Commentathons, Secret Ode Days, and Other Bloggy Loving

Infertility and pregnancy loss are shitty no matter how you cut it. No one wants to be living in the Land of If. The beauty of the blogosphere is that you quickly discover that there are many more people living on this island and most understand what you're thinking and feeling. Those people are nodding their heads as they read your words. And if there is any silver lining at all, it's the community that has sprung up through the weeds.

Sometimes we forget how much other people need to hear how they make a difference in our lives. Therefore, massive Commentathons in the winter and summer can help spread the comments across the blogosphere and brighten someone else's day with some feedback. Great Cake Days create a virtual party across the world. Frequent Secret Ode Days are sprinkled over the calendar like happy love surprises (wait...that sounded all wrong...but I think you know what I mean). Though the Commentathons and Great Cake Days only happen at certain points in the year, the Secret Ode Days is an ongoing project. Read more about it below...

Secret Ode Days pop up randomly in the calendar. The essence of Secret Ode Day can be found in this story that appears at the beginning of the post: Growing up, neighbours down the street had a tradition where their family had a floating holiday. It popped up unexpectedly on the calendar (at least for their kids) and only the parents knew when it was going to fall. Every morning, all the kids in the neighbourhood woke up and went to the window to check the tree outside their house because they kicked off this floating holiday by decorating this huge tree with lollipops some time in the middle of the night and all the kids in the neighbourhood were invited to come harvest the lollipops. Every morning had the possibility of being the morning, and even though it was just a simple lollipop--the same candy we had in our own kitchen drawers--it just tasted sweeter because it came up so unexpectedly.

That's sort of the point of Secret Ode Days.

You know that people read your blog because you have a sitemeter or they leave comments. But sometimes we just need something that is like the sweetness of a lollipop too by receiving kind words about our writing or personality. With the exception of this first string of Secret Ode Days, they will pop up on my blog unexpectedly. If you miss one, you can always find it again via the Festivities icon on the sidebar where I will keep an archive of each Secret Ode Day post.

This project--which I intended to be a one-day love fest--has now been converted to something ongoing. So here are the most frequently asked questions with their answers:

• Anyone can submit one.
• You can write one about someone who has already had a paragraph written about their blog (there is no limit to how many odes can be written about a person).
• All paragraphs are posted anonymously.
• You can write about more than one blog (giving each a separate paragraph). If you're in a particularly loving mood, feel free to write ten of them!
• You do not need to have a blog to submit one.
• Whenever I have a critical mass, I will post a new Secret Ode Day entry. All entries are archived on this post (see below).
• The beauty of Secret Ode Day is that just because your blog doesn't show up in the current post doesn't mean that there won't be a paragraph about it during the next post. And just because you appear in one post doesn't mean that you won't be mentioned in the next post too. It's just always a surprise--sort of like waking up in the morning and finding the trees decorated with lollipops.
  
• If you have a submission, send it to thetowncriers@gmail.com. Be sure to include the url as well as the blogger's name if possible.
• If you want to write one about me, create a fake email account to send it. All entries are kept anonymous from the blogger. So the only way to keep it anonymous from me is to make up a fake name and email account!

Wonder if anyone has written about your blog? Check the Secret Ode Archives by clicking on any of the hyperlinked entries below:

Ode 1
Ode 2

Commentathons are held twice a year in the summer and winter. Click up on any of the sign-up posts in the archive below to learn more about the Commentathon. Click on any of the master lists in the archive below to see the participants and points for that Commentathon.

Commentathon Archives:

Summer 2007 Sign-up Post
Summer 2007 Master List and Points



Great Cake Days: who doesn't love cake or a decadent dessert? Join in a virtual party that spans the globe by baking or buying a cake on the set date and posting a picture of the confection on your blog. Send me a link and I will compile a master list. Then, bloggers can jump from one cake post to another, learning recipes or just salivating over mounds of cupcake icing. Great Cake Days can be used to celebrate blogoversaries or holidays or happy occasions. Click on any link in the archives below to jump to a past Cake Day.

