Validation

I went to a speech last night by an academic who studies organisational energy. We were discussing whether it was easier for an organisation to regain energy it had lost, or to build energy from scratch. Ah, she said. It's about belief in success. If you've never been successful, it's hard to believe that you ever will be. Sound familiar?

But I think it's worse than that for us. We are mostly women who are used to being successful, and to being able to influence that success. Here we are, powerless to make ourselves successful in this miserable endeavour at which we all keep failing, and we also don't have the coping tools to deal with the fact that we keep failing. Low energy from the fact we've never been successful, and negative energy from the frustration at not being able to control our fate. A bad combination.

In other news, it's been a hard week to not be pregnant in my little corner of planet earth. First, and I readily admit I did this to myself, was the documentary on the Discovery channel about Jackie Clune. I'm not going to post a link to the discovery home and health site as all it gets you is a large picture of a naked pregnant woman, nothing to do with the documentary, that I imagine at least some of you aren't really in the mood for.

Anyway, Jackie Clune, for you ignorant non-brits, is a comedian. A reasonably famous one in the UK. One reason she's famous is that she spent 12 years being an out and proud lesbian. Then, as she puts it, she decided to give men another go, fell violently in love with a very handsome man, got accidentally pregnant at the age of 37, and had a daughter. Then, just 8 months after her daughter was born, she got accidentally pregnant again. At the 12 week scan they found out it was triplets.

Triplets. Accidentally. At 39. Now I'm not hoping for triplets but couldn't I have just a little tiny bit of her fertility? A smidge? She does seem like a nice woman - unassuming and terrified - but it was still hard to watch due to the usual blast of overwhelming jealousy at someone else's good fortune that I now seem to be unable to quench.

Second event was my high school reunion. Which I avoided, but I did get to read the newsletter. Let me offer you a sample of what my erstwhile schoolmates have been up to.

Juliette Fertile (nee Party Animal): Well, after getting my MA in Chinese at Oxford, and my PhD in international relations at Yale, I've spent 10 years travelling around the world to various trouble spots, working first with the Red Cross and now with the UN, helping set up crisis centres and saving people from certain death in areas like Biafra, the Sudan, Croatia, and Afghanistan. My latest posting in Iraq has forced me to finally become fluent in Arabic and in my spare time I'm helping a small women's cooperative develop their business in making and selling teapots. I'm also incredibly lucky to be married to the most gorgeous man in the world, Ollie (yes, Fiona, it's true, I promised you I'd marry him and I did!) and we have two lovely children: Joe and Amelia who are 7 and 4 respectively. Looking forward to hearing all your news!

Selena Really-Really-Fertile (nee Artypants): Having won an Oscar for my documentary: Up the Amazon in 2001, I've spent the last three years focusing on writing while being a mother to my adorable twins, Sophie and Madeleine. I hope at least some of you saw my first novel, I still can't believe - which made it onto the Waterstones top 10 list last October - it was very well received. Meanwhile my husband, Jurgen, has continued to wow the Art world with his creative video installations. Thank goodness Charles Saatchi is such a fan! I'm now expecting a little brother for the twins, who will be born around the time my second novel, Having it all, is published in the Spring. So excited to see you all!

Francesca I'm-so-bloody-fertile-I-get-pregnant-just-walking-down-the-street (nee Maths-Wizz): My First in maths at Cambridge soon turned into a PhD on option theory from MIT, at which point I went into banking. After becoming a senior vice president at Goldman Sachs five years ago, I left to set up my own company, which manufactures and markets the product I invented - the QuTiClean - that (we hope!) will change housework forever. Turnover finally hit the millions last year so now I can relax a little and enjoy life with my husband, Jamie, and our children Hamish (10), Freddy (7), Barty and Eloise (5) and little Jessamy (2). It's been an amazing few years and I can't wait to share more news with all of you!

Bitter? Moi? And honestly, I'm not exaggerating. These are truly superwomen.

