Thalia's fertility journey

I don't deserve you

I felt quite bad about that post after I wrote it. Like that stroppy email you should save and reflect on ovenight, rather than sending. I did in fact save it instead of posting, and wrote the Nostalgia post instead. But instead of saving to draft I saved it for later posting, and I was so busy at the end of last week I forgot and it got posted. By the time I remembered it already had 15 comments which I didn't want to lose, so I left it.

Despite my red face, I got so much out of your comments, thank you. I think you were all incredibly gracious given my moaning. You wrote some very wise thoughts. I do know that readers move on, and I understand that very well, particularly when they are still in the trenches. So it wasn't about any of my bloggy friends who have just retreated from the bloggy world as it became less and less helpful for them. It was more about those who are still around, yet no longer present here and in some other parts of the community which was once central to them.

It also wasn't about the early pioneers, as electriclady described them, the first wave of 2003/2004. They only very rarely commented here, although I know they read a bit more often than that, so I didn't feel the same sense of us all being in it together with them as I did with those of us who were all in the trenches together during 2005/2006/2007.

In additoin, one of the things I should have written is, "If you are reading this, it isn't about you." It turns out, understanding myself a bit better than I did a few days ago, that my real sadness wasn't so much about the comments, although I do love a bit of validation when it comes my way, but the loss of some of those relationships, and a sense of injustice that I didn't stop being supportive of them, yet they have moved on from me. I was once part of a community where just over 200 people congratulated me on the birth of my daughter. I am still part of a community, but a different one, a different shape and with a different purpose. Not a single purpose but a mess of different purposes, hence less of a unifying force and more of an underlying loyalty based on historical relationships. Some of those relationships were stronger than others, I should not be surprised at that although I allow myself a little bit of sadness.

But your comments helped me a great deal and gave me a bit of renewed energy for blogging. Thank you so very much for your thoughtfulness and fulfilling a need despite my worst side coming out. You're the best.

Comments

I used to get fed up with new bloggers complaining about lack of comments, or wondering what they needed to do to get that attention. When I started blogging, it was about commenting. The more you commented, the more people would see your name around, the more you got comments back. It was an excellent example of forming those social connections online, if you don't reach out, you don't form relationships, they are two way.

So as I realised how much comments meant to me, I was careful to always reciprocate, to offer as much back as I got in return. Although I don't comment as much any more, I do comment as much as I can, and yet it doesn't seem to work as well any more. Perhaps it's that weakening of the glue I wrote about last week. I think it's also that I have written less, and written more posts that are really for me rather than for an audience - for example my Pob snippets, which are, although I hope mildly entertaining, mostly for me to remember what she is doing at this age - so presumably people have started to not look for my posts any more. I also probably write less well than I used to, certainly I spend less time on most posts, and I've done less research and less active thinking as part of my posting than I used to. And I've never been the kind of funny writer who draws in the crowds. But still, it's part of my heart, this blog. 

Do me a favour, would you, and leave me a comment if you are still reading, if you can bear to. I'm feeling a bit disconsolate about pouring my heart out but getting much less back than I used to. I know readers fall off when the babies arrive, but quite honestly my feelings are a bit hurt by a few of the relationships that seem to have fallen by the way side. A couple of bloggers who I supported early on when they had very few readers, religiously left comments on their posts (and they on mine), are now much more established and well read, and in that process seem to have deserted me. They didn't even leave a comment when Junior was born, and we all know birth posts are easy to leave a comment on.

So well, enough moaning. I clearly still need validation. Must work on that self-realisation stuff.

Nostalgia

It's a silly thing, isn't it, Nostalgia? Me, I'm nostalgic for almost everything. I find change incredibly difficult, and letting go of anything causes me a lot of grief. To whit, the piles of baby clothes carefully folded away in our loft. And the fact I cried when my sister in law picked up the family cradle a couple of weekends ago. And yes, I know that's not nostalgia, but I have a point, honest I do.

 A few minutes ago I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and wandered in and out of the bedroom and bathroom, tidying and putting my suit away, getting ready for bed. I'd just been upstairs to gently nudge Junior awake enough to take his medicine (tonsillitis, the latest in a stream of lurgies which has visited our house recently). And I came down and the absence of the cradle in the bay window suddenly seemed utterly visceral. It will never be there again. I will never creep around when I'm getting ready for bed, concerned about disturbing my tiny baby. I'll never wake in this bed again, hearing those powerful newborn demands for food, and stumbling in the dark to the cradle to pick up my swaddled infant.