Cake Day Archives:

My Blogoversary Party 2007

Lyrics for Mother Earth's Flower Shop

Mother Earth's Flower Shop

Down on Second Street
Just past the ice cream shop
There’s a special store
With a sunny yellow top
This is where Mother Earth
Sits and waits for hours
To help broken-hearted
Mommy and Daddy flowers

Some walk right past
And don’t notice this special store
But others are glad it’s there
Because there’s magic behind the door

We were sad flowers
Our heads bent towards the ground
We had been waiting so long
For you to come around
We went to this special shop
With our drooping heads
Mother Earth gave us a hug
And this is what she said:

Some just need extra soil and they will grow like weeds
Others I have to give donated flower seeds
Mother Earth can spin together petals in a dish
A daffodil and a daisy receive their sweet rose wish

Mother Earth’s Flower Shop
It’s a very special store
Mother Earth’s Flower Shop
There’s magic behind the door

There are many ways
To build a family
Many ways to have a child
And turn two into three
These flowers are unique
Those tended by Mother Earth
Because she had her hand
In all those flowers’ births

Mother Earth’s Flower Shop
It’s a very special store
Mother Earth’s Flower Shop
There’s magic behind the door

The flowers who come to her
There’s more than you’re aware of
They’re just looking for
A flower to take care of
She gives them special seeds
Or sometimes full-grown flowers
And brings together love
To live in sheltered bowers

My precious little bulbs that’s how you came to be
You made our garden grow into a flower family
Now that you know that you’re from Mother Earth’s special room
You know you were made with love so bloom and bloom and bloom

© 2007 Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters

Questions for Waiting For Daisy

Each group wrote and received a set of questions to answer for their blog post about Waiting for Daisy. Here is the complete set of Waiting for Daisy questions broken down by group.

Group A answered by Group C

1. Orenstein struggles with the feeling that she "waited too long to start trying to conceive". How does this compare to your feelings about the timing of your journey to parenthood?

2. Peggy relied on a few things to comfort and give her a sense of security while pregnant or after miscarrying. Did you find that you also had a token, or good luck charm, or item you used to help you recover from loss or a failed cycle?

3. Which character exhibited more of your feelings/emotions/responses toward the infertility journey? Were you surprised by that reaction?

4. Very early in the book Peggy says something that every IF has thought at least once: “what do you do, think the first time you’re ready but your body says no?” Outside of when you got your infertility diagnosis (because that could have been many cycles in), how did you feel that FIRST time your body said no?

5. Peggy struggles through the book with questions of heritage, genes, and religion. How important is it for you and your partner to have a child that is biologically yours and why? What feelings go into that decision/choice for you right now if you are still trying to have a child ?

6. In a few places Peggy writes about conversations with Steven where they are trying to negotiate her obsession with getting pregnant. In the first conversation he says that she needs to care about something other than getting pregnant so that they can have a life and in the second conversation he says that he'll keep trying to get pregnant only if she stops caring about it. Do you find yourself negotiating your thoughts about infertility with your partner? Does he or she notice when you are retreating into the land of IF and if so, what, if any, strategies do you employ to help pull yourself back from the abyss?

7. This book was the first glimpse I've had at someone with spontaneous conception and recurrent miscarriages. As someone who has never had a BFP (even after an HCG shot), it was a chance to see what the love and loss cycle is. It made me realize: I've never thought of people like Peggy as infertile. We always here about how secondary infertility is the persona non grata of the infertile world, but I'm wondering if maybe it is women in the conception/miscarriage cycle that get short shrift?

8. On the bottom of page 62, Peggy muses that she thought Steven was getting her pregnant. If you’re undergoing treatments, who do you think gets the person pregnant? The owner of the other gametes (whether they’re your partner or donor sperm/egg)? The RE?

9. As the only "man-pie" in this round of the Book Tour, I feel obliged to ask a question regarding the role Peggy's husband Steven plays in her story. There are times when he says things to the effect of "Get over it," and expresses the wish to return their marriage from the uni-dimensional land of Infertility. It is cliche to say that infertility places strain on a marriage, but it was fascinating for me to observe this outside my own marriage in such detail and with such honesty. Did I ever tell my wife to "just roll with it"? No. (Although I am sure in the guise of "helping my wife heal" I said equally unhelpful things.) Did I wish she would just roll with it so we wouldn't be constantly reminded of our misery? Yes. Did I intellectually grasp why that was impossible? Yes, but I don't think I comprehended it on multiple levels until I read Waiting For Daisy. What was driven home to me was how for men and women, infertility is a parallel journey with many mutually exclusive experiences -- it all happens in her body, all very theoretical for me. My powers of empathy are great, but not limitless. I could go on with my own theories of what that leads to but I'm curious: How typical were Steven's responses to your own partner's? Can you ask him? (Apologies for the hetero-centric nature of the question.)

Group B answered by Group A

1. We have all had our own experience with infertility. Whether it was from IVF, IUI, miscarriages, or other forms we have all been there. How do you feel Peggy's story compares to yours?

