somebody’s Mum): During an exciting, activity-filled time in the author’s life, she pauses to reflect on the pregnancy she is experiencing with her surrogate and enjoy the moment.
I Hate the Word (from Bickerstaff Blog): When infertility feels like a personal attack by the universe, the author reminds herself that this is just life, even if the label for this life is a word that gets under her skin.
To Those Recovering from a Recent Loss (from Ready for My Turn): Time has been the saving grace in healing the wounds felt by the author after a loss, and she passes on that finding to others who are currently struggling to get through a loss.
Calypso’s Beads of Courage (from The Empty Cookie): The author provides a powerful visual story of her daughter’s life and death in the form of a bead necklace that relays each medical moment of her brief life.
How Can a Husband Support His Wife When Undergoing an IVF Cycle? (from A Pursuit to Perpetuate My Genes): 9 pieces of advice of how a person can support their partner who is undergoing IVF on behalf of the couple.
To Dad (from Stupid Stork): A very moving tribute to the father she loved intensely and lost way too soon.
A Legacy (from Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings): As the author gets rid of the tangible baby items now that family building is done, she realizes that these are just objects and the true legacy will be the support and information she’ll pass along to those who come after her.
Semper Fi (from Bereaved and Blessed): The author recounts going to stand along the route to support the motorcade carrying a fallen Marine, and I cried by the time the cars reached her and the enormity of the loss set in.
Lost and Found (from This Cross I Embrace): A very raw and honest post about feeling resentment when other people announce their pregnancies, and how a message came to the author in a prayer.
Bye Bye Babyhood (from Mud Hut Mama): Sometimes the tangible items mean so much more than their intended use. The author explains how a baby carrier became the bridge between the child she lost and the children alive, the receptacle of all her parenting hopes.
The Chrooster and Young Patch (from Pepibebe | Nurturing By Nature): A fabulous story about the author seeing a bit of herself and her partner in one of their chickens, and how with a simple placing of a fertilized egg, they can try to make their chicken’s dreams come true. I loved this story.
Letter to Myself (from CD1 Again): The author writes a letter to herself when she stops attempting treatments, giving herself the permission to mourn and move on.
The Best and Worst Day of My Life (from FrozenOJ’s Concentrated Life): The author takes the reader through a roller coaster of emotions as she gets her long-awaited positive only to start bleeding the next day.
Shades of Gray (from I’m Just Ducky, Thanks): An understanding takes root at the therapist’s office when the author realizes that while she’d like to be the person who educates the world on surrogacy, that may not be what she does best in life. And more importantly, that’s okay.
Harder But Not Worse (from Bionic Mamas): A post to bookmark and return to again and again whenever you’re in the throes of a particularly difficult parenting day, remembering that while some things are harder with a baby, they are rarely worse. And the author so beautiful explains the pain of parenting to the pain of infertility as “that misery as a rain shower is to the oceans.”
Sitting (from My Angel Baby… Aiden William): A beautiful post about how a mother found peace of heart after the loss of her son, finding the answer in the story of Lazerus.
And Then, a Car Backfired… (from Single Infertile Female): An incredible post that will move you from laughter to tears as the author explains how she went from laughing to crying in the doctor’s office.
Why Infertility Sucks! (from My IVF Journey): A wonderful vent-of-a post unleashing all the things she hates about infertility, that ends most poignantly: “I hate thinking I am a failure when I know I am not…”
Opening Up an Old Wound (from Fearlessly Infertile): A breathless post about having a child-free life plan changed when a call comes about a child coming to their family through adoption, and the need to make a decision whether to proceed ahead or keep the status quo.
Elleanor Jolea Is Born (from Desire to Mother): A very raw and truthful post about being deeply excited and saddened by a friend’s baby’s arrival. It’s about loving and coveting at the same time.
Here Get Pregnant and Take Your Meds (from Adventures, Dreams and Other Painful Things): A frustrating conversation between patient and doctor, where the author is at peace with the idea of a hysterectomy in order to finally put an end to the extreme pain, and the doctor spends the appointment trying to talk her out of the surgery.
Grateful Remorse (from Hapa Hopes): A wonderful, sweet, tiny post capturing a moment of gratitude between husband and wife.
How Life Changes in Two Short (but long) Years (from A Road Well Traveled): What a difference two years makes. The author takes the reader through an early loss to a first set of twin girls, and now continues the story with another set of twins on the way.
I Am Infertile (from Waiting to Expand): As much as the author doesn’t want infertility to be part of her identity and it isn’t a word she wants to use to define herself, infertility is part of who she is and always will be, even after the family building part of her journey ends.
Remembering (from The Chronicles of Violetta Margarita): A sweet post, especially knowing the outcome of the cycle, as the author writes her future child and begs them to stay this time around when they couldn’t before.
Left Behind (from Where Love and Chaos Reign): A breathtaking opening — “Infertility is a thief. It steals so much from so many. And while it gives in many ways, it often gives only to take away again.” — moves into a post about being left behind as friends conceive. An analogy for navigating friendships and infertility.
Trip to London – Day 2 – Coldcon! (from Elana’s Musings): A fun post about meeting some of her favourite people from Merlin at ColdCon in London, making the long trip from the US to England beyond worth it.
A Closer Look (from Window Into Our World): A powerful post that begs the reader to take a closer look at the pink ribbon campaign and learn about what the pink ribbon means instead of affixing it to a lapel and assuming its history.
Wasting Time (from Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…): The extraordinariness of the ordinary; just a mother and child enjoying an hour together, the tiny pleasures and the profound enormity.
Coming To Terms: Honey Lavender Ice Cream (from A Half Baked Life): The author tries to find peace with the idea of stillness, of waiting in the center of the chaos and observing, breathing. She longs for the feeling of movement, knowing at the same time that life often contains these pauses and they — like all other things — are there for a reason if we allow them to serve a purpose.
Next Steps (from Tales of A Cautious Optimist): The author proceeds into her next cycle in shock that the first IVF and FET didn’t work, but she finds comfort in the change in protocol, the entire team shouldering the burden.
The Same (from Here We Go Again): The same bed in the hospital is the birthplace of the author’s two sons; the one who is here and the one who isn’t. The post will make you hold your breath for a moment.
No Man Left Behind (from Mission 2 B a Mom): An important reminder that within all couples, there are two people going through infertility even if the procedures and tests are only being performed on one body. The author cautions not forget the other person on the emotional landscape.
Never Change (from Baby Smiling In Back Seat): The author hasn’t changed visually from her high school days, down to the clothing she’s wearing when she unpacks this fact, though readers will think about the hidden ways we all change over the years.
PSA: Freeze Your Eggs (from Yo-Yo-Mama.com): Once the author receives a 30% chance of getting pregnant from the doctor, she wishes she had taken out an insurance policy on her future fertility and froze her eggs. She offers out this thought to readers to hopefully save them from what she is going through with her diagnosis.
The Pain That Remains (from I Am The Genetic Mule): The author explores the pain of a failed IVF cycle, explaining that it began when she thought of those embryos as promises of future children, and when that didn’t come to be, it was more than just a loss of cluster of cells.
Learning to Fail (from Persnickety Chickadee): As adults, we build our lives around avoiding failure, choosing not to do things that we know we don’t do well. And then we discover we are infertile and simply avoiding family building is not an option. The author explains why infertility hits her so hard emotionally.
Do We Really Choose? (from No Kidding in NZ): The author explains that she sees the choice to live child-free as not really a choice at all; it was the outcome of her limitations and situation. The choice comes later, when she decides how she wants to live her life, joyfully and looking forward instead of backward.
The Silent Misery of Miscarriage (from Rainbows and Rainshowers): The author explains why she doesn’t talk about miscarriages with the people in her face-to-face world though she takes great comfort from writing about them online.
Thank You, Leslie Brown (from Life As I Know It): An ode to Lesley Brown, from one IVF mother to another. The author thanks the first woman to conceive via IVF, as well as remembers the women who went through IVF cycles at the same time and didn’t conceive their baby.
Doing The Math (from Somewhere In The Middle): Though the author struggles with math on paper, her brain automatically and effortlessly calculates the dates and time spans she doesn’t want to think about.
Lucky 13 (from My Life with Endo & Infertility): An unlucky number starts to feel more fortuitous as it pops up in many places, making the author realize that 2013 could be her year to get her heart’s desire.
Homestretch Anxiety (from Relaxed No More): A very honest post about the anxiety that grips the author prior to the birth of her long-awaited child, a child that she worked hard to create and yet can’t help but feel fearful as she faces the unknown of what parenting will actually be like.
Single Motherhood At My Age: My Reality (from My Preconceived Notion): Growing old is hard, the author points out, as she goes through what is happening right now, compounded by the fact that her pain spills over into the choices she makes as a parent without a second set of hands around to help. It’s an honest post about growing older; a venting that needed to happen.
Happy New Year! (from Life with Endo and PCOS): A very happy New Years Day post from exactly one year ago today, stating the author’s simple hopes for the coming year.
Obsessed with Babies (from My Cheap Version of Therapy): The author explains how her anxiety and focus has lessened now that her child is here, moving from occupying most of her waking thoughts and energy when they were trying to conceive, to now being a soft sound in the background as she is parenting.
Be Brave (from Wee Hermione): The author promises the reader that we’re stronger than we give ourselves credit for, and that her bravery is simply an act of committing to what she wants and going for it without regrets.
It’s Like Riding a Craptastic Bicycle (from Wonderfully Ordinary): Bicycle riding becomes an analogy for what it is like to return to treatments after being successful once, from quickly growing accustomed again to injections to that fear that you could always land face down on the figurative concrete.
Prison Blues (from Weathering Storms): An emotional and honest post about the author’s open adoption situation, which includes navigating a relationship with her son’s birthmother who is currently in jail. This wasn’t how she imagined open adoption, and yet she stays true to her beliefs for what she wants for her son.
I Need People to Understand This (from Catching Our Rainbow): The author writes a passionate plea for understanding that she is not waiting to become a mother. She started parenting the moment she saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, even if her children left her way too soon.
Superman, Batman, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (from Old Lady and No Baby): Two sisters, one the egg donor and one the egg receiver, get superhero socks to wear on the day of their procedures, bringing levity (and hopefully some superhuman power) to an emotional situation.
Note to Self: Don’t Look at Me (from Will CarryOn): An emotional post about the days after the loss of the author’s twins, when her milk came in despite efforts to stave off its presence. A post about how she feels about her body, how she can no longer look down at it with the happiness she felt weeks earlier.
Calls to Sterilize Parents of Children Locked in Hot Car Are Wrong and Misplaced (from Cora’s Story): A moving plea asking readers to stop judging parents who lose their children, even those whose children die due to human error. To put that energy instead into helping prevent future deaths from happening rather than condemning those who are already grieving.
It Takes A Village (from Res Cogitatae): Parenthood has changed the way the author views family; has changed the way she views physical distance and what she wants now in regards to her relationships. It’s a beautiful post to end the Creme on, that will hopefully make you also reflect on what is important to you this upcoming year.

Past Creme de la Creme Lists

Like what you read? Peruse an old Creme de la Creme list from the past

*I aim for inclusivity, therefore, if you think you belong on this list, you probably do. From the newly-diagnosed to the treatment vets, from those still filling out paperwork to those with completed adoptions, from those who are trying to choose a donor and those parenting DI or DE kids; those who are completely confused on what to do and those who are peacefully–or not peacefully–living child-free. Biological infertility or situational infertility, being a single parent by choice, straight or gay, young or old — this list is about difficulties while family building, pure and simple.

January 1, 2013 18 Comments

The 2012 Creme de la Creme List is Now Open for Submissions

by Mel

It is the seventh anniversary of the little Creme de la Creme. 277 bloggers participated last year. If this is your first time hearing about the project, this post should tell you everything you need to know. If you’ve participated in years past, you know how much fun the list is when its revealed on January 1st. So, I hereby declare the 2012 Creme de la Creme list open.

I know this is loooooong, but please read this whole post before submitting your entry. Every year, the rules change slightly in order to streamline the process.

If you didn’t read or participate in this list in 2006 or in 2007 or in 2008 or in 2009 or in 2010 or in 2011, the impulse behind this list are the ubiquitous award ceremonies that crawl out of their hiding spaces usually around December or January. Awards are nice — it’s good to honour someone and mark big accomplishments. But we all have a best post tucked into our archives. We all have words that have moved another person or ideas that have kicked off a series of musings. Bloggers are writers, and all of us deserve to be celebrated.

And we’re doing just that.

This is the way it works. If you want to participate, read through your archives from 2012 and choose a favourite post. You can leave all sorts of comments below telling me how fantastic I am, but fill out the form to send in your submission (do not leave it in the comments section–the point of this list is also the surprise of seeing the choices revealed on a single day). If you post your link below, I will delete it. Again, feel free to leave love comments below — in fact, please do leave love comments below — but not your submission for the list. Let’s keep it a surprise until the list is ready to go up.

You can only choose one entry. You cannot be modest. Everyone has a best post. There is no such thing as a boring blog. Even if you don’t think you have any readers because you’ve never received a comment, you have a best post. The one that you felt really good about when you hit publish. The one that would be the post you’d put forward if an editor called you tomorrow and said, “I have this great writing job for you that will pay a million dollars an hour. You just need to submit one blog entry to get this job so we can check your writing style.”

Even if you just found my blog because you read about the Creme de la Creme on another person’s blog, you are not only welcome to submit; you are encouraged. It is the best posts of 2012 for the ALI community and that community includes anyone who writes about infertility, adoption, pregnancy loss, stillbirth, neonatal death, assisted reproduction, pregnancy after infertility or loss, and every related topic — from living child-free after infertility to parenting after infertility. Everyone on the blogroll (or could be on the blogroll) is welcome to participate. Really, you don’t need to be a regular reader of my blog to join in. It’s open to everyone in the ALI blogosphere. I can’t say this in more ways than that. Which means you don’t need to write me a note asking if it’s okay to participate. The answer is yes. Okay?

Actually, it’s not only “yes;” it’s “please do.”

The list will be posted January 1st, and I promise that you will use up a good portion of the beginning of the year reading through the most stunning posts you’ve ever seen. We had 277 posts last year, and I’d really like to top that this year. My goal is all 3000 blogs currently on the blogroll, but barring that, let’s aim for over 300. Which means that not only do you have to participate if you’re reading this, but you need to spread the word and get other bloggers to participate (more on that below). Link to this post, send out a note to other bloggers you like, and suggest favourite posts to bloggers from this past year.

Um… other FAQ-like things:

How many posts can I submit?

You can only submit one. Please don’t submit two and ask me to choose. Submit one.

How will I know that you received my entry?

When you hit submit on the form, you should get a screen telling you that I have my entry. If you don’t see that screen, I don’t have your entry.

I sent in a post last week but I just wrote one that I love more! Can I switch my submission?

The short answer is no. The reason is that I write up the blurbs that appear next to each entry. This takes a lot of time. When you change your post, I have to write another blurb. Therefore, think carefully. But get your post in early so it’s high up on the list. But take your time picking it so you’re positive it’s the one you want on the list. But don’t give this too much thought…

If you just submitted it an hour earlier and realized you sent the wrong link, email me quickly so I can change it. Once I write the blurb, it’s set. I mean, you can pull your blog from the list, but you can’t submit a different link.

How do I know which one is my best?

Think of this list in sort of the same vein as those “Best American Short Story”-type collections except that it’s blog entries and everyone in the blogosphere should be represented with a link. The idea of the creme de la creme is not to put out there “the best” by someone else’s definition of “best.” It’s to put out the entry that means the most to you. Everyone has a best entry from 2012. It’s the one you would cry about if it was ever eaten by your computer. Even if it’s only meaningful to you.