Another old friend called in conjunction with the reunion. She and I have been out of touch for a while but she wanted to call and say thank you for the sympathy letter I sent her when her father died earlier this year. She's also been very successful - she's married to an actor, has two children and is a child psychologist with a weekly column in a national newspaper and two regular television programmes on mainstream channels. In the course of her work she met Sir RW, the uber-doc of UK fertility. She mentioned this after I told her about where we are on the fertility front. And good news, she passed on the maestro's advice! Now we'll all be pregnant soon! Are you ready for this advice? Because given the source, it's clearly going to be fab, right?

Ready?

Are you sure?

Ok because you know I'm going to tell you.

So, Sir RW says that what we need to do is...

JUST RELAX! Can you believe it? How can no one have told us this before! Seriously, he told my friend that you need to do two things. 1. Go on holiday, relax and have lots of sex. 2. Have an orgasm after the deposit has been made.

I can hardly speak I feel so enlightened.*edited to add that I am well aware that SirRW's comments were being relayed to me by an unreliable witness - I'm sure anything he had to say was more nuanced than this.

To add insult to injury, last night over dinner a colleague was discussing having found, on the JP Morgan women's initiative page, a policy saying that they supported adoption with various benefits. She was joking that of course JP Morgan had to offer those benefits since all the women who worked there would "have to adopt" since they'd be too old to have children by the time they got round to it. I thought about a suitable retort, and then just stayed silent. Coward.

And another colleague just started showing. Her third. Oh well.

Onward and upward.

Comments

[Nico]

It seems as if the order of things in this post got a little messed up somehow?

Regardless, I'm in shock at doctors telling us all we need to do is relax. You would think that they, of all people, would know that there ARE medical reasons for infertility, and it's not just in our heads.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine last night, a pediatric cardiologist, who said to me while I was trying to tell her about how M had come around to the possibility of adoption - before I managed to get to that part - she was telling me about how stress hormones can definitely interfere with getting pregnant. As another IF blogger said, How, then, is it that women get pregnant after being raped???? I cannot possibly imagine anything more stressful than that. ARGH!

And your superwomen bios? I think I'm going to go and shoot myself now. Yup.

[chee chee]

There is no getting away from the uber-fertiles of the world. It just sucks!

I love the fact this so called fertility "specialist" was offering such useless assvice.

Is there no safe harbor for we infertiles? Doesn't anyone GET it?

[zarqa]

It just never ends does it. Hang in there!

[Larisa]

Oh...NOW I understand. I will just go book myself that vacation pronto!

Those updates were impossible!

[Pamplemousse]

Dr RW is not actually such an asshat as that advice made him sound. His books are pretty good on IVF.

Those women make me want to kill them, frankly.

[elle]

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't even know where to start! First of all, YES, feeling so helpless & out of control is one of the hardest things about IF. I am used to do working hard & getting what I want, that is how most of us look at life, I would guess. IF takes the wind right out of those "can-do" sails. And your classmates, um, I feel like a major loser. I'm so glad I didn't go to your school - the pressure! The uberfertility dr recommends RELAXING?!? Seriously? WOW! If only I had known that years ago, I wouldn't be in this high-strung mess! Finally, your dinner companion needs a kick in the rear. I'd be happy to do it, too, if you want.

[T]

Oh here it is - I thought you deserved an award for this little slice of fertile hell you were experiencing.

psst - they tell you the secret to ivf after you've had four or five failures and it IS relaxing - who knew? They just need the money - porsches and vacation homes don't pay for themselves y'know.

[Sassy]

Urgh... I want to puke. I hope all that silly dinner companion loses her voice for a week in punishment.

[Lori]

Yikes - where to start!
First of all, the part about being accustomed to some degree of success in our endeavors is so true (at least for me). You work hard, and things will go your way. You reap what you sow. And so on and so forth. One of the hardest parts is learning how to cope with some emotions that I've just never had to deal with. Blech!
As for your fellow classmates - aren't I feeling like an underacheiver! Infertility aside, I think I'd dodge any class renunion with those folks.
And I could go on and on about the doctor's advice but I'll spare you all...

