Photo by Stephanie Himel-Nelson

Hello again everyone!  I have been MIA for a while due to being super busy over the past few weeks, but I wanted to check in and see what has been happening on the new blog site.

So, I have been talking to quite a few people regarding infertility, its varying forms, and how it is socially “acceptable” for people to respond to them.  The levels run the gamut from unsuccessfully trying to conceive for years, to those who have had multiple miscarriages prior to having a successful and healthy pregnancy.  There are also many who already have been blessed with a child, but would like more, and they are still experiencing difficulties conceiving.  Even though some people may ultimately have children, it doesn’t mean that they were “cured” of their infertility problems.

Sometimes it seems like some of my friends have gotten pregnant merely by looking at their husbands and it still bothers me that, even though I was finally able to conceive, we had to go through all we did just to get to this point.  Plus, my husband and I want to have more children in the future and I am terrified I may have to experience this all over again.  I also know of some people who have 1 or 2 successful pregnancies, but had to endure multiple miscarriages to get to that point.  While they are thrilled to have children, each miscarriage was a devastating experience to endure.

So whether you have been TTC (trying to conceive) for years with no luck or have had a child or two and are trying for more, everyone needs to be sensitive, and, perhaps more importantly, respectful toward all infertility experiences.  Each one of us has had our own unique and stressful experience, but we need to remember that we all are attempting to reach the same goal of a successful and healthy pregnancy.

Jacqui Dunn is an executive assistant for IntegraMed and is expecting her first child after going through IUI.

Photo by Stephanie Himel-Nelson

When you’re suffering from infertility or you’ve had multiple miscarriages, it can be hard to watch your friends and family celebrate pregnancy and birth after pregnancy and birth. I know.

You’ve all heard about my history of miscarriage and infertility, but I haven’t yet shared how I deal with pregnancy around me.  In the last 6 months or so, two of my best friends, my dear cousin and my sister-in-law have all announced pregnancies. Yes, it was hard, but I was thrilled for each of them. I know what a blessing a child is and how can I possibly begrudge someone else’s longed-for child? I want the people I love to be happy.

I was so excited when my brother (B) told me he and his wife (F) were expecting several months ago. I remember the day well because I was traveling and in meetings and my brother couldn’t reach me on the phone. B finally resorted to texting me and I read his news while in my very first face-to-face meeting with the people behind the Attain Fertility community. I squealed, interrupting the meeting, and shared the news. B and F had been trying for some time and everyone in the meeting understood exactly why I was so excited. They all dedicate their professional lives to informing us about treatment options for infertility and rejoice when one of us succeeds. My brother’s news was greeted with congratulations all around!

On my way home that evening, I thought about my little nephew or niece-to-be and how happy I was for B and F. Then I thought about how great it would be if we could give the baby-to-be a little cousin about the same age. And I felt that pang of sadness and regret. You all know what I mean. It’s the feeling you can’t avoid, no matter how happy you are for someone else. It’s the regret that you can’t have that happiness too.

As I watched B and F’s announcement on Facebook and all of the congratulations from our families and their friends, I felt that pang again. But I reminded myself that their pregnancy isn’t about me. It’s about their new family. I got over myself and then I debated how long I should wait before buying something for B and F’s new little one. In the past I’ve had a hard time feeling hopeful when I discovered that I was newly pregnant, but I didn’t want to transfer my anxieties to B and F. I wanted them, and everyone else, to rejoice over the new pregnancy.

Then, on Friday I got the call from my brother. B and F had gone in for an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. She miscarried.

Now, more than ever, I wish I could tell my little brother just how to fix this; that I had some magic words to make them feel better. I warned B that he may get over this, or at least be able to push it from his mind, a little more easily than F, but to understand that F may not. Aside from that, all I can do is tell them how sorry I am and that I’ll always be there to listen. I don’t want to offer empty platitudes that I know from experience will only make B and F feel more alone right now. But, of course, I can’t stop thinking about them and hoping that they know how much they are loved.

What do you wish your friends and family would say to you about your infertility or losses? What helps you feel a bit better?

Last weekend, at the BogHer 2010 in conference in New York, I had the chance to attend a panel about blogging grief, loss and tragedy on the internet. One of the panelists was Cecily Kellogg, who blogs as Uppercase Woman and is a noted infertility blogger. Cecily was on the panel to share her experiences after she developed preeclampsia and was forced to terminate her twin pregnancy at 23.5 weeks to save her own life. The stories of all of the panelists, including Cecily’s, were heartbreaking, but they were hopeful as well.

Many people are uncomfortable hearing or even reading about someone’s grief. As people undergoing infertility treatments or with the infertility diagnosis, we are all acutely aware of this. We’ve all suffered through those uncomfortable moments where well meaning family and friends joke about how you’re not getting any younger and you’d better think about having kids before your ovaries shrivel up. If you explain that you’ve been trying for several years and start mentioning ovarian reserve testing and male factor infertility, people just don’t know how to react.

Despite the inability of onlookers to process open grief, everyone on the panel indicated that blogging and the online community they’d found, saved them in many ways. Listening to the women on the panel discuss their grief and loss openly was refreshing. You see, when my husband and I were struggling to have our first child, I wasn’t blogging yet. I kept a diary and it helped to write about it, but we weren’t really sharing our experiences with anyone we knew. The very first time I got pregnant, we told everyone. After I lost the baby, we decided we weren’t going to be in that position again, openly grieving in front of everyone.

I retreated to an online help forum for women trying to conceive after a miscarriage. Later, I also joined a community for woman diagnosed with infertility. Only after my second child was born, in 2006, did I start to write about what I’d experienced trying to have a baby. But I never considered myself an “infertility” blogger. I had no right to do so. After all, I had two children; I had my “heir and a spare.”