I’m having a lot of trouble choosing my best one.

Why don’t you give a few choices to a friend and get their opinion? Don’t get hung up on the word “best.” It’s more about presenting a small taste of your blog. A lot of people read the list each January and it’s a chance for them to get to know your blog in one post. The goal, of course, is not only to honour every blog, but to also introduce everyone. Think of it like a cocktail party. You certainly think about what you wear, but everything doesn’t hinge on this one outfit.

I want to submit a post about my dog/favourite recipe/vacation in Hawaii. So … er … it’s not about adoption/infertility/loss. Can I? Or I want to submit a post but it has pictures of my baby in it. Do you think this is okay for an IF list?

Well, this list is sort of a pu-pu platter of the ALI community. Therefore, if your post is about your ski trip last winter, it doesn’t really show any emotion, thought, or event flitting through the community. Still, people have submitted off-topic posts in the past. If you have any part of the post that if ALI-related, all the better though.

The second question is a sensitivity one. Personally, I think that babies are part of the community and territory. The reality is that we’re all working towards parenthood or were once working towards parenthood. And children are included in that. I try to always mention in my blurb if it’s about a baby or if there are photos so people are given a heads up before they click over. So, yes, send posts that have photos in it and I will make sure that people know the gist of the post before they click over if they’re in a sensitive space.

I’m a man. Can I participate?

Are you part of the ALI community? Then didn’t you read above? EVERYONE is invited to participate. Male, female, young, old, married, single, gay, straight, everyone everyone everyone.

I’m a minnow. Can I participate?

Er … a minnow with a blog? An infertile minnow with a blog? I guess … I mean … I did say everyone … (but how do you blog underwater?)

I just started my blog in October. Can I participate?

As long as you’ve had one post in 2012, you can participate. Even if you didn’t start your blog until October 2012. Just choose your best from the last two months.

My blog is password protected. Can I participate?

If your blog is password protected and you want to participate, choose your blog entry and create a free blog at Blogger or WordPress and post that single entry. Then send me the link so I can place it on the list. I can’t link to password protected blogs.

When is the deadline for getting in my submission (and this has changed since last year so pay attention)?

To ensure that you’re on the list, please fill out the form by December 15th. No entries will be accepted after 11 pm EST on December 15th.

In the past, the list didn’t close until January, but this year, the list will not be updated after it goes up on January 1st. December 15th is the only deadline, and it is a hard deadline. Meaning, no one will be added who hears about this project after December 15th.

Which is why I am asking you, begging you, pleading with you, to spread word now. Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest it, blog about it, email about it, talk about it with that random stranger in the fertility clinic waiting room. Spread word now because people will not be able to add themselves after December 15th.

Can you post another link to the form right now because I’ve decided to submit.

Sure, here’s another link to the form. Just fill it out and hit send and it will go into the Creme de la Creme spreadsheet.

If you don’t want to participate, do nothing. With the Creme de la Creme List, I never add a blog or highlight a post unless the author has sent it to me. Therefore, no hurt feelings. If your post isn’t on the list, it’s because you haven’t sent one. If you see someone missing from the list after it is posted, go bug them and tell them to submit a post. But don’t send me a note asking me to add them without their permission. I really would like this post to be what the author believes is their best post, but if you are feeling shy and can’t choose, enlist a friend to help you narrow it down and choose your best work.

Lastly, there is another section of the list that needs your help: blogs that closed in 2012. These are blogs that closed entirely — the person stopped blogging and said specifically that they were not going to post any longer — not blogs that went password protected or the person moved their blog to a new space. If you read a blog that closed during 2012, please send me the title of the blog. It doesn’t matter if it was read by one person or read by 5000 people, all blogs should be honoured and recognized. And all blogs stand on the same plateau here.

Spread the word with the following button on a post or your sidebar to encourage others to send a link:

The code for adding the link to your blog can be found here. You can also use the social media buttons at the bottom of the post.

Everyone has a best post. It is your personal best. It is not best by any other standard. Stop comparing yourself. Stop feeling shy. Stop thinking it’s immodest to toot your own horn when I’ve told you to toot your own horn. Start reading through your archives. Reflect on the year. And then send me a link for the list.

Wheeeew. Sorry about that last part. But everyone in the blogosphere should be represented and honoured.

October 15, 2012 19 Comments

Annual Creme de Creme Plea

by Mel

As certain as the CVS leftover candy sale on November 1st or Black Friday post Thanksgiving, this is my annual plea on the day before the opening of the Creme de la Creme list to read the post in full when it goes up tomorrow. Because things change from year to year.

This will be the seventh Creme de la Creme. For those new to the community, the Creme de la Creme list has been the answer since 2006 to those ubiquitous “best of” lists that come out every winter. Instead of honouring a small handful of people, the Creme de la Creme points out that every single one of us has a post that is our personal best post of the year, the one we would be devastated if it were to be accidentally erased. Please don’t get hung up on the word “best.” We are talking about favourites. About the post you love. The one you’d want people to read if they could only read one post from your blog.

Because what the Creme de la Creme list becomes when it goes up on January 1st is a speed dating list. It introduces people to your blog and gives them a single taste of what 2012 meant to you. The point of the list, beyond celebrating every single member of the community, is to also make connections. To help you find new blogs to read. To help people find your blog to read.

If you want to peruse old Creme de la Cremes, you can see 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011.

*******

There are two reasons why I write a yearly pre-list opening post:

1. There is some truth to the fact that those higher up on the list (the list is shown in the order in which the submission was received) receive more eyes on their post. If you care about being high up on the list, you may want to choose your post today and be ready to go when the list goes live tomorrow morning with the submission form.

2. The list will close for submissions on December 15th this year. This is different from all other years when I took submissions after the post went live on January 1st and updated the list. Instead, the list will be closed for submissions at 11 pm EST on December 15th, and every entry will be on the list when the it goes live on January 1st. Which means that if you want to be on it, don’t dawdle.

And it also means that I need your help now to spread word when the list goes live tomorrow. Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest it, blog about it, email about it, tell your sister about it. I am a little worried about closing the list early since I know a bunch of people only find out about it when people start to tweet or blog about it come January 1st. But I also know that I suck lately at getting up the stragglers, and I want all the entries to be together when the list goes live so all will be read.

So… read the whole post when it goes live tomorrow. Then submit your favourite post. And tell other people about the list so they submit their favourite post. And then sit back and relax until January 1st when you get to read the most fantastic post of the year; a condensed, delicious, panoramic verbal view of the ALI community.

October 14, 2012 4 Comments

A Roundup Celebration

by Mel

Rather than point out four or five amazing posts I read this week, I’d like to direct your attention to 277 fantastic posts via an inverted version of the 2011 Creme de la Creme. I inverted it for the simple reason that the people at the top of the list are always read more than the people at the bottom of the list. So this is a chance to dive into all the ones you may have missed at the bottom last year.

There is a second purpose to this uber-Roundup, namely, to put it in your head that THE 2012 CREME DE LA CREME IS COMING. We have been doing this for — G-d help me — seven years. This will be the 7th Creme de la Creme.

It’s still pretty warm here, but it takes me months to put this list together and write all the little blurbs. For those who like to be at the top of the list, you may want to start combing through your archives now and decide which post you would like to use when the list opens on October 15th. It is also a space for a very important announcement: the list will only be open for submissions from October 15th until December 15th. Period. Full stop. End of story. Everyone will be on the list come January 1st, and the list will also be closed at that point to new submissions. It’s simply too hard to get to those later posts, and it’s not fair to those authors because it can be months before they get onto the list.

So this year, please help me to spread word that the list is open from October 15th to December 15th so that all hear and have the opportunity to get on the list. I hate the idea of someone finding out about the list on January 1st and needing to wait until the 2013 list in order to be included. The Creme de la Creme — as always — is open to every single person in the ALI community. Everyone, everyone, everyone: if there is a category for you on the ALI blogroll (and there are 53 categories on the ALI blogroll so one must fit you), you belong on the Creme de la Creme list.

And now enjoy a look back at the 2011 Creme de la Creme in reverse (with the last post submitted first, and the first post submitted last).

