Your Daily News Source

Keeping community connected in the IF/pg loss Blogosphere.

Latest Issue: Thursday, July 3, 2008.

Latest Post on BlogHer: Just Relax.

Read and Support.

Circle Time: The Show and Tell Weekly Thread

Welcome back to Show and Tell. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

A week or two ago, in the middle of a massive, gulping-while-crying meltdown, I wailed, "and I've never owned a business card." It is simply just one of a long stream of things I would like and do not have. I have never had a job that warranted a business card (teaching just isn't a business card-like profession) and while I still do not have a job that warrants a business card, I cannot help coveting them and what they mean.

Josh admitted that he could not fix many of my problems, but he could have business cards made. We hopped onto the computer and went through a few design choices and finally settled on the one below. It took a long time to decide what information to place on the card because...well...when it comes down to it, I still don't have a job with an office that warrants a business card. Therefore, we were stretching a bit to find things to stick on the front.

I have crossed out my last name in the photograph (with so many spammers constantly goading me to change my penis size, it seemed circumspect to not pass out my last name here so the spam emails could be tailored to me any further), but this is the business card that I will have few chances in life to actually pass out to anyone. Perhaps, if we meet at BlogHer, you will walk away with one in your pocket.


What are you showing today?

Other People Standing at the Head of the Class:

1. Infertility on the Brain
2. OB Nurse
3. Weebles Wobblog
4. The Second Time Around
5. Soulbliss
6. Who Shot My Stork?
7. The Life and Times of Me
8. Wishing4One
9. The Sweet Life
10. Fractured Rainbows
11. Letting it Out
12. Slaying, Blogging, Whatever...
13. The Making of a Family
14. Baby, Borneo or Bust
15. Dreams Come True...Sometimes
16. I Want to be a Mommy
17. Tales of the Phoenix
18. Conceive This!
19. Life of Melzie and Co.
20. The Therapist is In
21. Worth it All
22. Hurry Up n Wait
23. The Road Less Travelled
24. It's Stork Season...
25. Life from Here
26. Do Without Doing
27. Mommy Needs Therapy
28. One Hardy Swimmer
    
29. I know this is a vacation weekend in America so technically school should be closed, but since you're here in the classroom, is there anything you'd like to share?
    

Want to bring something to Show and Tell?

• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can't do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything--a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn't need to contain a picture if you can't get a picture--you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post "Show and Tell" each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don't just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
  
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.
• If you want it...
  I've now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.

Friday Blog Roundup

I have already admitted to being dumber than a napkin, so it probably shouldn't surprise you to learn that it took many months into the game to finally figure out Twitter. I was getting ready for bed and had an epiphany--it's micro-blogging. It's a blog entry in two sentences. And it's like an enormous blogging IM conversation. The people you follow--you watch their thoughts unfold in two sentence chunks and then people respond (sort of like a comment) and you follow their thoughts and build off of that...

I get it.

I think I get it a little more than Facebook. I certainly get it more than social bookmarking. In the long continuum of things I need to understand on the computer, this is how I would rank my knowledge:

Blogging
Google Reader
Twitter
Facebook
Social Bookmarking
How spam sites actually make money
Why every spam person this side of the Mississippi wants me to get a bigger penis and sends me an email about it

So, I decided to actually use Twitter now too. Though the site rarely seems to be working. Is this just me? Am I hitting it on its bad days? It seems to be in a constant state of getting too many tweets. Which makes me think of a large flock of angry birds, pecking at the computer keys.

I added some people successfully before getting kicked from the system and will add more when I can. If you would like to follow me, follow away: stirrupqueen. Though, if I could do it all over again, I'd be Lollipop Goldstein. It still makes me happy to say my new name.

I only have one question: how often do you respond to Twitters? Do you sort of read them and let them float by you, or do you feel compelled to reply and have that conversation as you would in the comments on a blog?