2. Peggy talks about 'scheduling to have a baby,' making sure her life goals had been met and it was the right time to start her family. Now in hindsight do you yourself regret putting a timetable on when you would start your family? Would you have 'scheduled' your life differently?

3. One page 152, the author writes of considering her 3 miscarriages differently - as two miscarriages and one molar pregnancy. She explains that she does that because she doesn't blame herself for the molar pregnancy (caused by sperm abnormality) like she blames herself and feels guilty for the other miscarriages. In your fertility life, do you categorize different incidences like she does? In your heart, do you feel more or less guilty depending upon whose "fault" it was? Is that a way of coping?

4. In the epilogue, Orenstein struggles with what might be called the mythology of infertility: the messages and assumptions that it's all worth it in the end; that it's a matter of luck (the chapter's title is "Meditations on Luck"); that everything has worked out for the best; that adoption might be an emotional/spiritual cure for infertility; that some couples may be too quick to seek medical assistance; that she may have waited too long to begin trying to conceive; and, as another woman told her earlier in her journey, that "the pain goes away." Her husband warns her to not become a revisionist, but she acknowledges that becoming a mother has been a "surprisingly redemptive" experience and seems to not entirely reject the above messages. Describe how you feel about the presence of this mythology, both in Orenstein's epilogue and in your own life. How has it affected the way you tell your story, on your blog or elsewhere, and how you interpret others' stories? To what extent have you revised or even rewritten your own story of infertility? Is it inevitable, perhaps even necessary, to do so?

5. Were others as selfishly frustrated as I that what we all consider to be the universal "assvice" - "Go away on a romantic vacation and it will happen!" - turned out to solve Peggy's problem? Has this outcome put more pressure on other readers' non-treatment cycles?

6. When I read how if one had asked the author 10 years earlier, she would have said that she didn't even want children, I felt better. I guess deep down I always knew that I wanted children, but having had a severely mentally and physically handicapped sister, I was scared. It was comforting to read about another woman's ambivalence and feelings of guilt. When I found out that I was losing ovarian function I could not believe that there was a strong possibility that I would never have a biological child. That spurred in me a determination I had not had in many years. Have you ever felt ambivalence towards parenthood prior to receiving your diagnosis?

7. When you received your IF diagnosis, did you feel as if you were being punished or it was simply a case of dumb luck?

8. Orenstein’s friend, Larry, says on p. 47, “you can only feel the loss of something you’ve had.” Orenstein gives her thoughts on the matter on page 50. Do you agree with Larry or Peggy?

9. “I felt like the luckiest unlucky woman in the world” (p. 57). This quote really struck me. Do we naturally grasp for the silver lining in things? Do we always have to convince ourselves that something makes us lucky in order to keep going through the difficulties of life?

Group C answered by Group B

1. One element of this book that really struck me was the Japanese tradition of mourning miscarriages and abortions. Should we apply a similar grieving process to our inability to conceive? Would a formal acknowledgment of the loss of easy, or any, fertility help us emotionally? And, if so, what form should it take?

2. Near the end of the book, Orenstein is enjoying her happy time Daisy, while at the same time reminding herself at her husband's request, that the journey to get Daisy was not worth all of the heartache. On the other hand, you could also observe that Orenstein had a difficult journey to motherhood, but in the end, she succeeded, so how could it not be worth it? If you had been in Orenstein's position, what would you have done differently? Are there particular actions/choices of hers that you felt were "over the top?"

3. I was really touched by the visit to the Jizo garden for Peggy to honor the baby she lost. What ritual helped you in the healing process after you experienced a loss?

4. Peggy Orenstein says, 'The descent into the world of infertility is incremental. Those early steps seem innocuous, even quaint; IUI was hardly more complex than a turkey baster. You're not aware of how subtly alienated you become from your body, how inured to its medicalization. You don't notice your motivation distorting, how conception rather than parenthood becomes the goal, how invested you become in its ‘achievement’.” Does this accurately describe your experience? Would you say you have become alienated from your body while struggling with infertility?

5. On p. 233, Orenstein describes what infertility cost her: "Becoming a parent can't give me back the time ... obliterated by obsession. It doesn't compensate for the inattention to my career, for my self-inflicted torment, for trashing my marriage." How is your experience with infertility and the toll it has taken on your life similar or different from Orenstein's?

6. You can tell from the title of the book that the author eventually becomes a mom. How did this knowledge affect you as you read? Were you hoping for a certain outcome -- unassisted pregnancy, medical miracle, child through foster or adoption...or possibly even dreading a happy ending? To what degree does your own experience filter into the unfolding of Orenstein's experience?

