Thalia's fertility journey

Congratulations

I missed the exciting points of last night. I felt crap and tired, so I went to bed at 2030, long before the first results came in at about midnight. I woke up this morning to the expected, but no less exciting, result. Congratulations, USA, you have elected someone who wants to change things. I hope he can achieve his exciting vision and help realise the potential of the US as a world leader.

I couldn't help but wonder if Hilary would have won as convincingly. I have to say, given the state of the economy and the fact that GW is currently the worst rated US president since they started polling - six points behind Nixon the week he had to resign - I'm fairly sure she would have done.

But would she have energised the electorate in the same way? Would the same number of people turned out to vote? I'm not sure. What was clear to me this morning, watching Jesse Jackson in the crowds, crying, watching young black people talking about the hope they now had for their future, watching the interview with the black senator, Henry Marsh, talking about what it meant to have a black president, was that as a non-American, I do not have the emotional connection to what it means to have a black President. It was clearer to me than it ever has been before, the extent of the hole in the American psyche that was created by slavery and its aftermath. From my perspective as a non-black, non-American, the oppression of women over the centuries and the continued inequalities in the world today are just as bad, if quite different. But in America, I think maybe they aren't. Maybe the horrific injustices of slavery and the horrific continuance of prejudice and inequality are more of a wound, and that having such a visible demonstration of fixing them provides a greater opportunity for the USA to heal, to come together to help the country and to help the world out of its current hole (despite the fact that Obama's personal family history is not part of that narrative).

So I'm glad. I shed a tear along with my best friend (who is half Afro-Caribbean, half Indian (the subcontinent, not Native American)) this morning as she told me about waking up her daughter at 2am this morning to witness history being made. I'm glad you have a President-elect who has such a vision for his country, and who has captured American hearts in such an impressive way. Congratulations.

4dp2dt: Other people's losses

Still feeling optimistic about this cycle. Let's see how long that lasts.

A friend of mine at work had a miscarriage yesterday at just past 13 weeks. She had been very cautious and told no one til after the 12 week scan. I spotted her at about 10 weeks and offered her a thought on clothes to wear to keep the pregnancy hidden longer since she was clearly nervous about people knowing. We had a good chat and I was delighted when she wrote to me 10 days ago to tell me about the good scan, about how excited she was and about her due date of 26 April.

Today I heard from another colleague that my friend had lost the baby. The day immediately greyed around me. I have no idea why this loss has affected me so but I've been on the verge of tears all day. I just wrote to my colleague to let her know I was thinking of her, and characteristically she wrote straight back to say thank you. Because it was past 12 weeks she went through a sort of labour and got to see her tiny, perfectly formed baby. She is cocooning with her husband right now. I don't know her very well (and remember, we are English) so I don't think there is anything else she would welcome from me right now but maybe I will send chocolate or something in a few days.

I want to do more, though, but I suspect that is  more about my needs than hers. I think part of my distress is the shock. She is young, they conceived first time, the 12 week scan showed everything was perfect. I just assumed all would be well for her. Miscarriages aren't that common, right? But they are, even for the supposedly fertile friends we struggle with. And perhaps every time we grieve for someone else, we feel our own losses again. My losses are minor compared to many of my friends' in this community, but perhaps we feel all those losses, just a little bit.

I'm so sorry, friend. I wish it hadn't happened. I hope it never happens again.

Is the pain valuable?

About 12 years ago, my friend Girl Detective and I went to see a Chinese film at the Ritz Cinema in Philadelphia. I can't remember what it was now, perhaps 'Raise the red lantern'? We came out profoundly depressed, and agreed with each other on the way home that we didn't need to be that depressed by Art. We could go through the rest of our lives as good, caring, responsible citizens while avoiding other similar works of Art that were likely to upset us. I've mostly stuck by this decision.

Except with the news. H is very keen on watching the news, and so we often have it on in the evening while I'm catching up with work on the sofa. Mostly I'm fine with it on, but occasionally a story gets me angry or upset. Angry about the situation in Zimbabwe, for example, or desperately upset about the incipient famine in East Africa. I wear my emotions very close to the surface, I always have, and I find it hard to switch off when something touches me.

