megfowler.com

Now that’s a hell of a title, no?

If you’re brand new to my blog, you might not know (and hey, that’s just fine! After all, it’s not really something that would come up if I met you at a dinner party, anyway… “Hi! I’m Debbie!” “Oh, hi! I’m Meg! I’m infertile!”) that my internal girl-nesses are not functional for the baby-making.

I wrote about it here and here (and lots of other places, but I’ll spare you a day’s worth of angst reading.)

(And any more parenthetical remarks, for that matter. For now.)

It’s funny — since I got this difficult news, it seems like pregnancy and baby-lusting and maternity whatnots and celebrity child coverage have become (even more of) an obsession in my part of the world.

Everyone is having kids, planning to have kids, worrying about how to raise their kids, freaking out about star “baby bumps” or getting the latest photo of Brangelina or Bennifer offspring — or, if they don’t have a pregnancy happening in the immediate future, fussing that they won’t be able to have kids at all, or that they’ll have to wait until childbearing becomes a high-risk proposition.

Add to that the explosion in trendy fashions for moms, a thousand chic new entries into the diaper bag market (hint: if it looks like a diaper bag, you’ve probably bought the wrong one), and concert t-shirts for the 6-12 month set.

Add to that the thousands of blogs written by moms and dads that are chronicling the first years of parenthood in extreme detail. Or the blogs that cover the torturous experiences of those families trying to have their first (or second, or third, or fourth) child who struggle with an inability to conceive, or to carry a child to full term.

Add to that all the websites that have sprung up offering parenting advice and parenting news, along with a healthy dose of targeted advertising and merchandising.

Add to that all the new terms that this generation and the one before have coined to add a little “quirk” or “cool” to their child-raising experiences, like “yummy mummy” or “hipster parents.”

Add to that the fact that my friends have been having little ones for more than a decade, and that I’ve been to more showers and hospital waiting rooms and delivery suites and christenings and dedications and first birthday parties than almost anyone I know. I am the Universal Auntie Meg.

When you put it all together, it’s a pretty sure recipe for insanity at times… or, at the very least, a little self-loathing. Whether or not that’s a reasonable response.

Sure, I don’t have a husband or a nest egg yet — and I know that both of those things will need to be a part of my baby plans, given the expense of adoption and my lack of desire to do it all alone (though that’s not a given, either.)

And of course, I know that everything will work itself out in time. It generally does. Besides — when it doesn’t, you find a new way to deal.

But man… this has been a tough year.

Sometimes I feel great about the entire thing, knowing that I will get the opportunity to help out a birth mother who needs a different life for her child than the one she can give. I’ve never lacked confidence in my ability to love any baby in my arms, whether I had to do 24 hours of labour or 24 hours of paperwork to put them there.

Sometimes, though, it puts an ache in the pit of my stomach or the centre of my heart that will not go away. I wait for it to pass, and that’s all I can do.

I think it’s changed me a little — toughened me up, made me a bit more resilient, given me a bit more perspective. On the other hand, it’s also softened me in ways I wouldn’t have foreseen, and made me a more thankful soul.

I know that when I finally DO have a little one of my own, I’ll be grateful and blessed beyond imagination. I always would have been, but now I know what it’s like not to take that for granted.

Still, people ask me all the time how I handle the whole thing… what my coping mechanisms are, what my advice for fellow “infertiles” (and I hate that term, for the record) might be, what drives me nuts about our baby-obsessed culture.

That’s why I’ve put together a quick list (because OF COURSE I’d make a list) of how to survive the ups and downs of an infertility diagnosis without going absolutely bajiggity. Bear in mind, I’m just a year into the whole thing, and I haven’t even started to work through it with a mate and face the bureaucratic snarl of adoption, as I said.

BUT.

1. Expect that some people won’t know what to say to you about the whole thing. They’re not trying to ignore you or disregard your experiences. They just have no idea what you need from them, or what you might be going through. Don’t write them off if they don’t step up to the plate with a heaping dose of comfort.