And it felt like such a big loss, such a huge thing to let go of. At the same time, I can remember at a factual level how awful those early weeks were, the utter utter tiredness, the lack of rationality, my feeling that I'd lost that precious relationship with Pob. I remember, but I don't remember how it felt, just that it was true. And so that leaves me with the feeling of loss, a weird loss because I don't want it back, exactly, I just want it not to be gone forever. I want a baby to wear those clothes, sleep in our room again, but I know that at the same time we are going to be happier as a family of four than I ever dreamed we could be, and almost certainly happier than as a family of five (as if that was even possible). I don't want another baby, but I do, oh I do.

So it is Nostalgia. a bittersweet yearning for something past. I yearn for those months of being on leave, having lots and lots of unstructured time with my children, for the tiny baby that Junior was, for learning to be a family of four. I yearn for it even while I know that parts of it were miserable, that the person Junior is now is in many ways so much more fun, more loveable. I'm not sure I'm ever going to lose that Nostalgia. I'm sure other things will replace it. But being nostalgic is a strong part of my personality, and this is such a profound shift in my life that I think it will always be there. I'll always miss the babies they were, even as they delight me with the new things they can do. That's my lot from now on, and I'm lucky, oh so lucky, I get the luxury of feeling this way. Of feeling this sad and this hopeful, of holding all those feelings in place at the same time.

I'm five. And five hundred

For once, I've actually remembered my bloggiversary in time to write about it on the day itself. And it coincides with another nice round number. Five years and five hundred posts ago I started this blog (I'm not very impressed with five hundred posts in five years. A hundred a year? One every 3.6 days? Must try harder). I had already been a participant in the bloggisphere for some time in the form of comments, but I realised as I read other blogs that when I read a comment I liked I clicked on the name to read more of what they thought and what they were experiencing, yet I wasn't allowing others to do the same for me. So why should people who wrote these blogs care what I thought in their comments if I wasn't similarly sharing my own thoughts? At the same time, we had some difficulties in our marriage that I couldn't talk about in real life, and I wanted a safe space to discuss them, a space where nobody knew my name.

In the five years since I have been writing the size of the infertile bloggisphere has exploded. At the time I started I think I'm safe in saying that we were all connected by, at most, two degrees (e.g., I read Julie, who read Cecily. Although I didn't read Cecily to start off with, a post at Julie's alerted me to the loss of Cecily's boys, which allowed me to connect to Cecily's experience. And add her to my list of blogs I read.). And we were all connected by the famous 'big list of blogs' at Julie's place, which allowed everyone to at least have the opportunity to 'know' everyone.

Nowadays I'm sure that despite Mel's efforts, we are not even all connected through the Stirrup Queens portal. There are simply too many people in the world blogging about infertility and infant loss, and increasingly many of them are not blogging in English and so don't naturally hook into the big US-UK-(some parts of mainland Europe)-Australia-New Zealand-Canada cabal. As new people join the infertile bloggisphere, us old ones often stick around (although sadly others don't), swelling the ranks further. 

For me, this means that a sense of community is harder. First because it's simply too big. The very good programme shown recently on BBC1 - 'Virtual Revolution' - shared some research on this. Basically in every primate society there is a natural group size of between 60 and 150. Beyond 150 groups tend to fragment into smaller units, as it's impossible to maintain the intense 1:1 interactions that are required for the group to maintain its identity. Despite the ease of online interaction, it turns out we still tend to stick to communities of less than 100. On facebook, the average number of friends is around 65. This community is much, much bigger than 150 - probably back in 2005 we had already exceeded this limit. 

What's happened? We've become a social network experiment. If you analysed our connections my guess it we'd look something like this

  Picture from here, thank you
 
Lots of relatively tightly linked groups, connected by less tight and dense links to other similar groups. Except that our links would continue to link those outside the picture. It's not a perfect illustration, but it will do.

Does it matter? Not really. People seem to still find the connection and supoprt they need (although I wonder if that's always true for someone blogging in, say, Hungarian or Tamil. And where are those blogging in Mandarin about infertility? There must be some, mustn't there? Do you think there is a Chinese equivalent of Tertia or Julia leading the way and making connections?). It does make the groups that do exist perhaps a bit less closely knit. The linkages are not so intense because there are more people sharing them. The need for support is a bit less obvious - we know the community is big, we assume someone else will make that comment. But it is what it is. It's much bigger and it's getting bigger.

And perhaps naturally, therefore, I cherish the links that have been with me since the beginning or almost beginning even more, even when those people have disappeared from my life. So I thank Sandy and Nico, who left my very first comments. I thank Grrl, whose blog was the first infertility blog I found. I thank Julie, for being the original glue. And I won't go on because inevitably I will forget someone and I always have hurt feelings when I read similar posts on other blogs and they haven't mentioned me! But I do thank all of you. For the 11,927 comments on my 500 posts. For getting me through it. For understanding when no one in real life did. For becoming real friends. I am so glad I didn't have to go through it without you.