But worse than what I see on Channel 4 every evening, are the three stories I've read recently on the internet. I'm not going to link to them now because I don't want to inflict the pain on all of you, and I know the temptation to click is hard to resist. All three are stories of terrible things happening to children. In the first two examples, because their parents, otherwise entirely caring and loving, didn't realise the child was in their care rather than the other parent's. In the third case an extraordinary neglect case. The first two happened in Italy, the last in the USA.

The point here is not what happened to those children, although it's appalling and horrible, but what I choose to do to myself. I know that I am going to carry the awful knowledge, the awful pain of those stories around with me for weeks, if not months. The images of what it must have been like for those children rise to the surface, unbidden, at regular but unpredictable intervals. I'm left wondering two things about myself. First, why did I click through when I knew it would upset me? Second, do I have to know about these things? Would it be ok if I just closed my eyes and let those stories pass by me?

It's a tough one for me. I want to know about the holocaust, for example. I think it's important that everyone knows it happened, some of why it happened, what we might do to prevent it happening again. Everyone in the world should know. I think the world should be aware of what's happening in Zimbabwe, be aware of the extraordinary events that are commonplace there - a man's wife being murdered because he dared stand for election, for example. Not to mention the other places in the world where awful things are happening right now.

So where do I draw the line? Is it enough to know that child abuse happens, awful accidents happen to children when their parents aren't paying attention? To know in the theoretical sense and not have to know the details? Or is it important to know the details of the stories, to let them haunt me because in doing so I...what? Decrease the chances of it happening again? What impact can I have on similar stories? I'm not a social worker, or a child care worker, or a charity worker who might fund the right programme.

I don't know. It's messy. I have to know these things exist, I have to have empathy for those children, but do I have to carry those stories with me - to honour the children concerned, at least in memory? Does that help?

                                             ***

6dp3dt - none of the cramps and pullings I've had before when I've been pregnant, except for one sharp one yesterday. Resisted peeing on a stick this morning because I only had two expired ones, one digital and one cross-type, the latter being notoriously hard to read, and the former being unsatisfactory in the peering and twisting activities. Torn between hoping and being pretty sure that one doesn't get that lucky twice in one's life.

Children of men

I finally watched Children of Men last night. Only the second film I've watched start to finish since Pob was born. When it finished, in fact before it finished, I was reduced to wracking sobs. I knew from about 10 minutes in that the film was going to destroy me, but somehow I couldn't stop watching. The bleakness of the world it portrayed got to me from the first minute, particularly that there were no good guys, everyone was in it for their own goals, including the so-called terrorists who wanted to liberate the country. Somehow the absence of children has created a world where either people don't care about anything any more, and hence commit suicide, or where they care passionately, without any barriers, about an ideal and are prepared to do anything to work towards what they think is right. The ideal, for the terrorists, has replaced any concern for individual humans, they have little fear for their own lives, and no care for the lives of others.

But the moment that recuced me to blubber was the walk that Theo and Kee take with the baby out of the building where the battle is going on. That everyone - soldiers, terrorists, fugitives alike - stops what they are doing to stare at the baby, to try to touch the baby - although in a gentle, rather than frightening way - brought home more than anything else in the film the utter devastation that not being able to have children has brought to the world. I wept because I remembered what it felt like to be just one individual, wanting to reach out and touch the babies I couldn't have, although I cannot really imagine what it would feel like if I was one of billions of people who felt the same way. I wept because I know how it feels to have our baby, to love her as much as I do, and to know that I have friends who are still reaching out but haven't been able to feel that love, friends who have stopped trying to have the baby, who ran out of runway. All that pain was beautifully portrayed on film, the hands, the faces, the arms, the eyes, the sotto voce singing of lullabies. It was utterly heartbreaking.

One thing that got to me, which presumably wouldn't have done before our recent issues, was the fact that Kee didn't seem to ever put the baby to the breast. When the baby was screaming, it seemed as if it would have been the 'natural' thing to do. "The baby must be STARVING," I was thinking, "why doesn't she feed her? Please let the baby be ok!" Perhaps the filmmakers felt that breastfeeding was a step too far for the viewing public, perhaps it just wasn't the issue, but I was so worried that this young girl wouldn't be able to care for her baby, having never seen anyone care for a newborn before, that she wouldn't know what to do. It didn't seem to be the message of the film, so I'm trying to take away a message of hope, but it was hard, the whole film was so bleak, I kept waiting for something else to go wrong.