A Sample Of My Thoughts (from Life’s Little Reflections): The anxiety inherent in a pregnancy that comes after infertility and loss.
Ghost Child (from Tuesday’s Hope): Three years after the death of her daughter, the author talks about that ghostly presence of someone who should be here as well as the idea that life continues on.
A Day Just Like This (from The Broken Road): A post no parent should ever have to write: a mother and father return to the cemetery to purchase the headstone for their daughter’s grave.
Brinley’s Month (from Brinley Love): The calendar has returned to August, the month in which her daughter died, and she and others keep finding dimes, small messages from her daughter.
Kick at the Darkness (from Sprout): A very powerful post about coming through an extreme depression, from the brink of losing her life, and stepping back into living due to a vision of her daughter who may one day come to be.
Hesitating and Wasting Time (from Relaxed No More): Recounting the beginning of her relationship with her now-husband, the author moves from not knowing if she wants to be a parent to trying to conceive.
Unexpected Help, Unlikely Alliances, and Other Unexpected Surprises on the Journey of Infertility (from The Infertility Therapist): A fabulous post about her husband’s uncle who made all the difference in her world in the days after they adopted their first child in India.
C & B: Love & Seasons (from Little Bird ): A moving post about transitioning from the season of mourning to the season of gentleness, where her heart knows that it can love her son without ever forgetting her daughter.
Support (from The Road Less Traveled): For the first time in her life, the author needs to call on the emotional support of others, and she learns that it isn’t quite so simple. That there are the people who she thought she could count on that don’t come through, and the ones that she never thought would be there and yet are.
To Lose a First Pregnancy (from Dwelling on Dream): The author doesn’t need her journal because the events of the day that she lost her baby are seared into her brain.
Happy 1st Birthday Addie B! (from Addison’s Wings: My Journey to Live Again After a Broken Heart): I cried reading the author’s quiet chant: “Together, we created her, together we said goodbye to her, together we love her, together we miss her and together we celebrated her.” A birthday post for a daughter who is no longer here.
2 Upsetting Issues & Counting (from Love, Loss & Life): A rallying cry of support for a fellow babylost family, the Duggars, in which the author explains just how hurtful the media coverage is for other parents who have lost their child.
Positive Thinking and IVF (from Buck Up, Buttercup): The author points out the dark side of coaching someone that they can control their health with positive thinking and the self-blame that can come out of the message.
Choosing (from This Was Supposed To Be My Symphony): The author notices that life hands everyone crap, and yet people are happy anyway. And in noticing this, she chooses joy over wrapping herself in sorrow.
Just Be Glad You Don’t Live In My Head (from MotherNatureSchmature): Chuckling over the memory of what she thought baby making was going to be like, the author recounts a dream she had about her FET
Transfer Day (from Hubbub): A recount of the transfer day that resulted in the author’s daughter (who will hopefully know the special role lavendar soap played in her conception).
The Social Science of Science (from The Guild of Knitting Kninjas): A thought-provoking post on the duality of reactions people bring to the idea of technology and advancements, especially in the field of medicine.
Just In Case You Thought I Was Normal… (from Beyond the Brick Wall): The author reads to her womb without knowing whether an embryo is in her uterus or has even implanted; a moment of parenting and care that is the first story amongst a lifetime of stories.
Zombie Fetus Watch 2011 (from Dead Cow Girl: Dominatrix Mommy Blogger): A live blog, hour by hour, of a miscarriage, and in its terribleness is also such a helpful resource for every woman who comes after the author who experiences the same thing.
Signs (from What Will Happen Today): A grieving mother looks for signs from her daughter, Ireland, after her loss.
Deeper Still (from Hope In Bloom): An exploration of the author’s faith, even in the face of loss.
Infertility Is… (from Living Our Life In Cycles): A frank and moving account of what infertility is, giving outsiders a peek into the emotional and physical landscape.
So You’re Pregnant and Your Friends Aren’t… Now What? (from Project Open Hearts): Very helpful advice on how to announce your pregnancy while keeping in mind friends and family who may be experiencing infertility or loss.
How Do You Define a Friend? (from The 123 Blog): A post celebrating friendships began online, and holding dear the friends the author has met through her blog.
I Think It’s Only Fair You Know About the Dark Days Too (Part 2) (from I Don’t Ever Want to Forget): A father tells his child the story of what else was happening in their lives (and the world) as they tried to build their family.
18 Months of Change (from Waves Over Stones): Reflections a year and a half after the death of the author’s son as she takes stock in what has changed, what is still the same.
Whirlwind (from Got Love, Been Married, Where the Hell’s the Baby Carriage?): A moving post about the birth and adoption of her son, Isaac, which happened at a whirlwind pace.
No Love Lost (from These Rotten Eggs – An Infertility Journey): An open note to 2011, saying good riddance to a year that has broken the author.
Everything You Can Imagine is Real (from Lovely Transitions): When positive thinking doesn’t come to fruition, the author voices her frustration with the idea that “everything you can imagine is real.”
A Public Service Announcement (from By the Brooke): The rarity of that 1% stillbirth statistic doesn’t really matter when it happens to you, bringing you into that small group that needs the understanding and empathy of the 99%; to make it not a shameful secret but a reality of life.
Isolated… but Not Truly Alone (from My Cheap Version of Therapy): A truthful post about the author’s experience being pregnant after infertility and all the difficult facets that come from having the experience be similar yet completely different from how it would have been if she had conceived on her own timetable.
T Is For… (from Adventures in Infertility-land): Bravely discussing the “T” word, the author explains how uncomfortable she feels using the word termination on her blog, even though she knows it would be helpful for people who find her posts and have gone through a similar experience of needing to terminate a pregnancy when the child will not survive outside the womb.
The Power of Definitions (from Two’s Company. Three’s a Family.): Pointing out the narrowness of definitions, the author expands the idea of motherhood and infertility, making these words more encompassing.
Christmas Post (from Mommyhood After Fertility Frustration): What a difference a year makes. The author recounts Christmases past while looking at her Christmas present which includes her child.
Hatched (from It is What it is (or is it?)): An incredibly important post, through the eyes of an adoptee, discussing the importance of how knowing how you came into the world because that story can have a ripple effect.
Made a Fool of Myself in Public (from The Childless Mom): On a difficult day, when the author was set to solo at the church, the pastor makes an announcement about his own impending grandfatherhood, and she dives into the deep grief she feels after a negative.
A Momma Kangaroo (from Our Little Tongginator): An update detailing the author’s new status as a kangaroo after meeting her new daughter in China and holding her non-stop in her carrier. A post about transitions great and small.
That’s What Infertility Does To You (from Expecting Miracles): A mother via adoption finds herself thinking about pregnancy tests and talks about the complicated thoughts she has about the idea of pregnancy in that current moment.
What’s Up with the Parentheses? (from (In)Fertility Unexplained): An explanation for why the author places parentheses around the prefex of infertility, and why words matter.
I am the Mom! (from Donor Diva: Mother via Egg Donation): Musings on the terms gamete donor and biological mother, wondering how the donation of the gametes translates into a type of parenthood.
The Bug: It Bit (from The Unfair Struggle): As her husband is wheeled away for surgery, the author has a moment of clarity in their infertility journey.
The Birth Story of Jackson Carter (from Miracle in the Making): The perfect description of birth — “I saw my whole heart get lifted onto my belly” — as a mother holds her son for the first time.
Discarded Dreams (from Pundelina Kafoops Lives Here): An emotional post about getting rid of the last of the IVF drugs, a moment that marks a true end for the author.
Charlotte Mabel (from Getting It Sorted): A gorgeous post detailing the personality of a daughter who was gone too soon.
Do You Have Children? (from Justin and Jessica): Every time the author is asked the question of whether she has children, she doesn’t know how to address it in a way that neatly packages the enormity of the answer.
Baby Blues (from She’s One in Amelian): A powerful post about working through that sense of denial and disbelief that comes with an infertility diagnosis.
Depression After Miscarriage (from Bohemian Transplant): After going through a miscarriage on her own, the author compiles a list of advice to help anyone who is experiencing depression after a loss.
Lots of Tears, a Latte, and a Blueberry Scone (from Baby-Making Merry-go-Round): A recount of the time she broke down and cried in the doctor’s office after a very frustrating experience of trying to get answers to her questions, all on the day she should have been having her 8 week sonogram.
Birth Mothers (from Life in the Last Frontier): A post empathizing with birth mothers and the impossibly hard work they do in creating a birth plan for their child.
Identity (from I Can’t Whistle): A gorgeous post about what she isn’t blogging about now that her child is here, even though she still has so much she needs to say.
The Landlord Called… Rent Is Due (from Two In The Mud): After lamenting the costs inherent in family building with infertility, the author talks about a fee that few fertile women think about — the embryo storage fee — and how to even list something like that on her budget.
In-Vitro Fertilization and The Emotions (from Toddlers and Test Tubes): While keeping in mind that no one can truly know what another person is feeling, even if they’ve been through the exact same experience, the author reflects on a woman who came into her life and how that person gave her comfort at the moment she needed it.
I Feel Broken (from The In Between): A friend drops the news of her pregnancy into the middle of dinner, and the author needs to get through the rest of the meal, listening to pregnancy talk while she’s dying inside.
Et tu, Muppets? (from Will CarryOn): With the most perfect line summing up her experience of watching the Muppet movie: “I hadn’t expected something that made me so happy as a child (and yes, as an adult) to make me so sad for not having the children to share it with.”
The First Time I Told Someone (from Roccie Road): The author finds happiness with each retelling of her donor egg story, realizing it isn’t something to hide but simply the unique way her son came into her family.
The Feeling of Happiness (from Trying to Calm): Finding happiness after the storm of many years of trying to conceive.
You’re Pregnant, I Hate You (from The Empty Uterus): A very honest reaction to how the author feels when she hears that someone is pregnant, even when that someone is a best friend.
Waiting for Winter (from Forever a Family): Another warning: you will cry reading this. A gorgeous post about saying goodbye to her son who is dying as he grows; a long, slow goodbye as — like the seasons — he goes from the autumn to the winter of his brief life. She writes, “When the call ended, I gasped and began sobbing. I wasn’t shocked. I knew this was coming, but nothing prepares you for the moment you truly realize your baby is dying.”
Quite the Baby-ful Weekend (from The Future Fords): A beautiful post explaining how she can be happy for her friends and sad for herself at the very same time as new babies come into the world.
What I Would Like Fertiles (And the World At Large) to Know. . . Part 1 (from The Stork Diaries): 10 facts about infertility the author would love the general public to know about our struggle.
HELP! My Biological Alarm Clock is Sounding, and My Snooze Button is Broken! (from Riding the IF (Infertility) Crazy Train): The author laments that while the snooze button has worked at other points in her life, it seems to be broken when it comes to her biological clock.
The First Time (from It Goes On): A heartbreaking post about the author’s first and second miscarriage, about how she came to guard her heart.
Hypocrisy and Choice (from My Preconceived Notion): Responding to the New York Times article on twin reduction, the author implores readers to not judge women who reduce twin pregnancies.
Reflections on Pregnancy and Loss (from Mission: Motherhood): A Jodi Picoult book brings to the surface all the fears the author felt while pregnant, and how relieved she is that all went well in the end.
All Grown Up (from Geebaby): In the wake of numerous Facebook status updates about parenthood that sting, the author asks herself: “do I think being an ‘adult’ is a requirement to parent, or do I think being a ‘parent’ is the ticket into adulthood?”
Why Ask For Help? (from In Due Time): A raw, heartbreaking post asking what is the point in asking for help when nothing can undo what has already been lost.
7/8/2012 (from My Life with Endo & Infertility): A very honest and informative post on how endometriosis has manifested itself for the author.
A Little History (from The Brooding Woman): The author relays the story of two of her sibling’s neonatal deaths and her mother’s two second-trimester losses, holding them up as a fact of wonder, how her parents got through it without being broken.
Are You Infertile? The New York Times Thinks You Are Rich and Whimsical (from Too Many Fish To Fry): A rebel yell to mainstream media to cover infertility fairly and honestly so that the general public can better understand the disease. The author looks at the types of stories the New York Times has posted recently and berates them for pushing an agenda rather than reporting objectively.
Unsuccessful (from Kate; Uncensored): Busting the myth that IVF is an iron-clad solution; that it always works. The author explains how they did IVF three times, and how it didn’t work for her.
The Dark Place (from The Elusive Second Line): A deeply honest post about owning her depression and stating her deepest, darkest thoughts.
Why She Drinks (from Bloodsigns): An incredibly powerful post unfolding the story of why her mother drinks, which really becomes a tale about how we love, and how we sometimes need to hold the world a bit at arm’s length.
It Must Be January 21st! (from Waiting, Wishing, Hoping): Talking about the need for a reboot as she needs every year in regards to her New Year’s resolutions, she relays the story of a friend and how she let the author down, but it’s time to move on and forgive even if she doesn’t really understand.
Eggs (from I’m Polycystitc Inside): Thoughts stemming from a trip to the RE, the author exclaims that we were all just egg cells sitting in someone’s ovaries and the mindblowing idea that we all develop into these unique human beings.
I Wish Someone Had Told Me This (from Our New Plan A): Sage advice from an IVF veteran about the difference between quitting and knowing when you have had enough and need to choose a different route.
The Story (from Adoption Adventures and More): An incredibly story of how the author came together with her son via adoption.
We’re Famous (from Two Hot Mamas): A post explaining what worked for the author and her wife in terms of feeding their child, with the emphasis being a balance of what is best for the child, best for the bio mother, and best for the non-bio mother, honouring all three factors.
One Year and Beyond (from Always Plus One): The author dreads the upcoming one year anniversary of her son’s death; not because the day will be any more painful emotionally than any other day, but because she doesn’t want to be out of that time period when she last had her son.
How Did I End Up In This Crazy Place? (from Finding My New Normal): On the eve of leaving for the United States to have her FET, the author reflects on how she thought she’d get pregnant vs. how it is actually happening.
Critical Thinking: When Is Enough Enough? (from Wistfulgirl’s World): The author asks an interesting question about what applies more to knowing when it would be best to not do treatments: the amount of things tried or the amount of time spent? After a long time waiting, she is ready to parent.
How it All Began … (from Being Joyful Always): A bittersweet post, especially in light of the fact that the adoption is not taking place, about how hopeful she felt when it seemed as if everything was sailing smoothly.
Meet the Rasmussen’s! (from Barren to Bonkers!): The first post of her blog explaining how every moment is now potential blog fodder in her family’s busy life.
Did I Get the Call? (from Recipe for a Family): The author asks the reader to “Imagine if we had no idea how long each pregnancy would be.” A post about the wait during adoption, and how the light on the answering machine captivated her for 19 months.
My Experience with Pregnancy After Stillbirth So Far (from Expectations Revised): A post that is just as much for the author as it is for all the women who need it who come after her; a post about being pregnant again after her first child was born still.
Child Care IS NOT Birth Control (from Desire to Mother): The author explains that while people joke that her job with children should be like birth control, every baby just makes her want to parent even more.
The Weekend Was Not a Total Loss (from KatyStuff): An average sick day at home in the life of a mother of two.
Thirteen Things They Don’t Tell You (from Journeywoman): 13 things the author could have never predicted about how it feels to have your parents get sick.
Right Where I Am: 1 Year, 1 Month (from My Sweet Kenny): With too much on her plate in terms of loss and infertility, the author states exactly where she is with her grief, a raw venting as she processes what has happened, where she is now.
Uhm, is this Thing Still on? (from Baby Wanted: Apply Within): A check in post that explores the idea that her life is not where she thought it would be when she first started her blog five years earlier, and how she wants to be cycling soon as it feels like time is running out.
Getting Over My Fear of the Internet Shut-Up (from Family Building with a Twist): A fear of being told to be quiet or not being read at all keeps the author from freely writing what she wants to write, and she comes to a place of peace by the end of the post, deciding to own to her space.
Between the Paper Sheets (from Between the Paper Sheets): The first post of her blog when the author realized that she needed to write about her journey, and what the paper sheets referred to in the title mean to her.
Dum Spiro Spero (While I Breathe, I Hope) (from Hope Delayed): An exploration of the deep-seeded hope that is as much a life-giving force as her own breaths. And like oxygen, she can’t truly live without it.
I Never Knew (from Life As I Know It): The birth of her third child gives the author insight into how much she didn’t know from the premature birth of her twins, and this insight translates into a sense of loss over what she didn’t get to experience the first time around.
Seventeen (from Now As I Lay Me Down to Sleep…): A warning: you will most likely cry reading this post about doubting second love and then finding it to be special, and how that idea gives her hope as she mourns her son.