*******

Have you ever heard the term "roadie" (hi, Rick!) used to mean a little drink you take with you on the road? As in, "wait a second, I need to grab my roadie." A little cup of wine or beer that the non-drivers drink on their way out to a social event--on their way to drink more wine and beer? Is this a Southern thing? I heard this from someone in Atlanta. Are Atlantans all lushes?

I predict that Sunny will respond to this with, "that's not a Southern thing! That's a smart thing!"

*******

Y'all are very tricky getting in extra words with the IComLeavWe description. On one hand, if part of what you write about is "secondary infertility", that should only count as one word. You shouldn't lose a word simply because you need two words to describe one thing. But Io's "being poor ass broke"? How can I not keep all of those words in? When I can shave it down, I do: "random life" has been reduced to "life." But you can't shave down being poor ass broke.

I love having the descriptions. They're not only helpful in the sense that you know what you're going to get when you click on the link, but it's also cool to see this mini bio of every blogger on the list. What they're dealing with, what they're thinking about. It sort of expands the blogroll list with its categories and allows people to be listed in multiple categories at once. So...if you're searching for new blogs, the IComLeavWe list is also a great place to look. Just saying.

*******

It is the 4th of July here. I'm using it as a writing day. I love fireworks but I hate crowds. So no Mall this year. When did I get so old and crotchety?

And now, the blogs...

Alison at (Un)complicate Me had a post about feeling lost. I love how it begins: "I'm afraid this post might turn into a brainpuke, but it needs out." That sensation of simply needing to have it said and have it heard. And then the post: the balance of being grateful and being scared simultaneously. And finding faith within your faith.

Where's My Damn Answer is a group blog, but I loved a post on it this week by contributor Lindaloohoo about adoption. This week was the last time she needed to fill out paperwork concerning her son's adoption and she writes: "But today. Ahhh. Today. I can’t even describe the feeling that hit me as I was making photocopies of our three year report and it dawned on me that this is the last time I’ll be doing ANY paperwork for this process, EVER AGAIN." The weight dropping from her heart. I cried reading about the connection between the butterflies that flew around her house back in California and the ones that swung from the ceiling in Guatemala. You will get chills up your arms when you understand this line: "we’ve always said that it was not the stork who brought our son to us, but the butterflies." Go over and read the whole post.

Bon at Scrambled Eggz has a gorgeous note written to her not-yet baby. I challenge you to get through it without crying.

Topcat at Indisputable Topcat has a very intense post about an argument with her husband. I could not stop thinking about it after I read it. I think the part that touched me so deeply was the part before and after the women came to her house. She writes about the meeting: "I needed that meeting SO. BADLY. I cried with sheer relief when it started, and was quite amazed when everyone started sharing. Why? Because other people are having struggles of their own!! Who knew!!" and then after the meeting: "They all left, I had a physical reaction to that meeting, like a weight had been lifted and I could breathe for a bit." Perhaps a subconscious and running theme for me this week with the roundup is the lifting of a weight. It is a gorgeous, albeit angry, post. Please go give her some love.

Lastly, Sunny from My Journey Towards My Little Miracle had a post about Facebook (see it all comes back full circle: the dropping of the weight, the social media sites and the social media sites). She writes about reconnecting with old friends through the site and what they think when they see her profile sans kids. She writes: "I wonder what they think when I don't list my kids' names and ages like they did. If they look hard they can see I am part of an infertility group. If they ask I will let them know. In fact I talked about our infertility to one of my 'friends' after she told me some tough stuff from her life. When she replied to my message she skipped the IF part." It was a sweet, sad side of reconnection.

Roundup to the Roundup: Twitter questions for those who twitter. Roadies. The IComLeavWe descriptions. Oh, and check back Saturday night/Sunday for Show & Tell. Josh made me business cards (a long story) and you will crack up when you see them.

Just Relax

Cross-posted with BlogHer because I'm a cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater. Unless it's pie. I don't do pumpkin pie.

Your blood doesn't clot properly thereby making it impossible for the embryos created out of your sub-par eggs (coming out of your prematurely failing ovaries) to remain implanted in the uterus, thereby necessitating conception attempts to move from the bedroom to a sterile doctor's office (and pay thousands monthly for the experience) with a cast of six male doctors staring at your vagina while attempting to manipulate the catheter on any given visit. No one can tell you how long this will take or how much money you will spend or what your body will endure.