It was a tough, tough film. All night I dreamt of not being able to feed my baby, of not being able to give birth at the right time, of trying to care for other people's babies. A long time ago I agreed with a friend that we didn't need to see films that were just horribly upsetting. I both wish and don't wish I was still following that agreement. Being that upset is horrible, but perhaps it's a good thing, to remember my own pain, to empathise again with the pain of others, to want to do anything I can to avoid a world without hope. Who knows what difficulties the world will get into during Pob's lifetime.  I can't quite imagine an infertile world, but I can imagine a world heading for environmental disaster, a disaster even closer than it seems today. For now I will redouble my efforts to turn down the heating, to recycle, to give up plastic bags, to buy without packaging, the little things I do which I hope will help her inherit a world with hope. Strange the effect that one film can have.

Reunion

Hooray!

Catherine T. Smith

Many of you may be surprised at finding this entry on my blog today. I'm quite surprised myself. When I first read about it on another infertility blog (I've forgotten whose, I'm sorry), I wasn't immediately tempted to get involved. It just didn't feel right, to be focusing on these 2,996 at the expense of all the other victims of similar atrocities who we could be remembering. Then one evening I clicked through to the 2,996 website and thought, "yes, everyone here should be remembered." I don't feel any special relationship to those who died. I didn't know anyone who died, or even anyone who was affected directly by someone's death. But something in me decided I should make some effort to commemorate someone who died on a Tuesday morning in 2001. To recognise that this should not have happened, just as every day, all over the world, people die from violence that they did nothing to cause, from violence that has no end. And to recognise that people who die in such acts are real people, with real impact on the world, as a person, rather than as a statistic or a political symbol.

And so I remember Catherine T. Smith.

Catherine T. Smith had recently been promoted to the role of vice president at Marsh and McLennan. They describe themselves as a global professional services firm, who after 9/11 developed a business in consulting on terrorism risks to businesses. Their offices were in the impact zone of American Airlines flight 11's hit on the North Tower, or One World Trade Center. Catherine worked on the 96th floor. As such it seems very likely that Catherine would have died on impact, or immediately thereafter. At her memorial service, her nephew Michael, who was 12 at the time, insisted that "She did not suffer, she went in peace."

Catherine was 44 when she died, and she lived with her domestic partner, Evelyn Cedeno in West Haverstraw, NY, USA. Evelyn and Catherine had both been regulars at the same bar in Rockland County for over twenty years, but had only become a couple about six years before 9/11. They had met again shortly after they'd both suffered break-ups, and took the opportunity to cry on each other's shoulder. Cathy, as she seems to have been known to her friends, pursued Evelyn until she finally gave in, leading to their description of themselves as Penelope and Pepe LePew. They planned to retire early, making sure they could enjoy the beachhouse in Manahawkin, on the Jersey Shore, which they'd recently built.

I wonder what Cathy's earlier life must have been like, coming of age just six years after Stonewall. She seems to have grown up in surburban New Jersey - what would her High School experience have been like in the early 70s? At least NYC would have been close by. By the end of her life, her sexuality seems to have become a non-issue. She had a happy relationship, she had good friends and colleagues, she had her family. She was close to her family, and spent the weekend before 9/11 shopping with her sister and mother for her mother's birthday. Michael, her nephew, said she was the aunt who was always there for him.

Reports describe Cathy as warm and loving, as well as full of smiles, with a real joy for life. I worried initially that this wasn't authentic, that that is just an easy thing to say about someone who has died so suddenly, but particularly after reading spontaneous comments from those who knew her in high school, combined with all those from family, friends and colleagues, it does seem to have been a strong characteristic. After all, she drove a canary yellow Volkswagen, so she must have had a great sense of humour. She collected baseball cards, and, according to her housemate Jill Aney, she planned to set up a business trading them. I get the impression she might have been a bit shy, even with all the smiles, which makes her pursuit of Evelyn all the more impressive.

The information has run out on me now. Catherine didn't leave any artefacts on the web during her life. The informaton that exists about her are her obituaries, comments on memorial sites about her, and a report of her memorial service. I'm sure those who loved her are finding this anniversary hard, as every day must be hard, living without someone you loved - love - so much. I wish I could give more insight, could more readily convey what she was really like, to live up to what I'm sure they are all feeling. But I can't. I'm only typing about someone I never met. I hope this is enough.

I remember Catherine T. Smith. I remember her as a person, and I remember her because her impact on the world should not go unnoticed.