Retrospective (from Mina’s Musings): Using your blog as a measurement for how far you’ve come; for proof that things will not always be as they are, in both the good and bad sense of that idea.
Threads (from Knocked up by Another Man): A lovely post about defining the role the author’s egg donor (and her family) play in the life of her son.
Wagon Ride (from Miss Inconceivability): A red wagon is both the tangible reminder and receptacle to the author’s dream of having two children.
Comment Whore Shipwrecked on a Desert Island (from Happy – Go – Lucky): Like many who have been blogging for a long time, the author considers how life has changed for most of the people on her blogroll, and how that has also changed the amount of time people blog and comment. A post both lamenting and acknowledging this new place in the blogging.
Once in a Lifetime (from A Half Baked Life): Weaving in the idea that every day is once in a lifetime, the author talks about bonding with her daughter and the thoughts she has as people return to the classroom now that she is not in academia for the time being. It is about holding tight to the present, to being here in the moment rather than thinking about the past or future.
Feeling Left Behind (from No Kidding in NZ): A fantastic post reframing living childfree after infertility, showing the reality of the option, which is that it is a path that runs parallel and not behind other paths out of infertility. A post about no longer feeling left behind but instead walking alongside.
Too Much (from One Who Understands): The author’s friend thinks she understands infertility based on the movie The Backup Plan, and the author is upset when her friend comments that if she had to do an IUI, she probably wouldn’t have tried for her six children.
Shhhhhh . . . Creeping In . . . (from A Fifth Season): The author comes back to her blog to write out her visit to her daughter’s grave because other than Grief itself, no one else asks or listens to where she had been all day.
On Being The Non-Bio Mom, Or: A Great Big Bundle of Worry (from Bionic Mamas): A deeply honest post from the non-bio mother about how she felt about the idea of parenting before they conceived their son, during the pregnancy, and after he arrived and she held him.
My New Reality (from A Bend in the Road): A visit to a new town and seeing a shrine in the town lays raw all of the emotions the author feels after the death of her daughter.
The Other Side (from Hope for the Best): A lovely post as her son turns two months old recounting his birth story but ends with an admittance that even though he is here, the author can still see the beauty in all the other paths out of infertility, including the choice to live childfree.
When I Grow Up… (from On KK’s Butterfly Wings): Answering that she wanted to be a mother of a living child wouldn’t have occurred to the author in her youth when asked the question of what she wanted to be when she grew up. And she wonders if it would have made a difference to put her foot down and insist that it was what she wanted more than anything.
As Time Elapse…Elapses (from The Maybe Baby(Babies)): On her four year blogoversary, the author recounts going to a Ween concert, and how it’s sometimes better to remember youth than to try to revisit it.
You Gotta Have Faith-a-Faith-a-Faith-ahhhh (from Journey to the Center of the Uterus): Finding peace in her faith, the author explains how she found Jesus and the comfort in knowing that she is part of a larger plan.
Scars (from Do Without Doing): The removal of an external scar is the catalyst for the author to consider her internal, emotional scars from infertility.
New Beginnings… (from My Scar Smiles at Me, I Don’t Always Smile Back): The shattering of a necklace brings peace instead of distress as the author relays two stories that have recently given her hope.
Identity (from Braving IVF): The author quits her job in order to accommodate IVF, but then discovers that she doesn’t really know what to do with her new-found time nor how to talk about why she is out of work.
The Half Truth (from The Long Way Around): The author finds it easier to admit to their losses than it is to admit to their infertility, and she wonders why she can talk about one but not the other.
Music Monday #28 (from Our Life Journey): Jumping off of a song by Matt Hammitt, the author states that regardless of how long her children exist — whether it be for days or many years — she wants them to know how intensely she loves them.
The Infertility Identity (from What IF? ): The author points out that as much as people lament how little is known about infertility, by not speaking openly about infertility, people contribute to that problem. She encourages people to speaking frankly about their struggles in the same way they would other issues.
How We Got Here (from Write, Baby, Repeat): Pregnant after a donor egg cycle, the author busts open the myth that people finally get pregnant after they adopt once her grandfather makes this comment.
Reflecting on 2011 (from The Cornfed Feminist): Trying to finding meaning in the time it is taking her to get pregnant, the author points out that if she had gotten pregnant when they first started doing medicated cycles, she would have never started blogging about infertility and found this community.
Tough Stuff (from Under the Same Sky): A truly heartbreaking and ultimately beautiful post about how the author came to understand and find comfort in a behaviour she once couldn’t comprehend in a patient. A post about the ways in which we cope with loss.
A Maternal Moment (from Just Let Go): A fairly gross moment with her dog let’s the author know that she has what it takes to become a mother.
Inside/Outside Box (from Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms): An exercise in designing an outside/inside box gives the author the space to mourn the twins she couldn’t adopt. A post about what deeply affects us despite the fact that we think we’re holding it at bay.
You Can’t Rush Grief (from Marriage 2.0): Grief comes in spirals; just one of the many lessons the author learned via her divorce and miscarriage, especially that grief cannot be rushed and is felt on its own timetable.
Never Is a Promise (from Les Terres Fertiles): Using Fiona Apple’s “Never is a Promise” to discuss infertility, the author grasps onto the idea of not fearing her dreams.
Birth Story! 10/6/11 (from A Road Well Traveled): A happy ending to a long journey — the birth of her twins from the water breaking to delivery.
The Universe is Trying to Break Me, But I Think I’m Already Broken (from For We Are Bound by Symmetry): With the soundtrack of another couple’s child’s heartbeat playing in the background, the author endures the annual exam from hell.
Am I Being Selfish? (from Searching for our Silver Lining): Turning the idea of the selfishness of fertility treatments on its head, the author ultimately points out that parenting itself is an act of great selfishness and selflessness at the same time.
One Year (from Love Life Project): The central question — whether the author is a mother despite not having her child alive — is answered by a slip of paper she leaves as a message to a future reader of a pregnancy loss book at a store.
What Not to Say to Someone With an Uncooperative Uterus (from Words and Pictures): An amusing post illustrated in clay figurines of the 12 things you definitely don’t want to say to someone struggling with infertility.
We Started a List of Names (from All I Ever Wished For…): A sad, almost dreamlike post about finding an empty sac after their IVF cycle, the one where they started to dream of baby names and plan for the future.
Interrupted Path (from Infertile In a Fertile Land): The author applies lessons learned from September 11th and her interrupted trip plans to her currently interrupted family building plans.
Thanksgiving (from Not Just an Army Wife ): As a fourth holiday season rolls around, the author asks when it’s going to be their turn to give a child a first Thanksgiving or Christmas. A post about finding thankfulness.
A Day Like Any Other (from Words Fly Up): The author doesn’t need an anniversary to miss her unborn children; it happens every single day of the year. A moving post about how that love doesn’t change with the calendar.
Thank You B. (from Nursing Infertility): A moment where the author’s husband stepped forward and supported her so fully that she knew without a doubt that all would be fine in the future.
Musings on Thanksgiving Day (from BIAGO – Baby, If All Goes Optimally): Written during a two week wait, a post imploring ALI bloggers to not feel pregnancy guilt if they’re lucky enough to get two lines.
Mythbusters: The Glowing Tomato (from Cradles and Graves): What does one do with their leftover syringes? A few creative ways (as well as some mindblowing facts) about how one couple put their syringes to other uses.
Dear Abby: You’re NUTS–Fostering is Not a Solution for Infertility or Adoption (from Creating a Family): A scathing response to Dear Abby’s not-too-informed advice counseling people who can’t afford adoption.
The Latina Factor (from The Corrocks): In addition to dealing with the common emotional elements of infertility, the author explains how the norms within her culture additionally come into play.
The Silence of Suffering (from Home Grown Love): The author makes a great point that in olden times, a woman who wasn’t having children after a certain point in marriage would be understood to have a medical issue and people would behave accordingly. Whereas in the modern age, she is subjected to hurtful comments.
An Orange, a Grapefruit and an Ass Hat (from Scrambled Eggs): A morphine-laden post depicting life from a hospital bed with OHSS.
Face Down Ass Up, That’s the Way We Like To… (from Exploring Chaos): Since her IVF cycle failed, the author’s normally mountainous sex drive has tanked and she wonders how to get her mojo back.
Tagged with Infertility (from Close Encounters with Fertility Treatment): In the same way that a blog post can be tagged, the author and her husband have been tagged with the term “infertility” and it has changed the way others scan them as well as how they see their own identity.
21 Guns (from From IF to When): An incredible post taking the song “21 Guns” and using it to explain why the author is so tired of fighting people about the disease rather than fighting the disease itself. It contains this chilling line: “Sticks and stones never hurt my bones. Words did, a little. But taking away my womanhood ruined me.”
10 Reasons Why Dogs are Better Than Kids (from Survive and Thrive): An ode to the author’s dogs; she recounts the numerous reasons why they top kids.
Everything Baby (from My Life in a Nut Shell): Not trying for a bit gives her both the space to breathe as well as a pit of sadness as life continues around her.
Take These 14 Simple Tests Before You Decide To Be Infertile (from Womb For Improvement): In the spirit of a popular meme, an amusing post about the 14 simple tests you can do before you “decide” to be infertile. Hint: have 50% of your friends pregnant and the other 45% trying to conceive so you always have a steady stream of pregnancy announcements.
Emotionally Ok… Mostly (from The Kay Khronicles): A tiny post admitting that after her loss, she is not emotionally okay.
Top 8 Reasons for IVF Stress… (from IVF Success Stories – Overcoming Infertility): The eight most common moments for stress during IVF including fertilization reports and betas.
Footprints (from Wonderfully Ordinary): A post that will make you smile about how the carpet in her guest room has changed — at least how she vacuums it — now that she has a baby.
Remembering (from Slowmamma): An incredibly moving post about her son’s identical twin brother who died and how she carries his memory.
Baby Making Roulette (from Single Infertile Female): Frustrated by the fact that the author is clearly ovulating and there’s no sex to be had in sight, she laments that she wishes there were more options for her beyond always waiting for IVF.
Miscarriage = A Broken Heart (from The Redhead Files): Getting the details off her chest, the author places all the small moments from her miscarriage on the screen.
Five Years Gone (from Life From Here: Musings From the Edge): Capturing the paradox that exists — her daughter would not be with her if she hadn’t lost her son — the author discusses how grief looks down the road, not realizing as she writes that she is nurturing another life.
9 Months of Grief (from Wegen Tales): The author points out the other situations that are resolved within nine months and asks why grief can’t work in the same manner. A post about finding her strength in her religion.
It Never Occurred to Us That It Wouldn’t Work (from Rasta Less Traveled): In a raw post, the author admits that she never thought her surrogacy cycle wouldn’t work, and when it doesn’t, she is devastated.
My Guardian Angel (from A Blanket 2 Keep): The author shares with a friend that she is infertile and receives back all the support she needs.
The Gift (from MoJo Working): In the loss of her child, the author finds a reason to leave her old life behind, grab her husband’s hand, and run into their new life together; a gift that she admits comes from that loss, something her child gave her.
Adoption is Like a Roller Coaster Ride (from Fearlessly Infertile): A post comparing the adoption process to riding a roller coaster, that ends with a decision to ride this journey with her arms up in the air.
What a Difference a Year Makes (from Waiting for Little Feet): The author explains how she used to live with infertility vs. the space it takes up in her life now, choosing to focus on the present rather than only halfway participating in her life.
Four Months (from Fireworks and Rainbows): The author only got 33 hours with her child, and this post encapsulates her anguish and longing for her son.
Public Service Announcement and Symptom Updates by DPO (from Waiting Expectantly for the Unexpected): A reminder to readers about why the author blogs, what the blog is, and what it isn’t.
Brave (from Still Life with Circles): An injection at the doctor’s office brings all of her daughter’s emotions to the surface in a post that explores what it means to be brave and strong; the impermanence of life.
Living With Courage (from A Second Line): After the author almost loses her life in childbirth, she explains how she came to her philosophy to live without fear.
Working Toward the “Known” (from Weathering the Storm): The author is ready to move away from treatments, but her husband’s heart is still set on continuing on this path. She asks the reader how they decided to stop treatments.
Me and the Cuckoo Baby (from Grit and Patience): Using the analogy of the cuckoo bird’s behaviour, the author admits her anxieties about her donor egg baby not quite fitting; not just in size, but inside her heart, until she reassures herself with others she loves who are not biologically related.
Head in the Sand (from Detour): Dr. Google, the author explains, can be a blessing as much as it can also be a curse for the anxious, and she encourages women to speak up to their doctor if they have the symptoms for endometriosis.
The Spiraling Insanity (Part I) (from Fox In The HenHouse): A raw post about what it was like for the author to experience an ectopic pregnancy, the conflicting emotions and the physical aspects.
Love Letter to My Chemical Pregnancy (from This is More Personal): A note from mother to child as her pregnancy ends, telling her embryo that it is the first time she has gotten to experience pregnancy; that its very presence has brought her hope.
Facebook Killed the Blogger Star (from Our Family Beginnings): In a goodbye post, a blogger signs off for the time being after completing her family. Loving a site enough to know when it is time to leave it.
Acrostic (from Infertile Fantasies): Taking apart the words “fail” and “win,” the author dissects the highs and lows in parenting, examining what is working and what is not, and reminding herself that it is a long journey.
Choices of Marriage (from A Life of Choice): Speaking from a place where her marriage has come from a difficult period onto much smoother ground, the author considers what worked for them.
AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh! (from Things get IF’fy): An amusing post fast-forwarding to life in the nursing home and how the author thinks she might react to people talking about their grandchildren as well as having that need to pretend to still be stimming when she’s old and grey.
Secret Fears (from My Lazy Ovaries): A very honest post about the author’s secret fears about infertility; whether her past thoughts are somehow sabotaging her current efforts as well as whether she is attempting to build her family for the “right” reasons.
I Thought We Were Suppose to Support Each Other! (from The Rocky Road to Motherhood): Pointing out the darker side of the ALI community, the author implores bloggers not to stop reading and supporting someone once they make it to pregnancy or parenting. A post about how we need more caring and less judging.
Who Would Have Thought? (from 1tsp grace): A brief, sweet post about the difference a year makes.
Sibling Rivalry (from Compromised Fertility): The author returns to the sibling rivalry she felt as a child when her sister mentions that she is going to try to get pregnant right after her wedding, and she has a sinking sense that this will probably go easily for her sister even though it has been difficult for her.
36 Eggs – What the?!?! (from Donor Eggs Journey): A beautiful post about meeting her son’s egg donor when they return to see if they can create a sibling for him. She describes the interaction as well as how she feels seeing her son’s features on this woman’s face.
On Becoming the Crazy Infertile Lady (from Getting There): The author jokingly fears that she is nearing her point of becoming a crazy infertile lady and provides a list of the five signs that will show she has gone over the edge.
You Must Give Up the Live You’ve Planned In Order to Find the Life That’s Waiting for You. (from A Fine Mess): The author kicks infertility to the curb (and beats her ass for good measure) through the song “Stronger” by Sara Evans.
Six Weeks and Peace Remains (from Our Life & God’s Plans): How one woman finds peace with G-d after receiving their infertility diagnosis.
Breaking Up with Treatment (from Searching for the Missing Piece): A post about how difficult it is for her to breakup with treatments, even though the author knows that it’s the right choice for her. Using the analogy of a relationship, she tries to explain why it is so difficult to walk away.
The ART of Conception (from Sybil and Alex): A helpful post about the science behind conception, and how treatments and medication aid in the creation of a life when a woman has PCOS.
Mommy’s Garden (from Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed): Retelling a story that a friend told her, the author gives a parable for how to explain donor eggs to a child.
So, It’s *THAT* Day, Eh? (from Hobbit-ish Thoughts and Ramblings): While others ask the author if she is excited for her first Mother’s Day, she explains that this moment feels anticlimactic considering that she has already considered herself a mother even when the rest of the world didn’t.
In The House I Built (from My Star In Heaven): A gorgeous analogy to life as a home, with her focus being the figurative room that should have held her daughter.
My Brother In-Law Vince (from A Single Journey): A moving post that goes from the inappropriate thoughts she has during the church service to finally understanding why a woman at the church asks for the same prayer every week.
Tolerant of the Intolerant (from Erat Mama): A post about the ignorant things people say and protecting your future children from other people’s hate. A beautiful look at the idea of being tolerant of the intolerant.
Journey (from Adventures of Taderbaby): A story about trying again after infertility. The author relays the story of being pregnant with their current child, and how it went from feeling hopeless to full of hope.