Be real about where you’re at, and share as much of your life as is appropriate, given your level of intimacy. Just as you probably don’t need to share your FSH levels with the guy in the next cubicle, you should feel comfortable telling your best friend you are upset about your ovaries leaving you high and dry, even if the only thing they can think of to do is hug you or buy you a coffee.

2. Expect that some people will say WAY TOO MUCH to you about the whole thing. Many people have some friend/relative/coworker who struggled with infertility, and will feel compelled to offer you all the gory details of what they went though, and their treatments, and what you should do that Cousin Michelle did with the naturopath because it worked out really well AND it cleared up her skin!

3. Expect that all the baby stuff going on around you will upset you now and then. Not because you are a jealous, evil, withered harpy, but because it’s hard to watch other people go through a really amazing experience that you might have to experience in a different or delayed way.

Not that it won’t be great when it happens — people will tell you this constantly, by the way, and they mean well — but it hasn’t happened yet. Let yourself feel that. Cry if you need to. Rant if you need to (though not at someone’s baby shower, ok?)

4. Expect that your friends who are pregnant and having babies will feel really weird about sharing their joys with you now and then. They don’t want to feel like they’re gloating. So ask them questions. Your circumstances should never cancel out their own.

And the same goes with new moms needing to complain to you when they feel like their pelvis is going to split in two, or that they might give away their sleepless newborn. They might hesitate, not wanting to look like some sort of ingrate. Do the same thing as when life is going swimmingly in babyland — ask them questions. Keep the communication flowing.

Don’t become the person people need to tiptoe around. That just makes for sore feet — and a pain in the ass.

5. Expect that your family will struggle with the whole thing. It’s especially an adjustment for your parents to make, if they tend to be pretty involved in your life in the first place. They won’t get all the “belly photos” and ultrasound photos and hospital photos and the horrible stories of long labours and frenetic trips to the hospital to tell their friends. And more importantly, they love you. They hate watching you go through something difficult. They might not even handle it well or say all the right things.

That’s when you remind yourself that they love you, and get over it. And tell them you love them — and that they need to get over it.

6. Expect that you will feel a bit weird about the whole thing with men, if you get your news when you’re a single girl. Do you tell them right away? How long do you wait? Do you wait until they mention their family plans, or what? How long can you wait to say something until you’re just being a bit false?

Well, of course, it ain’t first date material. But it’s not something you wait to say until you’re engaged, either. The secret is to make it as little of a bomb as possible, without being untrue to yourself. If they don’t react how you expected them to react, resist the urge to clam up or freak out or break things off immediately (unless the response was really offensive, in which case, don’t waste your sexy years on some moron, thank you very much.)

In a case like mine, kids are a very important part of my life anyway, so I doubt I’d be dating a guy who didn’t feel somewhat the same way about munchkins. I might be inclined to say something sooner than later if things were getting serious. But likely not after the first kiss.

7. Expect to have days where you want to do tons of research on your health and on adoption, and days where you just don’t even want to THINK about it. Both are completely okay. Go with it — and don’t freak out at anyone if they approach you with an article on a day when you do. not. feel. like. reading. about. this.

8. Expect that other people will have very complicated feelings about all your options for having a baby, either because of their own experiences, or because they have particular ideas about what is best for you. Be willing to listen to what they have to say, but know that what you want and how you feel is what matters in the end. For example, if adoption freaks you out, it freaks you out. This doesn’t mean that you are maligning adoptive parents or adopted kids or birth mothers or anyone else.

Adoption hadn’t even really occurred to me before I got my diagnosis. That’s just the truth of the matter. This doesn’t make me a bad person who wouldn’t love my own adopted child. It just means I hadn’t thought about it yet.

Well, that’s my two cents. Or eight cents.

In all honesty, I’m still hoping to do all the right things with my health and find out from my doctor that something miraculous is possible.

But this is the life I have now, and this is the wisdom I have now.

As my Nonna told me once, “If you learn something good, you might as well share it, just in case someone else needs to learn it, too.”