Circle the Wagons

Liana and Mason have had the worst week imaginable, the death of their longed for, planned for, years-in-the-making baby at about 13-14 weeks gestation, only picked up 2 weeks later. Please please go and let Liana know you are thinking of her.

Petrified

Thank you for all the support in my many freakouts and stresses in the last week. And for the lovely comments on my engagement ring story. I'm glad you all got it. It seems many of us have had similar experiences. That's happened to me a lot on here. I think something is taboo, I write about it, and many of you chip in saying you feel the same way - the best example is probably my Obsession post. Boy did that feel better.

Sadly the stressing is not over. I feel stupid for worrying and being stressed when at the same time LEB's 12 week pregnancy is ending again, and zhl's cycle was cancelled for a response level not that different from mine (please go and pay them a visit if you haven't already). But I recognise that this is my stressful situation and I need to deal with it in the way I can best cope with. For me that means posting, reading, and commenting on your blogs, and watching crappy tv and reading a lot of newspapers. And Heat. But still I've spent a lot of this weekend freaked out about what might happen tomorrow morning. Dr Google has nothing encouraging to say about my E2 levels. I went and read through Julie's IVF#4 story as I remember her not producing many follicles on this cycle - the one that conceived Charlie - but she was ahead of me at this stage, so no respite there. And I can't get over how low the E2 is.

And again, of course there is nothing I can do about it. I just have to go to bed, go to sleep, wake up and go to the clinic. And stay as calm as I can. Please, although I know it's pointless, hope for me that this isn't cancelled. I can cope with fewer eggs, nothing to freeze, but I don't want to have to wait until I'm 39 to do my first IVF.

May you be sealed in the book of life for a good year...

Preparing for Yom Kippur which starts in a few minutes. My best wishes are with you all. You've done so much for me in the last year, thank you. I'll be thinking of you as I reflect on the year past and the year to come. For those who are fasting, Be well over the fast. And for those who are not, if you haven't already, go and show Ovagirl some love.

London, 3 days later

It feels the same. It's sunny today, and we took a two hour walk to a fair that was happening in a local park. It was full of families having fun. We tried a small cafe's home made icecream, which was delicious. We wandered by the river. And every newsagent we passed had signs outside: "Pictures of the missing".

I've now read through these profiles in the paper three times - Friday evening, Saturday morning and this morning. They are very poignant. I remember reading the New York Times obituaries of the 9/11 dead, and being left with a sense of lives not lived, and how ordinary they were, until something extraordinary happened. And I remember the story of the guy from Cantor Fitzgerald who walked his son to nursery on 9/11 and so didn't get to work until 09:15, and so survived. Just like the guy who got off the number 30 bus on the morning of 7 July, because it was going so slowly, at 09:45. He told a guy trying to get on: "There's a free seat upstairs, mate." Two minutes later the top of the bus blew off.

London is determined to carry on. Although the city was quiet on Friday the weekend has been normal. I went on the Tube yesterday morning and it was the same as every Saturday morning. Except that when I got off at Holborn there was no entry to the Picadilly Line. And tomorrow when I take the Picadilly line to work I'll have to get off two stops early and walk. Who knows when they will be able to get the line working again. We'll cope.

I'm struck again by the debate on my post about hierarchies of loss. Is this bombing less awful than 9/11? Than Lockerbie? Because "only 70" people have died. Isn't that an extraordinary indictment of how we feel about world events. The loss that is felt by those 70 people's loved ones will be the same, whether it was 70 or 700. The difference from 9/11 that I can see, is that given the scale of the loss, I imagine that most people in New York were affected in some degree - perhaps second or third hand - but everyone had their lives touched by loss. For me and everyone I know, we don't know anyone who was lost last Thursday. I cry at the pictures in the paper, but it's a distant grieving, not a heartfelt loss. And unlike New York, Londoners are used to bombs. As a teenager I got used to planning longer than I needed for tube journeys to make up for disruptive bomb threats. But mostly when the IRA made a bomb threat, they made it in time to evacuate people. These people are in a different mindset.

Thanks to all of you for the thoughts you have posted on your blogs.

SBIH

Something very sad and bad is happening to Julia right now. I know (almost) no one is coming here, but if you have come here without having visited Julia, it would be great if you could go and give her a hug. Julia I am so very very sorry.