Confessions of an Infertile (from The 2 Week Wait): The discrepancy between the truth and how we answer questions about infertility. A fantastic vent about the thoughts that she never feels right releasing.
Dust in the Shadows (from Cullen’s Blessings): A breathtaking, brief poem about the death of her child.
On “Giving Up” (from Bodega Bliss): A very important post to read about what the author has learned about the concept of giving up. She writes: “It turns out I was wrong all along. This isn’t giving up. This is knowing when you’ve done all that your heart can bear.”
Dear George (from Burble): A beautiful letter from parent to child about missing him while still feeling his presence everywhere she goes.
Backstory (from Donating Hope): The author looks at how her first marriage still continues to haunt her life to this day without her realizing it before this point. A beautiful post about the decisions we make and what the heart wants.
Contraception (from Ginger and Lime): A sobering look at how we believe we have control, and how much is actually out of our hands. A post about everything the author thought about getting pregnant, and the reality of how little they needed birth control in the end.
The Power of Our Love (from Dragondreamer’s Lair): A beautiful post about the quilt a community came together to make for one of their own, and the woman who spearheaded the project providing the behind the scenes story.
On Wanting More (from Manapan’s Space): Even while being grateful for what she has, the author admits that having her son doesn’t erase what came before nor keep her from wanting more.
Forget Weddings and Baby Showers…..IVF Extravaganza is all the New Rage (from Petri Dish Chronicles): Going through the fine details such as wardrobe and celebration drinks, the author compares being a bride-to-be, a mother-to-be, or a woman going through IVF and finds the winner.
Confessions of an Infertile Mother-to-Be (from The Stork Drop Zone): A deeply raw post about the reality of surrogacy; the losses inherent in the process even while keeping your eyes on the end result. A very honest post about the experience.
Well, If My Chart Didn’t Say “Crazy” Before, It Does Now (from Three Cats and a Baby): The author explains how anxious she is about an impending appointment with her doctor after her hysterectomy, and why she put it off for so long. A post about the phone conversation with the office after she mentions her 10-month-old son.
Thoughts on BFP Blogs (from The Chronicles of Violetta Margarita): Sound advice on writing after your infertility blog turns into a pregnancy or parenting blog.
On Luck (from Meier Madness): Since good luck has found her at other points in life, the author assumed that ease would be the case in building her family and grapples with whether or not luck will find her again.
Bust a Myth (from Mommy Mahem): Busting an infertility myth, the author explains how parenting after adoption adds additional layers, and that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to family building issues.
My Infertility Manifesto (from Notes from the Ninth Circle – Jessie’s Infertility Journal): A manifesto about how she is dealing with infertility, and how what she is feeling is completely normal considering the circumstances.
Father’s Day (from Chasing Rainbows): On Father’s Day, the author gives a small prayer of thanks to her son’s donor, who — while not his father in any sense of the world — still is important to her because without him, her son wouldn’t be here.
Mommy Balancing Act (from The Subfertile Frugalista): The author admits that she doesn’t balance motherhood well, pointing out all the places where she is lacking, all the while cognizant that in the place that is most important to her, she is completely present.
Don’t Bet on 14 (from Where Love And Chaos Reign): After getting positive pregnancy tests at 10dpo, she discovers her hCG is 14, and two days later, only 11. A heartbreaking post about loss.
Stretch Marks (from The Lotus Flower): The stretch marks that she despised during pregnancy become a loving mark of her motherhood after the loss of her daughter. She explains that it is okay that her body will never be the same again, since she will never be the same again after this loss.
How to Explain to Someone What IF Feels Like (from The Port of Indecision): Using the acronym “bitch, please,” the author gives 11 facts about how infertility affects a person deeply.
Is This What Healing Looks Like (from Once A Mother…): Jumping off the concept of what it means to heal after losing a child, the author talks about what gave her the strength to continue living. And how in living itself, she came to heal albeit with scars.
Crazy Cat Lady (from Somewhere in the Middle): After the sting of a friend’s comment that the author has become a Crazy Cat Lady, she embraces the idea of how much her cat means to her, especially the love he gives her when she is down.
My Baby Has a Grandma (from Plan B(aby)): A warning: you will cry reading this post. A beautiful story about the daughter she lost, Naomi, and how in naming her after the loss, it led to a larger story of the people we know on earth and the moments perhaps that come after death.
Happy Independence Day! (from Babylicious Tales): On Independence Day, the author applies that concept of freedom to all the choices we have as infertile women on ways to get to parenthood as well as how to parent once we get there.
Slowly Losing My Sanity (from Which Way To Baby): The madness that is the first days after a positive beta; the hope and anxiety that mark the experience.
Infertility 101 (from This Space For Rent): Doing away with infertility myths, the author focuses on the facts of infertility including how many people are affected and how relaxing doesn’t make babies.
Being a Shut-In, or How Big is Home? (from Where Do We Go From Here?): The story of how her world expanded and contracted, due to infertility, and the comfort that comes from knowing a space — no matter how large or small — extremely well.
Accepting That This is the Path We’re On (from Invisible Mother): As much as the diagnosis is difficult to hear, the author explains why it also brings her peace to be fighting for a baby rather than fighting to not have a problem named.
The Luckiest (from Monkey Soup): Redefining the term “luck,” the author explains how this is a loaded word within adoption and alternative ways to look at it.
The Art of IVF (from Dear Infertility): Like cooking and baking, other art forms and lithography, IVF requires the doctor to both know a formula and leave it in order to accommodate all the tiny details that make a unique human being.
Comfort Zones (from Skytimes): The Internet becomes the mental space she needs as much as the physical space to find her sense of comfort.
Boxes and Dust Part 2 (from A Woman My Age): Going through mementos from the past, the author admits that the tiny reminders of infertility still get to her.
Right Where I Am: 12 years, 9 months (from The Road Less Travelled): Participating in a project of where she is in her grief at this very moment, the author relays the 13 years between the loss of her daughter and now. It is a bittersweet post about love, about noticing the ways we differ, and the price that was paid to have the life she has now.
How I Look At Children (from First Time Twins): The author explains why she may come across as someone not fond of children despite how much she wants to have children, providing an excellent analogy to brownies to boot.
Remember When Nancy Kerrigan Got Hit In The Knee And She Was Sobbing “Why Me?” Over And Over? Yeah. I’m Trying To Avoid That. (from Eggs In A Row): A great post using the story of Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan to put her sister’s pregnancy (and attending her shower) into perspective.
Am I Delusional? (from Diaries by Lucy): An explanation of how different IVF is this second time around, with the emotions of their first foray into treatments gone after the birth of their son.
The Butterfly (from Team Baby): An incredibly moving post about a butterfly found in the backyard that serves as a reminder of her embryos that didn’t make it.
Infertility Is Just Like A Fatal Disease, Only Worse. (from Becoming Parents): Explaining how infertility is fatal, killing the dreams you once had of your life, the author writes, “This disease is every bit as fatal as cancer, only with one horrible caveat — at the end, you physically remain alive and will spend the rest of your days on earth mourning the death of the life you always wanted.”
Frustration (from IF In Big Sky Country): An incredibly frustrating interaction with medical staff who take their time to convey that the author’s husband has a tumour in his kidney. The first post about the cancer that was part of their year.
A Year and A Half (from Baby Shmaybe…?): A catch-up post coming 18 months after her last post, the author tells the story of conceiving and delivering her son.
One Year Ago (from Even Miracles Take a Little Time): Instead of focusing on the day of birth, the author retells the day of her child’s conception, the IUI that brought her son to life.
The Girl I Used To Be (from The Misadventures of Missohkay): A wish that she could go back in time and warn herself of all she would endure in the course of a year. A post about the dates that haunt her as well as ultimately holding on to hope that life will be different in the future.
Mikveh Night (from The Journey to Baby G): The author talks about the turning point when going to the mikveh — a ritual bath — went from being a time of hope to a reminder of what isn’t there.
All We Are Is Broken (from Life and Love in the Petri Dish): After going for broke, the author admits that all they have to show for it is that they are broken. A post about mourning and the far-reaching effects of infertility.
Mothers’ Day (from Baby Smiling In Back Seat): With the most moving line of all — “At the time, I had no idea that 2010 would be the only Mothers’ Day of my life that I’d both be a mother and have a mother.” — the author walks through how she spent the holiday over the years, the longing and loss.
Miraculous Time (from Kmina’s Blog): A new mother explains why she isn’t in any rush to engage in sleep training, pointing out that all of us have mothers who feel about us the way she feels about her new baby.
Where Does Faith Come From (from Bring on the Babies…): Grappling with the idea of faith, the author explains how hers was shaken while relaying several stories that will send chills down your arms.
Stumbling Blocks (from Viva la Vida): Taking the “in” at the beginning of infertility, the author tells what she will be in vs. focusing on the things she is without.
On The Universe That Does Not Give a Damn and The Resolution of Loss (from Stork Stalking): In trying to make sense of why terrible things happen, the author explores the idea that out of destruction comes creation.
Being Appreciative (from Hapa Hopes): Maybe it’s the wait that makes the heart that much more accommodating; the author recalls dating and applies the experience to waiting for her child.
Just Relax (Lest I Forget) (from A Field of Dreams): A scathing response to the useless advice of “Just Relax” as the author recalls different locations on her infertility journey: the kitchen floor, the clinic’s office, the emergency room.
The Miscarriage and Infertility Phenomenon (from Life, Loss, and Other Things Worth Mentioning): The author points out how one rarely notices how frequently they see pregnant women or Facebook statuses about pregnancy until one is confronting infertility, and she explains what she says to herself in order to deal with these continuous visual reminders.
Infertility and Deployment: An Analogy (from The Annoyed Army Wife): In order to explain what infertility is like, the author creates an analogy to the unknowns of deployment. A valuable door for people to walk through to understand her experience.
My Infertility Story All Wrapped Up In A Bow (from My Infertility Story): The act of compressing her 3 year infertility journey into a timeline makes her reflect on how infertility has affected her life.
Two Years Of Wedded Bliss (from If You Don’t Stand For Something): On the 2nd anniversary of their marriage, the author looks at how she has become a stronger woman and they have become a stronger couple together. A beautiful post from wife to husband.
An In Between Place (from Here We Go Again): The author points out a hole in the English language, the emotional no-man’s-land between miscarriage and stillbirth, and how her loss doesn’t fit in either space.
Steps (from Worrier/Warrior): A beautiful post about letting go of the past and realizing that she is free to be happy, that she doesn’t need to remain mentally in the same place she was when going through infertility.
Definition of Family (from CD1 Again): A wonderful post by a stepmother trying to explain to her stepdaughter her place in her life, all the while trying to figure out how we define family.
Saying Goodbye Again (from Sunnydaytodaymama): A mother says goodbye to the embryos that didn’t make it post-transfer, all the while looking at her IVF child and knowing how much he wants to be a big brother.
Letter in Green Biro (from Nuts in May): A scathing response to a thoughtless advice column that condescendingly told a childless woman that she was the envy of mothers.
The Reason (from BagMomma): A thought-provoking post about why things happen, and the purpose of the struggles in life.
Shine On: This One is For You (from Chasing our Stork: From ART to Adoption): A video set to the song “Shine On” encapsulating all of the author’s emotions regarding infertility.
Full Circle (from Can I Get Some Sugar with these Lemons?): A Journey song brings catharsis for the author and her husband after the birth of their long-awaited child.
Destiny (from Witty Infertility): Rejecting the idea that her life is only complete after she reaches a milestone, the author embraces all that is currently good in her life right now.
Why I Killed Facebook (from Fertility Alphabet Soup): The author explains why she shutdown her Facebook account, and how her life hasn’t really changed at all with the exception that she doesn’t need to wade through pregnancy announcements anymore.
And Then it Hits Me… (from A Nuttier Life): When her SIL announces her pregnancy, the author realizes that the timing is similar to the child she lost; that as they were losing their pregnancy, another family member was creating life. And this realization hits her hard.
Mixed Emotions (from Not The Path I Chose): A moving post about how the author processes Mother’s Day without her mum.
Why I Call Myself an Infertile (from As Good As It Gets?): The author explains why she still calls herself infertile even after having a child. It isn’t about being stuck in the past; it’s about paying it forward.
What a Change a Year Makes (from Lessons from an Infertile Social Worker): A year later and her entire life different, a mother states: “Hope is a magical thing, never lost forever. It is always there, waiting to be found, waiting to be allowed back in. It’s a matter of seeing it, though it may not necessarily be in the form you expected it to be.”
Our Adoption Reopens (Subtitled “Adoption Is Hard”) (from Barren Woman): As the author moves from a closed to an open adoption, she writes a moving, important post about the reality of adoption.
If Given The Chance (from Funny Little Pollywogs): An emotional poem from a mother to her lost children about all the things she would have done.
The Walk (from Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…): A happy post about a walk with her daughter; a simple day in the life with so many additional layers underneath.
…And There Always Glad You Came (from Three is a Magic Number): The author, parenting after infertility, at first believes herself to be different from the Other Mothers, but a night out makes her realize that maybe she has more in common than she initially thinks.
25 Dollars (Canadian) (from Mommy Odyssey): Feeling desperate for a modicum of control following another miscarriage, the author shells out money to an online baby psychic for information on when her children would arrive. The lessons learned for $25 bucks and an ectopic pregnancy.
August (from I Lost a World): Marveling at the child who is here while mourning the child who is not; a note from mother to son about the love she feels for his sister, the anger she feels over his absence.
What I Hope my Child Would Want Me to Know (from Journey of Hope): Instead of a letter from mother to lost child, this letter is from the point-of-view of a baby gone too soon; what she wants her mother to know.
Like a Broken Record (from BattleFish): 3 months after the death of her mother, the author wonders how no one can tell that her smile doesn’t extend up to her eyes. While the rest of the world moves on, she continues to internally mourn so intensely that it seems strange that people can’t sense it externally.
Biological Clock (from Created Family): The author debates the balance between giving up her carefree twenties to the stress of infertility vs. starting family building early enough that more choices are open on her path.
Finding my Sight (from Not a Fertile Myrtle): The author realizes that if given the choice, she wouldn’t give up her infertility. Because even though she is still in the struggle to reach parenthood, infertility has given her a new view of the world.
A Day in The Life (from Future Expectations): A typical day in the very busy life of a single mum of twins.
Hot and bothered (from Non Sequitur Chica): The reality is that none of us know what is happening in someone else’s world when we ask a question, and this post serves as a good reminder for the thoughts unsaid in the conversation.
Balance (from The Smartness): A gorgeous post about parenting after infertility that states: “I asked ‘Why me?’ when I couldn’t get pregnant. Now I ask (again), ‘Why me?’ Why were we lucky, when it seems that so many others are overlooked?”
Griefs Rolling Tides – Mourning a Child (from Hiding Scars in my Yarn): A mother explains what it is like to lose a child — from the moments after the loss to way down the road when someone asks you if you have children.
The Death of the Fear of Dying (from My Lady of the Lantern): A painfully raw post to read; the author describes a time when her daughter was already dead, but she had not yet been told, and she was ready to give G-d her own life in order to have her child live. A moving post about the depth of love.
Miscarriages are Real Losses (from Stumbling Gracefully): The author busts open myths about miscarriage, explaining that when the loss isn’t validated, it adds to the physical and emotional pain already experienced by the woman.
Way Wanted Babies (from IF Crossroads): At a picnic held by her fertility clinic, the author finds her tribe after feeling different from other parents for so long. Spending time at an event for people parenting after infertility changes her perspective on parents.
Three (from Production, Not Reproduction): A beautiful letter from mother to daughter on her child’s third birthday with a hope that while she may not remember the specifics of her life at age three, that her child will always have imprinted on her being how she went through this world so deeply loved.
The Back and Forth of Heartbreak (from Bio Girl): A heartbreaking post about rationally knowing that the journey is over but the heart being unable to let go of the idea of still trying to build the family that exists in her dreams.
Breathing (A Poem) (from Four of a Kind): With each breath a mother takes, she remembers the child she carried and lost. A beautiful poem infusing a body with oxygen and memories.
My Son Processes his Adoptedness (from WriteMindOpenHeart): A mother keeps the lines of communication open with her son in regards to adoption and helps him over an emotional bridge when discussing his birthmother.
Occupy Blog Street (from Stirrup Queens): A post for the 99% of bloggers who don’t make the “best of” lists each year, the author encourages writers to protest by occupying their own blog and writing a kickass post.

