Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Infertility: On the Rise or Less Taboo?

If you’ve ever bought a new car, you’ll know that once you decide on the make and model (and sometimes even the color), you start to notice that same car everywhere you go. For me, it’s been the same with infertility. Since joining the ranks of the “ovarially challenged” I’ve noticed infertility everywhere—in the news, in the movies, in my social circle. And yet there was a time when couples without children were rare and the subject wasn’t discussed in polite company. So what’s changed?

Is infertility on the rise or are we just more open to talking about it?

[polldaddy poll=3807667]

Finding Her Place After Infertility

Several months ago, one of our sisters, Wendy, was in crisis. She had been working as a child development specialist, but after her infertility diagnosis she realized she could no longer stand to work in that environment. She quit her job and then found herself, in her words, “trying to find out who the hell I am and what to do with my life.”

Well, she found out. A couple of weeks ago she got a call out-of-the-blue, and last week she left for Bangladesh to take a position with UNICEF as a pre-primary education consultant.

I’ve never met Wendy, but I’ve been following her journey on the forum, and I’m so inspired by her accomplishments. Here’s a woman who was knocked sideways by her unplanned childlessness, and yet she’s found her way.

She told me:

I have spent a lot of time thinking, and the only way I can make sense of my infertility is that maybe [it] means I can and should continue development work. Rather than focus only on the children who might be living with me under my roof, I can impact so many more children. Indirectly, yes, but many more. Working in international development, I can work to improve their schools, their home life, their health and sanitation, their nutrition, their families’ lives.

Congratulations, Wendy. Good luck in your new endeavor.

Healing Bit-by-Bit

I’m ovulating. The fact that my body continues to go through this useless motion is of little consequence, other than the fact that my hormones go wild and I click into nesting mode, cleaning and tidying everything in sight. For someone as disorganized as me, it’s useful to have this happen once a month, and especially so this month.

I am preparing for the Royal Visit, otherwise known as my mother’s annual trip to stay with us for about five weeks. As I work from a home office and we live in a small two-bedroom house, this means I have to convert my office into a guest room, while still leaving a small corner in which I can continue to work.

It’s a nightmare, self-inflicted, but no less horrendous. Yesterday I threw out six bags of papers, today I boxed up everything that I can live without for the next month-and-a-half, and the rest is in a pile in the middle of the floor, awaiting my decision regarding its fate. I’m thinking that if I don’t look at it, it will just go away, but I know that come Wednesday morning, I’ll be stuffing it into a closet, where it will remain, probably forever.

During yesterday’s purge I came across some things: all my notes and test results from my assorted fertility-related doctors, information from two different adoption agencies, and a baby naming book, half filled in.

The whole lot went in the trash.

Not that tossing it didn’t leave a dent in my heart. It did. But it was a small dent and will heal quickly. And this is how it works. This is how we move on, one small step, one event, one reminder, one discarded memento at a time. It’s slow and it’s painful, but bit-by-bit, it works.

“Dealing with Infertility” Free E-Class

Lily, over at The Infertile Mind, is really clued into the emotional aspects of being childless-not-by-choice. She hosts a free e-class about dealing with these emotions and recently invited me to drop in to see what she’s up to.

Even though the class is aimed at dealing with infertility, the exercises she teaches can be used by anyone who is childless-not-by-choice. We all go through many of the same emotions. Participants work through a series of exercises at their own pace, but within a small community of likeminded women. You can choose to participate in discussions or just quietly work through in your own time. The exercises are all based on Lily’s own experience of dealing with infertility and moving on with her life without children.

One of my favorite exercises was about dealing with jealousy (see tomorrow’s post for more on this particular topic!) by listing all the things you envy about a person, and then listing all the things you don’t envy about them. What an eye opener that was! And it made me laugh—at myself—which is always a good thing.

Lily will be hosting another free class running October 4th through November 1st.

You can sign up here: http://www.infertilityeclass.com/Register.html

or get more information here: http://www.infertilityeclass.com/FAQs.html.

The class is private and password-protected, so you can safely let it all hang out, so to speak.

Creative Therapy

Today I finished making the final edits to the book I’ve been working on for the past six years. (Hard to believe it’s been that long!) When I started writing, my story was about all the ups and downs of trying to get pregnant, and although I say it myself, it was pretty funny. Of course, as my personal story kept growing, the book kept growing and growing, and getting less and less funny, until finally I couldn’t bear to write any more. I put the whole thing down for more than two years.

Eventually, I got to the place in my head where I was ready to tackle it again. I tossed out the entire original manuscript and started over from page one. Talk about a therapeutic cleansing. Now it’s done and I’m really pleased with the story I’ve been able to tell. But here’s something interesting: writing the story was a form of therapy for me. I relived every moment and sometimes it was painful. OK, a lot of times it was painful. But when I started editing, that changed. With every edit, I became less and less attached to the story. As I moved from the creative process of writing to the more analytical process of editing I gained distance from the story, until I was finally able to read the entire thing with almost no emotional connection.

I believe that writing the book has really helped accelerate my healing process. I can now look at my experience objectively and understand it, even see what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown from it. Suddenly that experience is not just something terrible that happened; it’s not something valuable. That’s something I never expected to happen.

Have you experienced the therapeutic benefits of writing or some other creative outlet? What worked for you and how has it helped? I’m a believer in creative therapy now. Are you?