The funny thing is, the legacy of infertility lingers.

Even after having two children, I’ve had problems with depression and there have been lasting effects on my marriage. It’s difficult to just “get over” so many miscarriages and, frankly, the loss of hope. The beginning of a pregnancy for most people trying to have a baby means joy and hope. For me, it meant tests, worry and, inevitably, loss. Suppressing my natural feelings for so long changed me irrevocably. I am not the person I once was.

Only after time, therapy and learning a lot about ourselves and how to communicate when things get rough, are my husband and I able to try again. This time, we know going into it that it won’t be easy and a baby won’t necessarily be the outcome.

So why write about all of this? Why share when we don’t know what the outcome will be?

It’s not that I think the infertility and infertility blogging community will save me. I don’t. I don’t even think that sharing this much about my life and my medical history is a good idea for everyone else. But for me, blogging about infertility is a way to acknowledge that, yes, there is a problem and no, it might not be OK.

Jacqui wrote a few weeks ago about this very subject – how much should you share about your infertility? Jacqui writes about her experiences because she knows that it can help others in her situation. I wish I could say my reasons are as altruistic, but they aren’t. I write about my infertility because not writing about it didn’t work very well for me. Keeping my feelings of hope and fear inside was unhealthy for me and my marriage.

In a strange way, writing cynically about my own fertility allows me to be more optimistic in other areas of my life. So I’ll keep sharing too much information and I’ll have friends and family who don’t know what to say. But that’s OK. The infertility community here on Attain Fertility is really all about you and me. Who cares what anyone else thinks!

We’ve all tossed a penny into a fountain or blown out our birthday candles with a wish.  If you’re like me, you’ve done that and you’ve wished on a shooting star, kissed the blarney stone and blown eyelashes all over the place; every time hoping for a baby.

These days, I’ve stopped wishing for a baby because it seems too hard and too certain to disappoint me.  Instead, I wish for happiness and inner peace with my life as it is.  Happiness is a big goal, but somehow it seems smaller than a baby and, after so many disappointments, more attainable.

One way that I try to keep myself peaceful and happy is by writing about my life, my experiences and my feelings about infertility; but not just writing, blogging.  You see blogging gives me a community of people like me.  You may not look like me, act like me or think like me, but you get me.  We have one very important common experience – infertility.

This weekend I attended the BlogHer conference in New York. It’s the largest conference for blogging women in the world and a great source of inspiration for me.  This year was no exception.  During the conference, I attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art and saw Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree in the Sculpture Garden.

I was struck by the tree, not just because its poor branches were weighted almost to capacity with tags, but because of the large number of people who were waiting to add their wishes.  As I watched, hundreds of people waited, wrote and tied their deepest desires to the tree for everyone to see.

It was amazing.  And it reminded me so much of what infertility bloggers do every day.

Infertility has taken me to some dark places.  I was depressed, scared and felt alone, despite the friends and family surrounding me. And while my quest for my first child happened before I began blogging on Lawyer Mama in 2006, the legacy of my depression still lingers.

In 2007, I started to write a bit about what I’d gone through and my struggles with depression, which began with my infertility diagnosis.  Even after two children, the pit that opened up under my feet as I had miscarriage after miscarriage was still there.  The pit was usually covered with lush branches and piles of leaves, away from sight, but it was always there, just waiting for me to fall in.

In 2008, I did fall in.  And it wasn’t pretty.

Blogging saved me in so many ways.  A community of bloggers listened and offered support.  And so now, as my husband and I try to add to our family, I’m looking for that community of support again.  I reach out to the community here on Attain Fertility and on the Attain Fertility Facebook page; I read infertility blogs.  I read some of the big ones that everyone knows, like Uppercase Woman and Stirrup Queens and A Little Pregnant.  I don’t read them because they’re big, but because they’re amazing women who have inspired me for years.  In fact, A Little Pregnant was the very first blog I read on a regular basis.  Ever.  (I’ve been stalking Julie online since 2003.  She’s that awesome.)

I also read blogs that simply speak to me, like Just Two Lines Away, Life & Love in the Petri Dish and The End of My Line. (In fact, please read his beautiful post Honesty. It says so much about how infertility changes us, even when we eventually come out the other side with a baby. I couldn’t have said it better.)  I don’t always comment on these blogs; they don’t all know I’m there or who I am, but I know that if I ever need support, all I have to do is leave a comment on one of their blogs and I’ll get it.  Because they get it.  Just like all of you.  And that’s pretty awesome.

So in my search for happiness and peace, I’ll be writing and listening and talking this time.  Because I know that blogging and this community can save me, even when everything else is overwhelming. I’ll continue to write my deepest desires here on my tree for everyone to see.  Just promise me you’ll keep coming back to read them.

It’s the beginning of August and time to look back at July and see how far we’ve come.  There have been many changes to the Attain Fertility community, including my introduction as the Attain Fertility Community Manager.  My first month with all of you has been wonderful.  Every day I’m inspired by your stories.

This month, Dr. Lowell Ku shared some great information about the IVF process and ovarian reserve testing. as well as the anatomic evaluations we can expect for infertility.

Jacqui Dunn asked us just how open we should be about our infertility.

Sharon, from the Attain Fertility Call Center, gave us some great advice on what to expect at a first appointment with your fertility center and some practical advice on seeking a second opinion.

On Facebook, we talked about our frustrations and joys and shared a lot of the really thoughtless things sometimes people say to us and how we deal with it.  We discussed PCOS, miscarriage and secondary infertility.  We talked about our hopes for the future, our disappointments of the past and the laughter we share to cope through all of it.  In a very exciting development, one of our community members shared the news of her positive pregnancy test!

I’m looking forward to all that August has to bring.