October 5, 2012 3 Comments

Creme de la Creme of 2011

by Mel

For the sixth year running, the ALI community kicks off the new year by celebrating our best posts of the last year.

Listed below are the best posts of 2011. If you have a blog that chronicles your family building experience with infertility* and you’re not on this list, please read this post and follow the instructions to send in your submission. This post is open until January 5, 2012.

In the meantime, happy reading! And leaving a comment on these older posts is not a “may I?” but a “please do.” Comments are how an author knows their words are appreciated. Comments about the Creme de la Creme in general can be left on this post.

The Creme de la Creme of 2011

Occupy Blog Street (from Stirrup Queens): A post for the 99% of bloggers who don’t make the “best of” lists each year, the author encourages writers to protest by occupying their own blog and writing a kickass post.
Backstory (from Donating Hope): The author looks at how her first marriage still continues to haunt her life to this day without her realizing it before this point. A beautiful post about the decisions we make and what the heart wants.
My Son Processes his Adoptedness (from WriteMindOpenHeart): A mother keeps the lines of communication open with her son in regards to adoption and helps him over an emotional bridge when discussing his birthmother.
Once in a Lifetime (from A Half Baked Life): Weaving in the idea that every day is once in a lifetime, the author talks about bonding with her daughter and the thoughts she has as people return to the classroom now that she is not in academia for the time being. It is about holding tight to the present, to being here in the moment rather than thinking about the past or future.
Breathing (A Poem) (from Four of a Kind): With each breath a mother takes, she remembers the child she carried and lost. A beautiful poem infusing a body with oxygen and memories.
Critical Thinking: When Is Enough Enough? (from Wistfulgirl’s World): The author asks an interesting question about what applies more to knowing when it would be best to not do treatments: the amount of things tried or the amount of time spent? After a long time waiting, she is ready to parent.
The Back and Forth of Heartbreak (from Bio Girl): A heartbreaking post about rationally knowing that the journey is over but the heart being unable to let go of the idea of still trying to build the family that exists in her dreams.
Three (from Production, Not Reproduction): A beautiful letter from mother to daughter on her child’s third birthday with a hope that while she may not remember the specifics of her life at age three, that her child will always have imprinted on her being how she went through this world so deeply loved.
Way Wanted Babies (from IF Crossroads): At a picnic held by her fertility clinic, the author finds her tribe after feeling different from other parents for so long. Spending time at an event for people parenting after infertility changes her perspective on parents.
Miscarriages are Real Losses (from Stumbling Gracefully): The author busts open myths about miscarriage, explaining that when the loss isn’t validated, it adds to the physical and emotional pain already experienced by the woman.
The Death of the Fear of Dying (from My Lady of the Lantern): A painfully raw post to read; the author describes a time when her daughter was already dead, but she had not yet been told, and she was ready to give G-d her own life in order to have her child live. A moving post about the depth of love.
Griefs Rolling Tides – Mourning a Child (from Hiding Scars in my Yarn): A mother explains what it is like to lose a child — from the moments after the loss to way down the road when someone asks you if you have children.
Balance (from The Smartness): A gorgeous post about parenting after infertility that states: “I asked ‘Why me?’ when I couldn’t get pregnant. Now I ask (again), ‘Why me?’ Why were we lucky, when it seems that so many others are overlooked?”
Hot and bothered (from Non Sequitur Chica): The reality is that none of us know what is happening in someone else’s world when we ask a question, and this post serves as a good reminder for the thoughts unsaid in the conversation.
A Day in The Life (from Future Expectations): A typical day in the very busy life of a single mum of twins.
Finding my Sight (from Not a Fertile Myrtle): The author realizes that if given the choice, she wouldn’t give up her infertility. Because even though she is still in the struggle to reach parenthood, infertility has given her a new view of the world.
Biological Clock (from Created Family): The author debates the balance between giving up her carefree twenties to the stress of infertility vs. starting family building early enough that more choices are open on her path.
Like a Broken Record (from BattleFish): 3 months after the death of her mother, the author wonders how no one can tell that her smile doesn’t extend up to her eyes. While the rest of the world moves on, she continues to internally mourn so intensely that it seems strange that people can’t sense it externally.
What I Hope my Child Would Want Me to Know (from Journey of Hope): Instead of a letter from mother to lost child, this letter is from the point-of-view of a baby gone too soon; what she wants her mother to know.
August (from I Lost a World): Marveling at the child who is here while mourning the child who is not; a note from mother to son about the love she feels for his sister, the anger she feels over his absence.
25 Dollars (Canadian) (from Mommy Odyssey): Feeling desperate for a modicum of control following another miscarriage, the author shells out money to an online baby psychic for information on when her children would arrive. The lessons learned for $25 bucks and an ectopic pregnancy.
…And There Always Glad You Came (from Three is a Magic Number): The author, parenting after infertility, at first believes herself to be different from the Other Mothers, but a night out makes her realize that maybe she has more in common than she initially thinks.
The Walk (from Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…): A happy post about a walk with her daughter; a simple day in the life with so many additional layers underneath.
If Given The Chance (from Funny Little Pollywogs): An emotional poem from a mother to her lost children about all the things she would have done.
Our Adoption Reopens (Subtitled “Adoption Is Hard”) (from Barren Woman): As the author moves from a closed to an open adoption, she writes a moving, important post about the reality of adoption.
What a Change a Year Makes (from Lessons from an Infertile Social Worker): A year later and her entire life different, a mother states: “Hope is a magical thing, never lost forever. It is always there, waiting to be found, waiting to be allowed back in. It’s a matter of seeing it, though it may not necessarily be in the form you expected it to be.”
Why I Call Myself an Infertile (from As Good As It Gets?): The author explains why she still calls herself infertile even after having a child. It isn’t about being stuck in the past; it’s about paying it forward.
Mixed Emotions (from Not The Path I Chose): A moving post about how the author processes Mother’s Day without her mum.
And Then it Hits Me… (from A Nuttier Life): When her SIL announces her pregnancy, the author realizes that the timing is similar to the child she lost; that as they were losing their pregnancy, another family member was creating life. And this realization hits her hard.
Why I Killed Facebook (from Fertility Alphabet Soup): The author explains why she shutdown her Facebook account, and how her life hasn’t really changed at all with the exception that she doesn’t need to wade through pregnancy announcements anymore.
Destiny (from Witty Infertility): Rejecting the idea that her life is only complete after she reaches a milestone, the author embraces all that is currently good in her life right now.
Full Circle (from Can I Get Some Sugar with these Lemons?): A Journey song brings catharsis for the author and her husband after the birth of their long-awaited child.
Shine On: This One is For You (from Chasing our Stork: From ART to Adoption): A video set to the song “Shine On” encapsulating all of the author’s emotions regarding infertility.
The Reason (from BagMomma): A thought-provoking post about why things happen, and the purpose of the struggles in life.
Letter in Green Biro (from Nuts in May): A scathing response to a thoughtless advice column that condescendingly told a childless woman that she was the envy of mothers.
Saying Goodbye Again (from Sunnydaytodaymama): A mother says goodbye to the embryos that didn’t make it post-transfer, all the while looking at her IVF child and knowing how much he wants to be a big brother.
Definition of Family (from CD1 Again): A wonderful post by a stepmother trying to explain to her stepdaughter her place in her life, all the while trying to figure out how we define family.
Steps (from Worrier/Warrior): A beautiful post about letting go of the past and realizing that she is free to be happy, that she doesn’t need to remain mentally in the same place she was when going through infertility.
An In Between Place (from Here We Go Again): The author points out a hole in the English language, the emotional no-man’s-land between miscarriage and stillbirth, and how her loss doesn’t fit in either space.
Two Years Of Wedded Bliss (from If You Don’t Stand For Something): On the 2nd anniversary of their marriage, the author looks at how she has become a stronger woman and they have become a stronger couple together. A beautiful post from wife to husband.
My Infertility Story All Wrapped Up In A Bow (from My Infertility Story): The act of compressing her 3 year infertility journey into a timeline makes her reflect on how infertility has affected her life.
Infertility and Deployment: An Analogy (from The Annoyed Army Wife): In order to explain what infertility is like, the author creates an analogy to the unknowns of deployment. A valuable door for people to walk through to understand her experience.
The Miscarriage and Infertility Phenomenon (from Life, Loss, and Other Things Worth Mentioning): The author points out how one rarely notices how frequently they see pregnant women or Facebook statuses about pregnancy until one is confronting infertility, and she explains what she says to herself in order to deal with these continuous visual reminders.
Just Relax (Lest I Forget) (from A Field of Dreams): A scathing response to the useless advice of “Just Relax” as the author recalls different locations on her infertility journey: the kitchen floor, the clinic’s office, the emergency room.
Being Appreciative (from Hapa Hopes): Maybe it’s the wait that makes the heart that much more accommodating; the author recalls dating and applies the experience to waiting for her child.
On The Universe That Does Not Give a Damn and The Resolution of Loss (from Stork Stalking): In trying to make sense of why terrible things happen, the author explores the idea that out of destruction comes creation.
Stumbling Blocks (from Viva la Vida): Taking the “in” at the beginning of infertility, the author tells what she will be in vs. focusing on the things she is without.
Where Does Faith Come From (from Bring on the Babies…): Grappling with the idea of faith, the author explains how hers was shaken while relaying several stories that will send chills down your arms.
Miraculous Time (from Kmina’s Blog): A new mother explains why she isn’t in any rush to engage in sleep training, pointing out that all of us have mothers who feel about us the way she feels about her new baby.
Mothers’ Day (from Baby Smiling In Back Seat): With the most moving line of all — “At the time, I had no idea that 2010 would be the only Mothers’ Day of my life that I’d both be a mother and have a mother.” — the author walks through how she spent the holiday over the years, the longing and loss.
All We Are Is Broken (from Life and Love in the Petri Dish): After going for broke, the author admits that all they have to show for it is that they are broken. A post about mourning and the far-reaching effects of infertility.
Mikveh Night (from The Journey to Baby G): The author talks about the turning point when going to the mikveh — a ritual bath — went from being a time of hope to a reminder of what isn’t there.
The Girl I Used To Be (from The Misadventures of Missohkay): A wish that she could go back in time and warn herself of all she would endure in the course of a year. A post about the dates that haunt her as well as ultimately holding on to hope that life will be different in the future.
One Year Ago (from Even Miracles Take a Little Time): Instead of focusing on the day of birth, the author retells the day of her child’s conception, the IUI that brought her son to life.
A Year and A Half (from Baby Shmaybe…?): A catch-up post coming 18 months after her last post, the author tells the story of conceiving and delivering her son.
Frustration (from IF In Big Sky Country): An incredibly frustrating interaction with medical staff who take their time to convey that the author’s husband has a tumour in his kidney. The first post about the cancer that was part of their year.
Infertility Is Just Like A Fatal Disease, Only Worse. (from Becoming Parents): Explaining how infertility is fatal, killing the dreams you once had of your life, the author writes, “This disease is every bit as fatal as cancer, only with one horrible caveat — at the end, you physically remain alive and will spend the rest of your days on earth mourning the death of the life you always wanted.”
The Butterfly (from Team Baby): An incredibly moving post about a butterfly found in the backyard that serves as a reminder of her embryos that didn’t make it.
Am I Delusional? (from Diaries by Lucy): An explanation of how different IVF is this second time around, with the emotions of their first foray into treatments gone after the birth of their son.
Remember When Nancy Kerrigan Got Hit In The Knee And She Was Sobbing “Why Me?” Over And Over? Yeah. I’m Trying To Avoid That. (from Eggs In A Row): A great post using the story of Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan to put her sister’s pregnancy (and attending her shower) into perspective.
How I Look At Children (from First Time Twins): The author explains why she may come across as someone not fond of children despite how much she wants to have children, providing an excellent analogy to brownies to boot.
Right Where I Am: 12 years, 9 months (from The Road Less Travelled): Participating in a project of where she is in her grief at this very moment, the author relays the 13 years between the loss of her daughter and now. It is a bittersweet post about love, about noticing the ways we differ, and the price that was paid to have the life she has now.
Boxes and Dust Part 2 (from A Woman My Age): Going through mementos from the past, the author admits that the tiny reminders of infertility still get to her.
Comfort Zones (from Skytimes): The Internet becomes the mental space she needs as much as the physical space to find her sense of comfort.
The Art of IVF (from Dear Infertility): Like cooking and baking, other art forms and lithography, IVF requires the doctor to both know a formula and leave it in order to accommodate all the tiny details that make a unique human being.
The Luckiest (from Monkey Soup): Redefining the term “luck,” the author explains how this is a loaded word within adoption and alternative ways to look at it.
Accepting That This is the Path We’re On (from Invisible Mother): As much as the diagnosis is difficult to hear, the author explains why it also brings her peace to be fighting for a baby rather than fighting to not have a problem named.
Being a Shut-In, or How Big is Home? (from Where Do We Go From Here?): The story of how her world expanded and contracted, due to infertility, and the comfort that comes from knowing a space — no matter how large or small — extremely well.
Infertility 101 (from This Space For Rent): Doing away with infertility myths, the author focuses on the facts of infertility including how many people are affected and how relaxing doesn’t make babies.
Slowly Losing My Sanity (from Which Way To Baby): The madness that is the first days after a positive beta; the hope and anxiety that mark the experience.
Happy Independence Day! (from Babylicious Tales): On Independence Day, the author applies that concept of freedom to all the choices we have as infertile women on ways to get to parenthood as well as how to parent once we get there.
My Baby Has a Grandma (from Plan B(aby)): A warning: you will cry reading this post. A beautiful story about the daughter she lost, Naomi, and how in naming her after the loss, it led to a larger story of the people we know on earth and the moments perhaps that come after death.
Crazy Cat Lady (from Somewhere in the Middle): After the sting of a friend’s comment that the author has become a Crazy Cat Lady, she embraces the idea of how much her cat means to her, especially the love he gives her when she is down.
Is This What Healing Looks Like (from Once A Mother…): Jumping off the concept of what it means to heal after losing a child, the author talks about what gave her the strength to continue living. And how in living itself, she came to heal albeit with scars.
How to Explain to Someone What IF Feels Like (from The Port of Indecision): Using the acronym “bitch, please,” the author gives 11 facts about how infertility affects a person deeply.
Stretch Marks (from The Lotus Flower): The stretch marks that she despised during pregnancy become a loving mark of her motherhood after the loss of her daughter. She explains that it is okay that her body will never be the same again, since she will never be the same again after this loss.
Don’t Bet on 14 (from Where Love And Chaos Reign): After getting positive pregnancy tests at 10dpo, she discovers her hCG is 14, and two days later, only 11. A heartbreaking post about loss.
Mommy Balancing Act (from The Subfertile Frugalista): The author admits that she doesn’t balance motherhood well, pointing out all the places where she is lacking, all the while cognizant that in the place that is most important to her, she is completely present.
Father’s Day (from Chasing Rainbows): On Father’s Day, the author gives a small prayer of thanks to her son’s donor, who — while not his father in any sense of the world — still is important to her because without him, her son wouldn’t be here.
My Infertility Manifesto (from Notes from the Ninth Circle – Jessie’s Infertility Journal): A manifesto about how she is dealing with infertility, and how what she is feeling is completely normal considering the circumstances.
Bust a Myth (from Mommy Mahem): Busting an infertility myth, the author explains how parenting after adoption adds additional layers, and that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to family building issues.
On Luck (from Meier Madness): Since good luck has found her at other points in life, the author assumed that ease would be the case in building her family and grapples with whether or not luck will find her again.
Thoughts on BFP Blogs (from The Chronicles of Violetta Margarita): Sound advice on writing after your infertility blog turns into a pregnancy or parenting blog.
Well, If My Chart Didn’t Say “Crazy” Before, It Does Now (from Three Cats and a Baby): The author explains how anxious she is about an impending appointment with her doctor after her hysterectomy, and why she put it off for so long. A post about the phone conversation with the office after she mentions her 10-month-old son.
Confessions of an Infertile Mother-to-Be (from The Stork Drop Zone): A deeply raw post about the reality of surrogacy; the losses inherent in the process even while keeping your eyes on the end result. A very honest post about the experience.
Forget Weddings and Baby Showers…IVF Extravaganza is All the New Rage (from Petri Dish Chronicles): Going through the fine details such as wardrobe and celebration drinks, the author compares being a bride-to-be, a mother-to-be, or a woman going through IVF and finds the winner.
On Wanting More (from Manapan’s Space): Even while being grateful for what she has, the author admits that having her son doesn’t erase what came before nor keep her from wanting more.
The Power of Our Love (from Dragondreamer’s Lair): A beautiful post about the quilt a community came together to make for one of their own, and the woman who spearheaded the project providing the behind the scenes story.
Contraception (from Ginger and Lime): A sobering look at how we believe we have control, and how much is actually out of our hands. A post about everything the author thought about getting pregnant, and the reality of how little they needed birth control in the end.
