Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Superstitions revisted

I’ve been a little bit superstitious since I was a kid. Ever the athlete, I had lucky socks that I would wear for basketball games, lucky underwear (no, not that kind of lucky underwear – I was a kid) that I would wear on the days I had volleyball games or math tests, and a lucky pre-track meet meal of a Pizza Hut personal cheese pizza.

These pseudo-illogical ways disappeared for the most part during college and my twenties. My only momentary lapse was buying a plastic statue of St. Joseph, the patron saint of home and family, and plant him in the ground upside down next to your “for sale” sign. You then say a prayer to him every day for nine days and your house should sell more quickly. So, maybe it’s more religious than superstitious, but you get the idea. Anyway, Jack Bauer and I tried this method to sell our house in Atlanta and it worked.

And then I started trying to get pregnant.

Since I originally thought it would only take a few months, six max, to get pregnant, I started buying cute unisex onesies, décor for the nursery and other baby belongings. We’d buy our future baby souvenirs while we were on vacation, too.

When I started the hard core fertility treatments, I went into overdrive (maybe it was the fertility drugs), buying even more infant equipment because I was convinced that it would work and I’d soon need Diaper Genies and teething toys.

After three ovulation induction treatments didn’t work and the first IVF didn’t take, I started reverting back to those old superstitious ways, and wondered if buying all the baby stuff was actually inhibiting my ability to get pregnant. So, I went cold turkey and stopped the shopping spree. You would’ve thought I was a heroin addict, I’d get the shakes when I’d pass a Gymboree.

Then we got the call in July 2008 about Nate, and those baby buying tendencies picked right back up. My girlfriends almost had an intervention with me after one trip to an Outlet Mall – I tore threw Oshkosh B’gosh and Hartstrings like there was no tomorrow, estimating how big Nate would be when would get to bring him home. Then, all progress to get him home stopped.

So I had to go into withdrawal once again. But, I have stuck to my guns and haven’t bought any baby-related stuff for more than a year and a half, except for shower gifts for friends, which is incredibly hard to do.

Most recently, I've been adhering to some of the Chinese superstitions. Of course, they wouldn't call them superstitions, they are just things that go along with the Chinese way of thinking. I have rubbed the lion cub on the lioness statues at the front of Buddhist temples, which is supposed to bring you children, and I have started drinking warm water instead of cold water. (quick post on that tomorrow).

Here’s hoping that I’ll have trips to Pottery Barn Kids in my near future, or at least the Chinese version of PBK. At least once, on every shopping trip, I say to myself, "That's something I will get once we have Nate."

What about you? Any superstitions about trying to conceive?

8 comments:

  1. I wasn't superstitious, although I did have a "wish box" where I wrote down my heart's desire, folded it up and kept it in a decorative box in my bedroom. I used to visit the wish box and remove the paper, unfold it and blow on it like it was a stray eyelash. A silly ritual that made me feel better.

    I hope you get your wish.
    Lisa (yourgreatlife - ICLW#44)

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  2. I dont think it is superstitious so much as just plain ol infertile. When we started TTC (because I knew I had endo) I thought it may take a while and I for sure brought nothing. The first thing I ever brought was a book after our first IVF cycle (that was a freeze all cycle because of my crap lining). I brought that out of a symbol of hope.
    Then nothing until I brought Monkey and Giraffe, our 2 little baby symbols last spring.When we were expecting (now)we did not start to buy anything after the 1st tri, and even at that most things we are holidng off until after 28 weeks.

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  3. No suggestions but this is a great post. I think we all have our things we looked forward to - even something as basic as shopping for baby.

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  4. Certainly I won't buy anything baby related. But I recently read a new blog about a woman trying to conceive (she had only just started) and she bought a pram and baby carrier from eBay. I shook my head wearily, if only she knew. But then, of course, she got pregnant almost immediately - so I wondered if it was the power of positive thinking.

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  5. I'm starting to get superstitious and weird... lol. My mom recently sent me a picture of the virgin mary holding baby Jesus, that has been in the bedrooms of several family friends who had trouble conceiving. Lo and behold, they got knocked up while the virgin looked down at them! We shall see, I guess. At this point I'll try anything.

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  6. I haven't bought anything baby related...but I suppose my superstition is that I try realllly hard to not get my hopes up.

    I think because people keep saying, "You know, when you don't want it to happen, it will." And as stupid as that sounds, it's always in the back of my mind lol.

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  7. I didn't allow myself to buy anything baby-related in the years of TTC, with the exception of 2 onesies that I thought I'd be using to tell DH our first IVF had been a success (and then the numbers started falling fast before I could), and a My First Disney Bear when we went to Disneyworld for our conceptionmoon and thought we'd be pregnant any minute. But when we found out about our baby boy, who came to us through the miracle of open adoption, 4 days before he was born, I really wished we had done some shopping in advance! So I think a little preparation is a very good thing :)

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  8. My husband and I have been trying for a year now to conceive and we did following a histogram. I lost my baby while on vacation in Ireland and at times I still feel like my heart was ripped out of my body. I recently heard that Ripleys believe it or not has two fertility statues from the Ivory Coast on display at the Ripleys in Niagara Falls Canada and I live 3 hours away. My husband, son from a previous relationship and I went on Friday and I touched the statues. I know that many people have said that I should be grateful for the two children I already have and that I'm too old to have more children (I'm 39). What makes them think that I'm not grateful for my kids? I love my boys and as a result I would like to have more children with my new husband who has none. I didn't get a choice of having more with my ex but my husband would like to have a child if possible. So as stupid as it might sound to people those Ripleys statues are not going to hurt. They will be on their way to the Ripleys in Florida next I believe where they will be retiring the exhibit. Go and touch if you can and believe in the power of hope in the dream to be the most powerful person in the world. Mother.

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