Love Letter

Dear Baby-Longing Mama, 

I've been thinking about you, soul sister. 

It's May and almost Mother's Day and it feels like everywhere you go someone is holding a swaddled newborn in their arms. 

I know you would rather pretend it doesn't matter, but it's OK to let your heart break a little. It's OK to let yourself feel the brokenness of wanting something you're not sure you'll ever have. 

Nobody wants to dwell in what is difficult, but you can say this is hard. You can take a moment to sit in the sadness and the anger and not get stuck. 

The thing itself ~ the not having what you want ~ it doesn't define you. There's not a woman on earth whose life has turned out exactly as she imagined. 

While I don't know precisely what will happen, I really think everything is going to work out. I have to believe this suffering is making way for something beautiful. 

It's just hard to see it right now from our point of view. 

All my love,
C

PS: Nothing new in my neck of the woods.

Holiday Guide for the TTC Crowd

I don't need to tell you the holidays are hard.

Something about our childhood memories colliding with our adult hopes wraps us up in a strange nostalgia. We miss the past and we miss the future.

We miss those who aren't with us. We miss those who have never been with us ~ like the cherub-cheeked children we imagined in our life.

And it's not just the trying-to-conceive crowd. Plenty of people feel sick to their stomachs for the entire month and a half between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Plus, Christmas (as much as I love it) is about the birth of a child.

I suspect part of the problem is that while we are simultaneously missing the past and the future, we are not at all celebrating life as it is right now.

I refuse to let my child-free status tap the joy out of the most joyous time of the year. I'm not saying it's easy, but choosing to have a good time is the first step to having a good time.

So, here's my guide for how to survive.

1. Skip the holidays. Extreme this may be, it's a legitimate survival approach for those suffering raw emotional wounds, like a recent miscarriage. If 2011 delivered this kind of disappointment, I'm not going to tell you to deck the halls and have a good time. Hunker down in a dark room with movies and ice cream and magazines. Keep your phone nearby and your friends on speed dial. We send our love and prayers and hope to see you happier in the New Year.

2. Say no. December's dance card fills up quick. It's OK to sit out a few songs. Only go to the events you know you'll enjoy. I typically avoid large parties with lots of guests. I say no to the big parties, so I can say yes to the smaller gatherings with my closest friends.

3. Don't spend the holidays with anyone to whom you have to explain yourself. Families are complicated, and some families are more complicated than others. If yours has a habit of bringing up painful topics as dinner discussions, tell them in advance that all fertility talk is off limits. Or make alternate plans.

4. Know what you're going to say. Even when you are picky about which events to go to and who to spend your time with, someone is bound to ask you, "Do you have kids?" "Are you planning on having kids?" "Have you thought about seeing a doctor?" "How is it going?" "Are you still trying?' Etc. Etc. John used to joke, "We had kids, but the economy got bad so we sold them." Or, he would say, "No, we don't have kids. We play board games at night." At this point, I usually respond with an abbreviated version of the truth.

5. Consider putting "trying" on hold until the New Year. If the disappointment of not getting pregnant is going to ruin your Christmas, I suggest giving yourself a break from peeing on sticks.

6. Music. Maybe it's just me, but happy songs make me happy. Sad songs make me homicidal. Pump up the volume accordingly.

7. Create new traditions. Sleep in. Drink cocktails. Get away. Last year, John surprised me with a night at the Fairmont right before Christmas. He knew I had always wanted to stay there (and the rates are surprisingly low in December). It was a great treat and something we would be less likely to do if we had kids. 

8. Spread holiday cheer. Infertility is no picnic, but it could be worse. Giving back gives me clearer perspective. Shop for charity. Volunteer at a shelter. Collect canned food or blankets or coats or socks. Visit a convalescent hospital or the lonely neighbor on your street. You can't help but be happy when you make someone else happy.

If you have a holiday survival tip, I'd love to hear it.


xo! Christina

Life is Cake

“To our knowledge, flourless chocolate cake is the only dessert that is named for a missing ingredient.” ~The New Best Recipe cookbook, page 862

Being childless sometimes feels like being a flourless chocolate cake. You’re defined by what is missing in your life and your identity can be pigeonholed into one category ~ infertile. Never mind all the rest. Never mind all the tiny ways you try to make this world a better place. You’re not a mom, so it doesn’t matter.

This is as ridiculous and as untrue as telling a flourless chocolate cake it’s not decadent because it lacks dry ingredients.

Yes, John and I would like children, but my mind tells me: Be happy now. Do not wait. Nothing is going to get any more perfect than it already is.

It’s true certain circumstances are easier to live with than others. But a lot of circumstances are easier to live with than we let them be.

This applies to the fertility struggle as much as it does to any struggle. And I don’t want to be defined by my struggles. I want to be defined by my joys. I want my mind to be so jam-packed and overflowing with everything good and right in my life that all the negatives are pushed to the back corner, where they can be properly ignored.

I wonder if flourless chocolate cake ever longs for more than its rich ingredients of chocolate, butter and eggs. I’m thinking not.

Of course, we are not cake.

And sometimes not having a baby (or fill in the blank with whatever is lacking in your life) is harder than I would like to admit, and it’s hard to know what to do when you feel disappointed or left behind. A few years ago I noticed most of my friends were having their second child. Now almost everyone is welcoming their third or fourth.

Sometimes I feel like I’m never going to catch up, like I’m so far behind I’m not even in the race.

This feeling is not limited to children. There are several areas in my life I find just as frustrating as infertility, and all of them have the tendency to make me feel inadequate and stupid.

You might be wondering how something so obviously out of my control as infertility could make me feel stupid. This is where I will show you the ugliness of self-blame:

We should have started trying sooner, before I turned 30. We should have had our lives more together so we could have started trying sooner without fearing we would end up on welfare. We shouldn’t have worried so much about being ‘ready’ to have children. (By the way, we never became ‘ready’ we just stopped worrying about it.) 

This train usually crashes somewhere around: I should have done my high school summer reading because slacking in English is clearly when my life took a turn for the worse.

The fact John and I are childless really isn’t a turn for the worse. It’s just not what we imagined. I bet flourless chocolate cake is not what a lot of people imagine. When done well, it’s surprisingly and undeniably delicious.