Dear George (from Burble): A beautiful letter from parent to child about missing him while still feeling his presence everywhere she goes.
On “Giving Up” (from Bodega Bliss): A very important post to read about what the author has learned about the concept of giving up. She writes: “It turns out I was wrong all along. This isn’t giving up. This is knowing when you’ve done all that your heart can bear.”
Dust in the Shadows (from Cullen’s Blessings): A breathtaking, brief poem about the death of her child.
Confessions of an Infertile (from The 2 Week Wait): The discrepancy between the truth and how we answer questions about infertility. A fantastic vent about the thoughts that she never feels right releasing.
Journey (from Adventures of Taderbaby): A story about trying again after infertility. The author relays the story of being pregnant with their current child, and how it went from feeling hopeless to full of hope.
Tolerant of the Intolerant (from Erat Mama): A post about the ignorant things people say and protecting your future children from other people’s hate. A beautiful look at the idea of being tolerant of the intolerant.
My Brother In-Law Vince (from A Single Journey): A moving post that goes from the inappropriate thoughts she has during the church service to finally understanding why a woman at the church asks for the same prayer every week.
In The House I Built (from My Star In Heaven): A gorgeous analogy to life as a home, with her focus being the figurative room that should have held her daughter.
So, It’s *THAT* Day, Eh? (from Hobbit-ish Thoughts and Ramblings): While others ask the author if she is excited for her first Mother’s Day, she explains that this moment feels anticlimactic considering that she has already considered herself a mother even when the rest of the world didn’t.
Mommy’s Garden (from Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed): Retelling a story that a friend told her, the author gives a parable for how to explain donor eggs to a child.
The ART of Conception (from Sybil and Alex): A helpful post about the science behind conception, and how treatments and medication aid in the creation of a life when a woman has PCOS.
Breaking Up with Treatment (from Searching for the Missing Piece): A post about how difficult it is for her to breakup with treatments, even though the author knows that it’s the right choice for her. Using the analogy of a relationship, she tries to explain why it is so difficult to walk away.
Six Weeks and Peace Remains (from Our Life & God’s Plans): How one woman finds peace with G-d after receiving their infertility diagnosis.
You Must Give Up the Live You’ve Planned In Order to Find the Life That’s Waiting for You. (from A Fine Mess): The author kicks infertility to the curb (and beats her ass for good measure) through the song “Stronger” by Sara Evans.
On Becoming the Crazy Infertile Lady (from Getting There): The author jokingly fears that she is nearing her point of becoming a crazy infertile lady and provides a list of the five signs that will show she has gone over the edge.
36 Eggs – What the?!?! (from Donor Eggs Journey): A beautiful post about meeting her son’s egg donor when they return to see if they can create a sibling for him. She describes the interaction as well as how she feels seeing her son’s features on this woman’s face.
Sibling Rivalry (from Compromised Fertility): The author returns to the sibling rivalry she felt as a child when her sister mentions that she is going to try to get pregnant right after her wedding, and she has a sinking sense that this will probably go easily for her sister even though it has been difficult for her.
Who Would Have Thought? (from 1tsp grace): A brief, sweet post about the difference a year makes.
I Thought We Were Suppose to Support Each Other! (from The Rocky Road to Motherhood): Pointing out the darker side of the ALI community, the author implores bloggers not to stop reading and supporting someone once they make it to pregnancy or parenting. A post about how we need more caring and less judging.
Secret Fears (from My Lazy Ovaries): A very honest post about the author’s secret fears about infertility; whether her past thoughts are somehow sabotaging her current efforts as well as whether she is attempting to build her family for the “right” reasons.
AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh! (from Things get IF’fy): An amusing post fast-forwarding to life in the nursing home and how the author thinks she might react to people talking about their grandchildren as well as having that need to pretend to still be stimming when she’s old and grey.
Choices of Marriage (from A Life of Choice): Speaking from a place where her marriage has come from a difficult period onto much smoother ground, the author considers what worked for them.
Acrostic (from Infertile Fantasies): Taking apart the words “fail” and “win,” the author dissects the highs and lows in parenting, examining what is working and what is not, and reminding herself that it is a long journey.
Facebook Killed the Blogger Star (from Our Family Beginnings): In a goodbye post, a blogger signs off for the time being after completing her family. Loving a site enough to know when it is time to leave it.
Love Letter to My Chemical Pregnancy (from This is More Personal): A note from mother to child as her pregnancy ends, telling her embryo that it is the first time she has gotten to experience pregnancy; that its very presence has brought her hope.
The Spiraling Insanity (Part I) (from Fox In The HenHouse): A raw post about what it was like for the author to experience an ectopic pregnancy, the conflicting emotions and the physical aspects.
Head in the Sand (from Detour): Dr. Google, the author explains, can be a blessing as much as it can also be a curse for the anxious, and she encourages women to speak up to their doctor if they have the symptoms for endometriosis.
Me and the Cuckoo Baby (from Grit and Patience): Using the analogy of the cuckoo bird’s behaviour, the author admits her anxieties about her donor egg baby not quite fitting; not just in size, but inside her heart, until she reassures herself with others she loves who are not biologically related.
Working Toward the “Known” (from Weathering the Storm): The author is ready to move away from treatments, but her husband’s heart is still set on continuing on this path. She asks the reader how they decided to stop treatments.
Living With Courage (from A Second Line): After the author almost loses her life in childbirth, she explains how she came to her philosophy to live without fear.
Brave (from Still Life with Circles): An injection at the doctor’s office brings all of her daughter’s emotions to the surface in a post that explores what it means to be brave and strong; the impermanence of life.
Public Service Announcement and Symptom Updates by DPO (from Waiting Expectantly for the Unexpected): A reminder to readers about why the author blogs, what the blog is, and what it isn’t.
Four Months (from Fireworks and Rainbows): The author only got 33 hours with her child, and this post encapsulates her anguish and longing for her son.
What a Difference a Year Makes (from Waiting for Little Feet): The author explains how she used to live with infertility vs. the space it takes up in her life now, choosing to focus on the present rather than only halfway participating in her life.
Adoption is Like a Roller Coaster Ride (from Fearlessly Infertile): A post comparing the adoption process to riding a roller coaster, that ends with a decision to ride this journey with her arms up in the air.
The Gift (from MoJo Working): In the loss of her child, the author finds a reason to leave her old life behind, grab her husband’s hand, and run into their new life together; a gift that she admits comes from that loss, something her child gave her.
My Guardian Angel (from A Blanket 2 Keep): The author shares with a friend that she is infertile and receives back all the support she needs.
It Never Occurred to Us That It Wouldn’t Work (from Rasta Less Traveled): In a raw post, the author admits that she never thought her surrogacy cycle wouldn’t work, and when it doesn’t, she is devastated.
9 Months of Grief (from Wegen Tales): The author points out the other situations that are resolved within nine months and asks why grief can’t work in the same manner. A post about finding her strength in her religion.
Five Years Gone (from Life From Here: Musings From the Edge): Capturing the paradox that exists — her daughter would not be with her if she hadn’t lost her son — the author discusses how grief looks down the road, not realizing as she writes that she is nurturing another life.
Miscarriage = A Broken Heart (from The Redhead Files): Getting the details off her chest, the author places all the small moments from her miscarriage on the screen.
Baby Making Roulette (from Single Infertile Female): Frustrated by the fact that the author is clearly ovulating and there’s no sex to be had in sight, she laments that she wishes there were more options for her beyond always waiting for IVF.
Remembering (from Slowmamma): An incredibly moving post about her son’s identical twin brother who died and how she carries his memory.
Footprints (from Wonderfully Ordinary): A post that will make you smile about how the carpet in her guest room has changed — at least how she vacuums it — now that she has a baby.
Top 8 Reasons for IVF Stress… (from IVF Success Stories – Overcoming Infertility): The eight most common moments for stress during IVF including fertilization reports and betas.
Emotionally Ok… Mostly (from The Kay Khronicles): A tiny post admitting that after her loss, she is not emotionally okay.
Take These 14 Simple Tests Before You Decide To Be Infertile (from Womb For Improvement): In the spirit of a popular meme, an amusing post about the 14 simple tests you can do before you “decide” to be infertile. Hint: have 50% of your friends pregnant and the other 45% trying to conceive so you always have a steady stream of pregnancy announcements.
Everything Baby (from My Life in a Nut Shell): Not trying for a bit gives her both the space to breathe as well as a pit of sadness as life continues around her.
10 Reasons Why Dogs are Better Than Kids (from Survive and Thrive): An ode to the author’s dogs; she recounts the numerous reasons why they top kids.
21 Guns (from From IF to When): An incredible post taking the song “21 Guns” and using it to explain why the author is so tired of fighting people about the disease rather than fighting the disease itself. It contains this chilling line: “Sticks and stones never hurt my bones. Words did, a little. But taking away my womanhood ruined me.”
Tagged with Infertility (from Close Encounters with Fertility Treatment): In the same way that a blog post can be tagged, the author and her husband have been tagged with the term “infertility” and it has changed the way others scan them as well as how they see their own identity.
Face Down Ass Up, That’s the Way We Like To… (from Exploring Chaos): Since her IVF cycle failed, the author’s normally mountainous sex drive has tanked and she wonders how to get her mojo back.
An Orange, a Grapefruit and an Ass Hat (from Scrambled Eggs): A morphine-laden post depicting life from a hospital bed with OHSS.
The Silence of Suffering (from Home Grown Love): The author makes a great point that in olden times, a woman who wasn’t having children after a certain point in marriage would be understood to have a medical issue and people would behave accordingly. Whereas in the modern age, she is subjected to hurtful comments.
The Latina Factor (from The Corrocks): In addition to dealing with the common emotional elements of infertility, the author explains how the norms within her culture additionally come into play.
Dear Abby: You’re NUTS–Fostering is Not a Solution for Infertility or Adoption (from Creating a Family): A scathing response to Dear Abby’s not-too-informed advice counseling people who can’t afford adoption.
Mythbusters: The Glowing Tomato (from Cradles and Graves): What does one do with their leftover syringes? A few creative ways (as well as some mindblowing facts) about how one couple put their syringes to other uses.
Musings on Thanksgiving Day (from BIAGO – Baby, If All Goes Optimally): Written during a two week wait, a post imploring ALI bloggers to not feel pregnancy guilt if they’re lucky enough to get two lines.
Thank You B. (from Nursing Infertility): A moment where the author’s husband stepped forward and supported her so fully that she knew without a doubt that all would be fine in the future.
A Day Like Any Other (from Words Fly Up): The author doesn’t need an anniversary to miss her unborn children; it happens every single day of the year. A moving post about how that love doesn’t change with the calendar.
Thanksgiving (from Not Just an Army Wife ): As a fourth holiday season rolls around, the author asks when it’s going to be their turn to give a child a first Thanksgiving or Christmas. A post about finding thankfulness.
Interrupted Path (from Infertile In a Fertile Land): The author applies lessons learned from September 11th and her interrupted trip plans to her currently interrupted family building plans.
We Started a List of Names (from All I Ever Wished For…): A sad, almost dreamlike post about finding an empty sac after their IVF cycle, the one where they started to dream of baby names and plan for the future.
What Not to Say to Someone With an Uncooperative Uterus (from Words and Pictures): An amusing post illustrated in clay figurines of the 12 things you definitely don’t want to say to someone struggling with infertility.
One Year (from Love Life Project): The central question — whether the author is a mother despite not having her child alive — is answered by a slip of paper she leaves as a message to a future reader of a pregnancy loss book at a store.
Am I Being Selfish? (from Searching for our Silver Lining): Turning the idea of the selfishness of fertility treatments on its head, the author ultimately points out that parenting itself is an act of great selfishness and selflessness at the same time.
The Universe is Trying to Break Me, But I Think I’m Already Broken (from For We Are Bound by Symmetry): With the soundtrack of another couple’s child’s heartbeat playing in the background, the author endures the annual exam from hell.
Birth Story! 10/6/11 (from A Road Well Traveled): A happy ending to a long journey — the birth of her twins from the water breaking to delivery.
Never Is a Promise (from Les Terres Fertiles): Using Fiona Apple’s “Never is a Promise” to discuss infertility, the author grasps onto the idea of not fearing her dreams.
You Can’t Rush Grief (from Marriage 2.0): Grief comes in spirals; just one of the many lessons the author learned via her divorce and miscarriage, especially that grief cannot be rushed and is felt on its own timetable.
Inside/Outside Box (from Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms): An exercise in designing an outside/inside box gives the author the space to mourn the twins she couldn’t adopt. A post about what deeply affects us despite the fact that we think we’re holding it at bay.
A Maternal Moment (from Just Let Go): A fairly gross moment with her dog let’s the author know that she has what it takes to become a mother.
Tough Stuff (from Under the Same Sky): A truly heartbreaking and ultimately beautiful post about how the author came to understand and find comfort in a behaviour she once couldn’t comprehend in a patient. A post about the ways in which we cope with loss.
Reflecting on 2011 (from The Cornfed Feminist): Trying to finding meaning in the time it is taking her to get pregnant, the author points out that if she had gotten pregnant when they first started doing medicated cycles, she would have never started blogging about infertility and found this community.
How We Got Here (from Write, Baby, Repeat): Pregnant after a donor egg cycle, the author busts open the myth that people finally get pregnant after they adopt once her grandfather makes this comment.
The Infertility Identity (from What IF? ): The author points out that as much as people lament how little is known about infertility, by not speaking openly about infertility, people contribute to that problem. She encourages people to speaking frankly about their struggles in the same way they would other issues.
Music Monday #28 (from Our Life Journey): Jumping off of a song by Matt Hammitt, the author states that regardless of how long her children exist — whether it be for days or many years — she wants them to know how intensely she loves them.
The Half Truth (from The Long Way Around): The author finds it easier to admit to their losses than it is to admit to their infertility, and she wonders why she can talk about one but not the other.
Identity (from Braving IVF): The author quits her job in order to accommodate IVF, but then discovers that she doesn’t really know what to do with her new-found time nor how to talk about why she is out of work.
New Beginnings… (from My Scar Smiles at Me, I Don’t Always Smile Back): The shattering of a necklace brings peace instead of distress as the author relays two stories that have recently given her hope.
Scars (from Do Without Doing): The removal of an external scar is the catalyst for the author to consider her internal, emotional scars from infertility.
You Gotta Have Faith-a-Faith-a-Faith-ahhhh (from Journey to the Center of the Uterus): Finding peace in her faith, the author explains how she found Jesus and the comfort in knowing that she is part of a larger plan.
As Time Elapse…Elapses (from The Maybe Baby(Babies)): On her four year blogoversary, the author recounts going to a Ween concert, and how it’s sometimes better to remember youth than to try to revisit it.
When I Grow Up… (from On KK’s Butterfly Wings): Answering that she wanted to be a mother of a living child wouldn’t have occurred to the author in her youth when asked the question of what she wanted to be when she grew up. And she wonders if it would have made a difference to put her foot down and insist that it was what she wanted more than anything.
The Other Side (from Hope for the Best): A lovely post as her son turns two months old recounting his birth story but ends with an admittance that even though he is here, the author can still see the beauty in all the other paths out of infertility, including the choice to live childfree.
My New Reality (from A Bend in the Road): A visit to a new town and seeing a shrine in the town lays raw all of the emotions the author feels after the death of her daughter.
On Being The Non-Bio Mom, Or: A Great Big Bundle of Worry (from Bionic Mamas): A deeply honest post from the non-bio mother about how she felt about the idea of parenting before they conceived their son, during the pregnancy, and after he arrived and she held him.
Shhhhhh . . . Creeping In . . . (from A Fifth Season): The author comes back to her blog to write out her visit to her daughter’s grave because other than Grief itself, no one else asks or listens to where she had been all day.
Too Much (from One Who Understands): The author’s friend thinks she understands infertility based on the movie The Backup Plan, and the author is upset when her friend comments that if she had to do an IUI, she probably wouldn’t have tried for her six children.
Feeling Left Behind (from No Kidding in NZ): A fantastic post reframing living childfree after infertility, showing the reality of the option, which is that it is a path that runs parallel and not behind other paths out of infertility. A post about no longer feeling left behind but instead walking alongside.
Comment Whore Shipwrecked on a Desert Island (from Happy – Go – Lucky): Like many who have been blogging for a long time, the author considers how life has changed for most of the people on her blogroll, and how that has also changed the amount of time people blog and comment. A post both lamenting and acknowledging this new place in the blogging.
Wagon Ride (from Miss Inconceivability): A red wagon is both the tangible reminder and receptacle to the author’s dream of having two children.
Threads (from Knocked up by Another Man): A lovely post about defining the role the author’s egg donor (and her family) play in the life of her son.
Retrospective (from Mina’s Musings): Using your blog as a measurement for how far you’ve come; for proof that things will not always be as they are, in both the good and bad sense of that idea.
Seventeen (from Now As I Lay Me Down to Sleep…): A warning: you will most likely cry reading this post about doubting second love and then finding it to be special, and how that idea gives her hope as she mourns her son.
