The right way to invite an infertile to a baby shower

I'm probably preaching to the choir with this one, but perhaps you can cut it and send it to pregnant friends to avoid any akwardness on the topic of baby showers; for infertiles they feel more like monsoons.

It seems that there is often a lot of debate on this topic - infertiles who are very sensitive to fertile friends and fertile friends who think we're hypersensitive about baby showers. And, maybe we are, but I think for good reason.

I certainly don't expect my friends who are moms to tiptoe around me about their pregnancies, avoid telling stories about their kids, or not send me a picture of their cuties (Christmas cards of just kids not included), but showers can be a volatile emotional grenade for some of us who have been trying for years (or even those just starting) to bring a child into our lives.

One of my good friends is pregnant with her first baby, and I am very, very happy for her and her husband. Actually, I wrote a post about her a few months ago because of her wonderful way of telling me she was pregnant - sensitive and more concerned about how I would handle it rather than showing any of her own over-excitement about being a mom.

Given how she handled her pregnancy announcement, I'm not surprised that she was so thoughtful about my invitation to her shower which is in a few weeks. She acknowledged that she knew it would be very difficult for me to attend and that she would completely understand if I didn't want to attend, remembering her own discomfort at showers when she was trying to get pregnant.

Here's what she did right:
1. Showed honesty and candor by acknowledging that it could be hard for me to attend
2. Showed sympathy and empathy
3. Gave me an out with no questions
4. Showed true friendship and selflessness

And, what she didn't realize, is that I wouldn't miss this shower for the world. Trust me, I've given my fair share of lame excuses of why I can't attend other showers (apparently, I go out of town a lot). While I know it won't be easy, I want to celebrate her precious gift with her and her closest friends and family. Yes, I love my friend, but the way she approached me honestly and with great sensitivity, made me love her all the more.

Hocus Pocus, Fertility Incantations and Other Pregnancy Magic - excerpt from book

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, which I was convinced made me run faster.

These illogical ways disappeared for the most part during college and in my twenties. My only momentary lapse was when we were trying to sell our first house. I bought a plastic statue of St. Joseph, the Catholic patron saint of home and family, and planted him in the ground upside down next to our “For Sale” sign. Then you’re supposed to 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, Nick and I tried this method and it worked. So I wonder if I should do something similar to promote the growth of a babe in the womb. Maybe I should plant a small statue of a Kokopelli, the Native American fertility deity.

Psychotic Pre-baby Shopping
Since I originally thought it would only take a few months to get pregnant, six months maximum, I started buying cute unisex onesies, décor for the nursery, and other baby belongings. We’d buy 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 trying to get off smack; I’d get the shakes when I’d pass a Gymboree.

So, I haven’t bought any baby-related stuff for more than two years, except for shower gifts for friends, which is incredibly hard to do (Note to other infertiles: Buy and send gifts on-line; it’s a much easier pill to swallow). What’s worse is that, apparently, my self-imposed, superstitious moratorium on buying peanut paraphernalia hasn’t worked anyway (no baby(ies)), yet I still can’t force myself to walk into a Pottery Barn Kids.

Back to invoking the saints. My best friend gave me a pendant of St. Gerard, the patron saint of fertility. He’s neatly tucked away in my change purse, but I’m wondering if I should wear him around my waist, lest that be sacrilegious. Also, I’m not sure why the patron saint of fertility is a man, but I know that God has his reasons. I’ve also prayed to the patron saint of little children, the patron saint of miracles, and the patron saint of fertile fields. One girlfriend recommended saying a prayer to St. Polycarp (the patron saint against earaches and dysentery) since he probably isn’t as busy as the more popular saints. I also found another potential heavenly helper – St. Mary of the Fertile Rock. So far, no divine intervention, though.

Anyway, at some point along the path to procreation with no success, you start to get pretty frustrated. For some couples this happens sooner than others, but after five or six months of trying, many start searching for new ideas to make that magical big belly appear. So far, I’ve been told loads of advice, including which sexual positions are best for pregnancy (these tend not to be the most fun for women, of course, and result in levels of discomfort that I really didn’t think could be achieved), and what to do post-coitus, including prop my feet on big pillows for at least an hour, or stand on my head. And, as odd as these recommendations sound, they actually worked for some of my friends.

In my research, I found that women received positive pregnancy test results from simple measures such as good luck charms, lighting votives at church, meditating to calm and prepare the uterus and/or sperm, and rubbing the belly a certain way to send in positive energy. I have tried them all and they didn’t work for me.

Tiger moms, helicopter moms, what about the non-moms?

You can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing the big tiger mom versus "compassionate" mother debate these days. And, there's still a lot of discussion over the helicopter moms hovering over their children to the point of ridiculousness. Plus, there are soccer moms, working moms, freaky pageant moms, the list goes on. People love to categorize types of parenting.

I say: What about the non-moms? Not the women who gave birth, but are far from being a mothering figure in their child's life, but those of us who long to have children, who have tried harder than most to become parents, yet it continues to allude us.

Heck - I'd be happy if someone called me a tiger mom these days. Being a tiger mom is better than not being a mom at all. Am I bitter? Maybe a bit, but at least I recognize it and it's for a good reason.

Only infertiles...

Only infertiles...

Are excited that we feel pukey and nauseated post IVF or IUI

Curse toliet paper

Can easily pick out our ovaries and follicles on an ultrasound with no training

Are thrilled when our breasts are engorged and veiny

Can track our cycles with the precision of a military operation

Can give ourselves an injection of horse urine blindfolded

Tear up in Target when we see "My First Christmas" onesies and peanut-sized Halloween costumes

Have our REs on speed dial

Feel a bitter twinge when we hear pregnancy announcements

Call our pets furbabies for lack of the "real" thing

Have sex on doctor's orders

I'm missing a ton of things. What else?

What I have in common with female pandas - revisited

This is a post from over the summer that I thought was pretty appropos because of the birth of a new panda at Zoo Atlanta a few months ago. Jack Black was on Good Morning America last week with the cute little bugger.

This was my last weekend in China, and we were able to go do something that I've wanted to do since I first arrived eight months ago - visit a Giant Panda reserve in the western part of the country.

So, off we flew 1,800 km to Chengdu, the gateway to Tibet and the home of one of the largest panda breeding and research centers in the world.

And, while visiting this amazing place, I discovered that female pandas and infertiles have something in common - difficulty getting pregnant.

Pandas in the wild only number 1,600, which is why there is such an emphasis at this center and others to determine good ways to help them procreate. When there is such a small number in the wild, your number of mates is less than desirable, too.

Not only that, but they only have sex about once a year. And, to make matters worse, a panda's anatomy doesn't help either. According to the Giant Panda Museum, a male panda has a rather small penis and the female has a long vagina. (No, I'm not kidding. This was actually written in English on one of the signs in the museum. Thank goodness there wasn't an accompanying diagram.) So, conception the old-fashioned way is a bit difficult.

Researchers have become expert semen collectors (and no, I don't want to know how) and use artificial insemination to get the females pregnant using a "frozen straw" method, sounds appealing, no?

And, even by using the medical intervention, the chances of conception are relatively low, though when they do, 45% result in twins. Oh, and the researchers use the panda's urine to do a pregnancy test, just like us, (though I doubt that they can take a HPT by themselves and they probably don't obsess looking for a faint light for 30 minutes after the 3 minutes is up, either.)

So, we infertiles can share our misery with the darling black and white gentle bears.

Those babies are worth it, too.