[Allie]

I'm speechless. I'm sitting here staring at my keyboard and I have no clue where to begin. I feel like I should have something witty to say, but I'm flabbergasted.

[nina]

Oh my god. You've made these women up, haven't you? I hope you'll use that newsletter to build a nice bonfire. Dr.Winston can go fcuk himself. I wonder if 'relaxing' will magically disolve my endometriomas or make my second ovary reappear? Maybe I'm not relaxing hard enough.
I'm so sorry you have to put up with these inane comments. You handled yourself with a great deal more restraint than I would have.

[Emily]

Ah yes, but of course. Isn't that the way it always is? Just relax works equally as well as fat just melting from my body. Sorry, won't work. Still needed to have a few holes punctured in my stomach to remove those fibroids because they weren't going to melt on their own.

[OvaGirl]

Two horrendous events in quick succession...

Sometimes I get furious with the way our bodies seem to let us down so badly.

And the Just Relax thing? Them's fighting words!

[Sarah]

Urg... Stupid comments, stupid pregnant people... After a major breakdown on my part on learning a new co-worker is preggers, I was told by a well intentioned friend well maybe you'll be pregnant before she has her baby. Maybe... and we all know being pregnant actually results in a baby. So umm... thats helpful.

Hope you find some luck ignoring the "just relax" recommendations.

[fisher queen]

Oh the horror. I would have crawled into bed with a small vat of ice cream.
One thing I've noticed about many superwomen: something is usually missing. All of their striving is often a symptom of the fact that they're looking for something they lack: personally, emotionally, or spiritually. And I'm saying that in the nicest possible way...
Doctors can bite. Plain and simple. They don't know everything, 'else we'd all be preggers, wouldn't we?

[Sheryl]

YIKES is all I've got to say...

[Tania]

Overachievers give me the creeps. They probably all send out 5 page Christmas letters outlining their wonderful lives, so you should really make sure to get on their mailing lists. Just give 5-10 years when their little darlings are all a bunch of coke addicts and anorexics because their parents have been so busy being perfect and trying to make their children perfect that they're just a bunch of messed up teenagers.

Relax????? Hmmmmm...... Brilliant. And who would have thought of going on a vacation to relax...... Groundbreaking. Can't wait for the book!

[mm]

Stupid fucknuts. Relax my ass! At this point I think I'm more likely to conceive Elvis' love child than I am to relax. Not bloody likely. Please tell me you were making those superwomen up!

[Julianna]

Damn. That is all I can muster. DAMN.

[Patti]

Hey Thalia, are those bios for real? If so, your high school sounds worse than mine! I won't be going near my 10 yr reunion.

RE the failed saline sonogram. The doc has no friggin idea what to do about my ute refusing to expand. She just hopes a repeat of the procedure will be successful. She mentioned exploratory surgery as an option, but she noted that she would likely encounter the same problem. So this could be Game Over.

For the immature eggs, the nurse who gave me the news said the Doc would recommend a drug protocol. She hasn't yet mentioned bypassing IUI and going straight to IVF. If she did, it would probably be Game Over, though maybe I would do it if she thought my other problems could be overcome.

For the thin endo, she's hoping estrogen will fix that. If it doesn't she would have to try to build it up, I think through surgery. Again, could be a deal-breaker.

Anyway, I don't know as much as I should. The thyroid problem is the most fixable of the lot!

Thanks for your interest!

Patti

[Dooneybug]

Oh for goodness sakes...the fertile cows are everywhere aren't they? I can't stand bios like that. They're so braggy and make me want to puke.

[Panda]

I say lets track down these poeple and kill them.

Regardless of what I've had to deal with, I just hate them anyway.

[kate #2]

Damn...so I have wasted all this time, energy, and money of my IF treatments when it is SO simple. Oh if only we could shoot people sometimes!

Aren't you SO glad you didn't attend your reunion, now!

[pixi]

OMG, I laughed my ass off while reading your reunion story.

You're a pretty accomplished gal yourself, though. Just because you haven't had a baby YET, it doesn't mean you aren't phenomenal, too, you know?