I Never Knew (from Life As I Know It): The birth of her third child gives the author insight into how much she didn’t know from the premature birth of her twins, and this insight translates into a sense of loss over what she didn’t get to experience the first time around.
Dum Spiro Spero (While I Breathe, I Hope) (from Hope Delayed): An exploration of the deep-seeded hope that is as much a life-giving force as her own breaths. And like oxygen, she can’t truly live without it.
Between the Paper Sheets (from Between the Paper Sheets): The first post of her blog when the author realized that she needed to write about her journey, and what the paper sheets referred to in the title mean to her.
Getting Over My Fear of the Internet Shut-Up (from Family Building with a Twist): A fear of being told to be quiet or not being read at all keeps the author from freely writing what she wants to write, and she comes to a place of peace by the end of the post, deciding to own to her space.
Uhm, is this Thing Still on? (from Baby Wanted: Apply Within): A check in post that explores the idea that her life is not where she thought it would be when she first started her blog five years earlier, and how she wants to be cycling soon as it feels like time is running out.
Right Where I Am: 1 Year, 1 Month (from My Sweet Kenny): With too much on her plate in terms of loss and infertility, the author states exactly where she is with her grief, a raw venting as she processes what has happened, where she is now.
Thirteen Things They Don’t Tell You (from Journeywoman): 13 things the author could have never predicted about how it feels to have your parents get sick.
The Weekend Was Not a Total Loss (from KatyStuff): An average sick day at home in the life of a mother of two.
Child Care IS NOT Birth Control (from Desire to Mother): The author explains that while people joke that her job with children should be like birth control, every baby just makes her want to parent even more.
My Experience with Pregnancy After Stillbirth So Far (from Expectations Revised): A post that is just as much for the author as it is for all the women who need it who come after her; a post about being pregnant again after her first child was born still.
Did I Get the Call? (from Recipe for a Family): The author asks the reader to “Imagine if we had no idea how long each pregnancy would be.” A post about the wait during adoption, and how the light on the answering machine captivated her for 19 months.
Meet the Rasmussen’s! (from Barren to Bonkers!): The first post of her blog explaining how every moment is now potential blog fodder in her family’s busy life.
How it All Began … (from Being Joyful Always): A bittersweet post, especially in light of the fact that the adoption is not taking place, about how hopeful she felt when it seemed as if everything was sailing smoothly.
How Did I End Up In This Crazy Place? (from Finding My New Normal): On the eve of leaving for the United States to have her FET, the author reflects on how she thought she’d get pregnant vs. how it is actually happening.
One Year and Beyond (from Always Plus One): The author dreads the upcoming one year anniversary of her son’s death; not because the day will be any more painful emotionally than any other day, but because she doesn’t want to be out of that time period when she last had her son.
We’re Famous (from Two Hot Mamas): A post explaining what worked for the author and her wife in terms of feeding their child, with the emphasis being a balance of what is best for the child, best for the bio mother, and best for the non-bio mother, honouring all three factors.
The Story (from Adoption Adventures and More): An incredibly story of how the author came together with her son via adoption.
I Wish Someone Had Told Me This (from Our New Plan A): Sage advice from an IVF veteran about the difference between quitting and knowing when you have had enough and need to choose a different route.
Eggs (from I’m Polycystitc Inside): Thoughts stemming from a trip to the RE, the author exclaims that we were all just egg cells sitting in someone’s ovaries and the mindblowing idea that we all develop into these unique human beings.
It Must Be January 21st! (from Waiting, Wishing, Hoping): Talking about the need for a reboot as she needs every year in regards to her New Year’s resolutions, she relays the story of a friend and how she let the author down, but it’s time to move on and forgive even if she doesn’t really understand.
Why She Drinks (from Bloodsigns): An incredibly powerful post unfolding the story of why her mother drinks, which really becomes a tale about how we love, and how we sometimes need to hold the world a bit at arm’s length.
The Dark Place (from The Elusive Second Line): A deeply honest post about owning her depression and stating her deepest, darkest thoughts.
Unsuccessful (from Kate; Uncensored): Busting the myth that IVF is an iron-clad solution; that it always works. The author explains how they did IVF three times, and how it didn’t work for her.
Are You Infertile? The New York Times Thinks You Are Rich and Whimsical (from Too Many Fish To Fry): A rebel yell to mainstream media to cover infertility fairly and honestly so that the general public can better understand the disease. The author looks at the types of stories the New York Times has posted recently and berates them for pushing an agenda rather than reporting objectively.
A Little History (from The Brooding Woman): The author relays the story of two of her sibling’s neonatal deaths and her mother’s two second-trimester losses, holding them up as a fact of wonder, how her parents got through it without being broken.
7/8/2011 (from My Life with Endo & Infertility): A very honest and informative post on how endometriosis has manifested itself for the author.
Why Ask For Help? (from In Due Time): A raw, heartbreaking post asking what is the point in asking for help when nothing can undo what has already been lost.
All Grown Up (from Geebaby): In the wake of numerous Facebook status updates about parenthood that sting, the author asks herself: “do I think being an ‘adult’ is a requirement to parent, or do I think being a ‘parent’ is the ticket into adulthood?”
Reflections on Pregnancy and Loss (from Mission: Motherhood): A Jodi Picoult book brings to the surface all the fears the author felt while pregnant, and how relieved she is that all went well in the end.
Hypocrisy and Choice (from My Preconceived Notion): Responding to the New York Times article on twin reduction, the author implores readers to not judge women who reduce twin pregnancies.
The First Time (from It Goes On): A heartbreaking post about the author’s first and second miscarriage, about how she came to guard her heart.
HELP! My Biological Alarm Clock is Sounding, and My Snooze Button is Broken! (from Riding the IF (Infertility) Crazy Train): The author laments that while the snooze button has worked at other points in her life, it seems to be broken when it comes to her biological clock.
What I Would Like Fertiles (And the World At Large) to Know. . . Part 1 (from The Stork Diaries): 10 facts about infertility the author would love the general public to know about our struggle.
Quite the Baby-ful Weekend (from The Future Fords): A beautiful post explaining how she can be happy for her friends and sad for herself at the very same time as new babies come into the world.
Waiting for Winter (from Forever a Family): Another warning: you will cry reading this. A gorgeous post about saying goodbye to her son who is dying as he grows; a long, slow goodbye as — like the seasons — he goes from the autumn to the winter of his brief life. She writes, “When the call ended, I gasped and began sobbing. I wasn’t shocked. I knew this was coming, but nothing prepares you for the moment you truly realize your baby is dying.”
You’re Pregnant, I Hate You (from The Empty Uterus): A very honest reaction to how the author feels when she hears that someone is pregnant, even when that someone is a best friend.
The Feeling of Happiness (from Trying to Calm): Finding happiness after the storm of many years of trying to conceive.
The First Time I Told Someone (from Roccie Road): The author finds happiness with each retelling of her donor egg story, realizing it isn’t something to hide but simply the unique way her son came into her family.
Et tu, Muppets? (from Will CarryOn): With the most perfect line summing up her experience of watching the Muppet movie: “I hadn’t expected something that made me so happy as a child (and yes, as an adult) to make me so sad for not having the children to share it with.”
I Feel Broken (from The In Between): A friend drops the news of her pregnancy into the middle of dinner, and the author needs to get through the rest of the meal, listening to pregnancy talk while she’s dying inside.
In-Vitro Fertilization and The Emotions (from Toddlers and Test Tubes): While keeping in mind that no one can truly know what another person is feeling, even if they’ve been through the exact same experience, the author reflects on a woman who came into her life and how that person gave her comfort at the moment she needed it.
The Landlord Called… Rent Is Due (from Two In The Mud): After lamenting the costs inherent in family building with infertility, the author talks about a fee that few fertile women think about — the embryo storage fee — and how to even list something like that on her budget.
Identity (from I Can’t Whistle): A gorgeous post about what she isn’t blogging about now that her child is here, even though she still has so much she needs to say.
Birth Mothers (from Life in the Last Frontier): A post empathizing with birth mothers and the impossibly hard work they do in creating a birth plan for their child.
Lots of Tears, a Latte, and a Blueberry Scone (from Baby-Making Merry-go-Round): A recount of the time she broke down and cried in the doctor’s office after a very frustrating experience of trying to get answers to her questions, all on the day she should have been having her 8 week sonogram.
Depression After Miscarriage (from Bohemian Transplant): After going through a miscarriage on her own, the author compiles a list of advice to help anyone who is experiencing depression after a loss.
Baby Blues (from She’s One in Amelian): A powerful post about working through that sense of denial and disbelief that comes with an infertility diagnosis.
Do You Have Children? (from Justin and Jessica): Every time the author is asked the question of whether she has children, she doesn’t know how to address it in a way that neatly packages the enormity of the answer.
Charlotte Mabel (from Getting It Sorted): A gorgeous post detailing the personality of a daughter who was gone too soon.
Discarded Dreams (from Pundelina Kafoops Lives Here): An emotional post about getting rid of the last of the IVF drugs, a moment that marks a true end for the author.
The Birth Story of Jackson Carter (from Miracle in the Making): The perfect description of birth — “I saw my whole heart get lifted onto my belly” — as a mother holds her son for the first time.
The Bug: It Bit (from The Unfair Struggle): As her husband is wheeled away for surgery, the author has a moment of clarity in their infertility journey.
I am the Mom! (from Donor Diva: Mother via Egg Donation): Musings on the terms gamete donor and biological mother, wondering how the donation of the gametes translates into a type of parenthood.
What’s Up with the Parentheses? (from (In)Fertility Unexplained): An explanation for why the author places parentheses around the prefex of infertility, and why words matter.
That’s What Infertility Does To You (from Expecting Miracles): A mother via adoption finds herself thinking about pregnancy tests and talks about the complicated thoughts she has about the idea of pregnancy in that current moment.
A Momma Kangaroo (from Our Little Tongginator): An update detailing the author’s new status as a kangaroo after meeting her new daughter in China and holding her non-stop in her carrier. A post about transitions great and small.
Made a Fool of Myself in Public (from The Childless Mom): On a difficult day, when the author was set to solo at the church, the pastor makes an announcement about his own impending grandfatherhood, and she dives into the deep grief she feels after a negative.
Hatched (from It is What it is (or is it?)): An incredibly important post, through the eyes of an adoptee, discussing the importance of how knowing how you came into the world because that story can have a ripple effect.
Christmas Post (from Mommyhood After Fertility Frustration): What a difference a year makes. The author recounts Christmases past while looking at her Christmas present which includes her child.
The Power of Definitions (from Two’s Company. Three’s a Family): Pointing out the narrowness of definitions, the author expands the idea of motherhood and infertility, making these words more encompassing.
T Is For… (from Adventures in Infertility-land): Bravely discussing the “T” word, the author explains how uncomfortable she feels using the word termination on her blog, even though she knows it would be helpful for people who find her posts and have gone through a similar experience of needing to terminate a pregnancy when the child will not survive outside the womb.
Isolated… but Not Truly Alone (from My Cheap Version of Therapy): A truthful post about the author’s experience being pregnant after infertility and all the difficult facets that come from having the experience be similar yet completely different from how it would have been if she had conceived on her own timetable.
A Public Service Announcement (from By the Brooke): The rarity of that 1% stillbirth statistic doesn’t really matter when it happens to you, bringing you into that small group that needs the understanding and empathy of the 99%; to make it not a shameful secret but a reality of life.
Everything You Can Imagine is Real (from Lovely Transitions): When positive thinking doesn’t come to fruition, the author voices her frustration with the idea that “everything you can imagine is real.”
No Love Lost (from These Rotten Eggs – An Infertility Journey): An open note to 2011, saying good riddance to a year that has broken the author.
Whirlwind (from Got Love, Been Married, Where the Hell’s the Baby Carriage?): A moving post about the birth and adoption of her son, Isaac, which happened at a whirlwind pace.
18 Months of Change (from Waves Over Stones): Reflections a year and a half after the death of the author’s son as she takes stock in what has changed, what is still the same.
I Think It’s Only Fair You Know About the Dark Days Too (Part 2) (from I Don’t Ever Want to Forget): A father tells his child the story of what else was happening in their lives (and the world) as they tried to build their family.
How Do You Define a Friend? (from The 123 Blog): A post celebrating friendships began online, and holding dear the friends the author has met through her blog.
So You’re Pregnant and Your Friends Aren’t… Now What? (from Project Open Hearts): Very helpful advice on how to announce your pregnancy while keeping in mind friends and family who may be experiencing infertility or loss.
Infertility Is… (from Living Our Life In Cycles): A frank and moving account of what infertility is, giving outsiders a peek into the emotional and physical landscape.
Deeper Still (from Hope In Bloom): An exploration of the author’s faith, even in the face of loss.
Signs (from What Will Happen Today): A grieving mother looks for signs from her daughter, Ireland, after her loss.
Zombie Fetus Watch 2011 (from Dead Cow Girl: Dominatrix Mommy Blogger): A live blog, hour by hour, of a miscarriage, and in its terribleness is also such a helpful resource for every woman who comes after the author who experiences the same thing.
Just In Case You Thought I Was Normal… (from Beyond the Brick Wall): The author reads to her womb without knowing whether an embryo is in her uterus or has even implanted; a moment of parenting and care that is the first story amongst a lifetime of stories.
The Social Science of Science (from The Guild of Knitting Kninjas): A thought-provoking post on the duality of reactions people bring to the idea of technology and advancements, especially in the field of medicine.
Transfer Day (from Hubbub): A recount of the transfer day that resulted in the author’s daughter (who will hopefully know the special role lavendar soap played in her conception).
Just Be Glad You Don’t Live In My Head (from MotherNatureSchmature): Chuckling over the memory of what she thought baby making was going to be like, the author recounts a dream she had about her FET
Choosing (from This Was Supposed To Be My Symphony): The author notices that life hands everyone crap, and yet people are happy anyway. And in noticing this, she chooses joy over wrapping herself in sorrow.
Positive Thinking and IVF (from Buck Up, Buttercup): The author points out the dark side of coaching someone that they can control their health with positive thinking and the self-blame that can come out of the message.
2 Upsetting Issues & Counting (from Love, Loss & Life): A rallying cry of support for a fellow babylost family, the Duggars, in which the author explains just how hurtful the media coverage is for other parents who have lost their child.
Happy 1st Birthday Addie B! (from Addison’s Wings: My Journey to Live Again After a Broken Heart): I cried reading the author’s quiet chant: “Together, we created her, together we said goodbye to her, together we love her, together we miss her and together we celebrated her.” A birthday post for a daughter who is no longer here.
To Lose a First Pregnancy (from Dwelling on Dream): The author doesn’t need her journal because the events of the day that she lost her baby are seared into her brain.
Support (from The Road Less Traveled): For the first time in her life, the author needs to call on the emotional support of others, and she learns that it isn’t quite so simple. That there are the people who she thought she could count on that don’t come through, and the ones that she never thought would be there and yet are.
C & B: Love & Seasons (from Little Bird ): A moving post about transitioning from the season of mourning to the season of gentleness, where her heart knows that it can love her son without ever forgetting her daughter.
Unexpected Help, Unlikely Alliances, and Other Unexpected Surprises on the Journey of Infertility (from The Infertility Therapist): A fabulous post about her husband’s uncle who made all the difference in her world in the days after they adopted their first child in India.
Hesitating and Wasting Time (from Relaxed No More): Recounting the beginning of her relationship with her now-husband, the author moves from not knowing if she wants to be a parent to trying to conceive.
Kick at the Darkness (from Sprout): A very powerful post about coming through an extreme depression, from the brink of losing her life, and stepping back into living due to a vision of her daughter who may one day come to be.
Brinley’s Month (from Brinley Love): The calendar has returned to August, the month in which her daughter died, and she and others keep finding dimes, small messages from her daughter.
A Day Just Like This (from The Broken Road): A post no parent should ever have to write: a mother and father return to the cemetery to purchase the headstone for their daughter’s grave.
Ghost Child (from Tuesday’s Hope): Three years after the death of her daughter, the author talks about that ghostly presence of someone who should be here as well as the idea that life continues on.
A Sample Of My Thoughts (from Life’s Little Reflections): The anxiety inherent in a pregnancy that comes after infertility and loss.
The list is finished for this year.

Blogs that Closed in 2011**

We’re so sorry to see these blogs missing from the blogosphere. Every piece of writing changes a person’s perspective of their own journey. The world was changed by their words.

Two Moms Are Better Than One

That Was the Plan

Wishing & Hoping & Thinking & Praying & Planning & Dreaming

Our Family Beginnings

If you have a blog to add to the list that closed in 2011, please email me.

Past Creme de la Creme Lists

Like what you read? Peruse an old Creme de la Creme list from the past

**sometimes an author doesn’t formally end their blog but stops writing. Other times, one blog ends and another blog begins by the same writer. Still others, a blog is placed on this list only to start posting again months later. Not included on this list are blogs that have gone password protected and continue to be written for a smaller audience. Apologies to anyone who hasn’t truly closed their blog who appears on this list. Please let me know and I’ll take it down. At the same time, if you have closed your blog this year and would like to be honoured on this list, please send me your blog name.

January 1, 2012 19 Comments

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