Pamela Tsigdinos’ Great Interview About Moving Beyond Infertilty

Life Without Baby member, Pamela Tsigdinos talks about overcoming infertility and making the decision to remain childless. It’s so great to hear her talking about the emotions, the stigma, and about “coming out of the closet” as an infertile woman. Wonderful. Also interesting to hear a discussion about choosing to get off the baby crazy train on a site dedicated to “IVF and third party family building.”

You can hear the podcast of her interview on the link below:

The Impact of RESOLVE with Executive Director, Barbara Collura, and Pamela Tsigdinos, Author of Silent Sorority, a Winner of Resolve’s Hope Award.

You can also check out Pamela’s website: Silent Sorority

Personal Images of Infertility by Monica Wiesblott

This image is part of the collection in Monica Wiesblotts’ new exhibit “Barren: Life on Infertile Soil.” Monica is a photographer whose work “examines the quiet reflections of a life without children, in a child-centric world and what it means to navigate daily in those constraints”. She says:

“The inspiration for the show was not only the discovery of my own infertility, but the silence surrounding it. The longstanding stigma of shame has made us a silent tribe of women.”

 

If you find yourself in Southern California this fall, make your way to Ventura to see Monica’s show.

BARREN: life on infertile soil

Personal Images of Infertility by Monica Wiesblott

 

September 30, 2010- October 23rd, 2010

Meet the artist: October 1st, 2010 5-8pm

Artist reception October 9th, 2010 4-6pm

 

Gallery 255

255 South Laurel Street

Ventura CA 93001

 I’m hoping to make it to the show and will report back when I do.

Finding a Community

When I was younger I didn’t really get the whole “girlfriend” thing. My friends were always a mixed bag of male and female and I never felt I had much to contribute to the “girls’ night out” chatter.

I don’t feel that way anymore. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the value of having a trusted group of female friends to help me through life’s challenges. It’s so good to have people to talk to who know that I’m not perfect and like me anyway, even when I do stupid things. It’s reassuring to know that, when you’re dealing with life’s issues, there’s always someone else who’s been through something similar, and can share war stories and solutions.

When I was dealing with infertility, I didn’t have that community. Although my friends were supportive and kind, none of them had been through anything like it. I looked for an online community, but couldn’t find one where I felt comfortable. I really did feel that I went through that whole chapter of my life almost alone.

I started this site to talk about life after infertility and to be heard, but the pleasant surprise for me is that I’ve finally found a wonderful community of women who want to talk, listen, help, and support one another. And we’re not just talking about infertility and being childless; we’re talking about books, gardening, travel, pets, family, you name it.

Have you found other helpful websites and online communities out there? Please share your finds with us.

Why We Can’t Always Get the Help We Need

Harriet Brown wrote this fascinating article in this week’s New York Times Health section. It’s about how we cope with other people’s crises, or more to the point, how others cope with ours. It was a real eye-opener for me, because I learned a lot about how I deal when people around me are in trouble, but it also shed light on some of the reactions we’ve experienced from other people. For example:

Awkwardness is a common reaction — not knowing what to say or do. Some people say nothing; others, in a rush to relieve the feelings of awkwardness, blurt out well-intentioned but thoughtless comments, like telling the parent of a child with cancer, “My grandmother went through this, so I understand.”

If you’ve dealt with infertility or loss, I know you’ve met these well-meaning people. “My sister tried for 10 years, then gave up and got pregnant.” You know the ones. But why do people do this? Here’s one explanation:

Feelings of vulnerability can lead to a kind of survivor’s guilt: People are grateful that the trauma didn’t happen to them, but they feel deeply ashamed of their reactions. Such emotional discomfort often leads them to avoid the family in crisis.

The author went on to explain that when her teenage daughter was hospitalized with anorexia, many of her friends disappeared, just at a time when she needed them most. Looking back, she realized that the friends who disappeared had daughters the same age as hers.

They could picture all too vividly the same thing happening to their children; they felt too much empathy rather than not enough.

Interesting. Is it possible that some of the people who say things that feel cruel are just putting up their own defense mechanisms to avoid facing something that could happen to them?

Brown concludes by saying:

Thinking back to my own years of crisis, I wondered why I’d focused on the friends who didn’t come through when so many others had.

David B. Adams, a psychologist in private practice in Atlanta adds:

“The human condition is that traumatic events occur, and the reality is that we are equipped to deal with them. The challenge that lies before us is quite often more important than the disappointment that surrounds us.”

We can’t control how those around us react to our crises, or how they help or hinder; all we can do is focus our energies on finding our own way through, and appreciate the people who are there for us.

Spring Cleaning My Past

I know it’s a bit late in the year, but I’m spring cleaning.

Over the years I’ve been added to mailing lists and e-mail subscriptions based on my plans to be a mother. Even though I’ve moved on to a new chapter in my life, every now and then a reminder from my past pops up to haunt me.

It’s been a while since I’ve received free samples of diapers and formula in the mail, but I still get plenty of postcards for children’s portrait photographers, baby fairs, and parenting classes.

I’ll be unsubscribing myself from the e-mail lists of Babies R Us, Adoptive Families, and my former acupuncturist. It’s not that these reminders send me into any kind of emotional turmoil; I just don’t have a use for their products and they’re cluttering up my Inbox. So it’s time to say “Goodbye.”

Have you done a spring cleaning on your past? Or are you still not ready?