But, of course, despite all of that, we're going to have to ask you to just relax if you want this to work.

Stress reduction has long been held up as the panacea for a host of ailments including infertility. In last weekend's New York Times magazine, Peggy Orenstein had an article titled "Stress Test" that points out the missing threads in this line of thinking:

It’s not that I think the mind-body connection is a total sham. But even where it would seem most established, say in the relationship between stress and heart disease, the mechanism is unclear. Is stress an independent risk factor or does it merely influence others, raising blood pressure or encouraging over-eating? Either way, popular mythology both simplifies and generalizes the potential harm, applying it to everything that ails us. After all, it feels true: I’m more at peace with my frenetic life after a few rounds of sun salutations. Yet, what does that prove?

I would take it a step further to say that even if the mind-body connection exists and stress levels affect hormone production, pointing out how stress affects the body and asking those in a health crisis to relax through therapy, yoga, and meditation is reductive (and, in turn, raises stress levels when you hit that brick wall). If it were truly a solution, the infertility crisis would be moving towards resolution rather than chaos as technology improves and stress reducing outlets increase.

In the end, it's a prescription that moves in a circuitous route rather than forward towards a solution. It is an empty prescription--one that states the problem without stating a true solution. It is like this: we can say that overeating leads to obesity. And we can point out ways to curb overeating including portion control, drinking a lot of water, and exercising instead of consuming food. But if these solutions were implementable, many more people would do it. No one consciously chooses to be unhealthy. Yet sometimes we truly cannot help our unhealthy tendencies, no matter how much the head battles the heart.

The reality is that we're talking about some major emotional rewiring.

It is too hard to stop overeating simply by having someone tell you to stop overeating. It is too hard to stop overeating simply because you are attending therapy or drinking two liters of water a day or even exercising with a personal trainer while eating with a personal chef. Can we do it for short periods of time--even months or years? Of course. When other factors are aligning themselves in the outside world, we can muster amazing willpower to override our natural tendencies. But we can't sustain this level of self-control indefinitely. We all have a way of moving back towards the way we deal with our stress: overeating, obsessing, consuming mind-altering substances.

Because, what all of these things have in common is the control we are desperately trying to grasp in the face of having a lack of control.

We all have our ways that were either taught or intuited that help us process life. I'm not saying that our methods are healthy. Many times, like stress or overeating, it can be detrimental to our health or push us even farther from the goal. But pointing it out doesn't make the problem disappear.

Worrying, not deep breathing, is the anxious girl's way of dealing with stress. Because what is worrying other than emotional preparation? Running through the what ifs, feeling the intensity of the emotion ahead of time, falling apart and having a long cry--these are the ways we exercise our hearts to deal with the crisis when it actually occurs. How many times does the anxious girl say that she's great in a crisis? Preparation--it's the motto of anxious ladies and girl scouts.

And that, I would say, is a more feasible goal. Someone needs to invent a therapy that doesn't go against the natural tendencies of the worrier but instead embraces them. Oh...wait...it does exist. It's called blogging. And I'd love to see a study where blogging, writing the what ifs out to their limit, sitting in front of the computer and having a good cry, falling apart completely is shown to have the same success rate as those who go against their body and unnaturally force it to relax.

Once they do that study, I'll go back to visualizing my happy space and shoving all of my infertility worries into their alloted daily hour.

Orenstein finishes the article with this thought: "Stress is our burden, our bogyman, and reducing it is the latest all-purpose talisman against adversity’s randomness." In the end, aren't we all simply searching for an answer; an explanation; the secret door that lets us out of here? And can we blame researchers for holding out this idea even if being told that unattainable relaxation will help only brings on more stress?

In the News

Seriously, I truly can't believe this happened to me, nor that our local news station was willing to use my Microsoft Paint picture instead of a photo and believe that my name is Lollipop Goldstein.

Local News Story