7. Peggy Orenstein writes: "Swallowing that little white pill was the first time I did something I swore I wouldn't in order to get pregnant: I willingly put my health on the line." Do you believe you've put your health on the line by ingesting hormones, etc.? Is it a decision you'd make again for the chance to get pregnant? How far would you go? How strong has your primal urge been?

8. Peggy Orenstein writes: "You don't notice your motivation distorting, how conception rather than parenthood becomes the goal, how invested you become in its 'achievement.' Each decision to go a little further seems logical. More than that it begins to feel inevitable." In your pursuit for children, what has been the extent of the collateral damage? Have you risked your finances? Alienated your spouse or friends?

9. After you realized that you might not be able to have kids on your own, did you assume that based on all of the fertility clinic ads and success photo albums as Peggy writes, "science would relieve [your] pain?" And, if after an unsuccessful IVF you found that science did fail you, what were you left feeling about your next steps?

10. Peggy Orenstein writes that her first reaction to donor eggs was, "Using donor eggs was so Handmaid's Tale. Once again I thought, I'd never be that desperate for a child?" What was your initial reaction to the idea of donor eggs? Did your opinion change over time? If you were successful, would you tell your children that they were conceived using donor eggs? Why or why not?

11. Peggy Orenstein writes about the Buddhist being Jizo "who among other tasks watches over miscarried and aborted fetuses as well as dead children.” She also writes: "My own dilemma now was this: how could I memorialize someone who never really existed? Should I try to forget these babies, these nonbabies, that I'd lost? Could I, even if I wanted to?" Do you mull over similar questions? What is your thinking about it? A recent Globe and Mail piece talks about memorializing loss of children down to embryos--
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070526.wxunborn056/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home
    Would your loss be made less difficult through this ritual not currently available to us?

12. For those who have suffered infertility and now have children:
    Peggy Orenstein writes, "Sometimes [my friends] seemed to me like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Who were these women and what had they done with my friends?" Have you embraced your new role as "mom" to such a degree that you're now unrecognizable to your friends who don't have children? If so, is it a conscious decision or did it just happen?

Book Tour: Waiting For Daisy by Peggy Orenstein

I really liked this book. Orenstein is a great storyteller, and isn't afraid to cast herself in unflattering light. She's honest with her prejudices, quick to admit when she was wrong and doesn't attempt to reconcile paradoxes which cannot ever fully be resolved.

In the epilogue, Orenstein struggles with what might be called the mythology of infertility: the messages and assumptions that it's all worth it in the end; that it's a matter of luck (the chapter's title is "Meditations on Luck"); that everything has worked out for the best; that adoption might be an emotional/spiritual cure for infertility; that some couples may be too quick to seek medical assistance; that she may have waited too long to begin trying to conceive; and, as another woman told her earlier in her journey, that "the pain goes away." Her husband warns her to not become a revisionist, but she acknowledges that becoming a mother has been a "surprisingly redemptive" experience and seems to not entirely reject the above messages. Describe how you feel about the presence of this mythology, both in Orenstein's epilogue and in your own life. How has it affected the way you tell your story, on your blog or elsewhere, and how you interpret others' stories? To what extent have you revised or even rewritten your own story of infertility? Is it inevitable, perhaps even necessary, to do so?

Especially when the ending of an IF narrative is a child, it is hard not to wrap that narrative in a neat little bow and ignore the fact that it corresponds so well to our notions of explication, complication and resolution. We know too well that life isn’t always so neat. Orenstein knows that too and is suspicious of her own dramatic arc. I wouldn’t describe it as a mythology – because the experiences are real. It is whether or not we can ascribe some universal meaning outside of the specific experiences that give me, and I think Orenstein, pause. Her “redemption” may resonate with others who have similar experiences, but in the end it has meaning only for her. Our narrative – perhaps less dramatic, but equally redemptive in my humble opinion – gives our lives some coherence. We try not to revise it – but the vagaries of memory make revision impossible. And yet, in talking to others, I’m not sure there’s anything to learn from infertility that one can pass on to another, other than make them feel less alone in their travails. It sort of ends there. I wouldn’t hold up our happy ending as a reason to keep trucking, but I would share my disappointments and experiences with despair, not to diminish someone elses’, but to let them know that it is okay to feel what they’re feeling. Whatever other guilt they’re experiencing, they shouldn’t have to apologize for their pain.

Were others as selfishly frustrated as I that what we all consider to be the universal "assvice" - "Go away on a romantic vacation and it will happen!" - turned out to solve Peggy's problem? Has this outcome put more pressure on other readers' non-treatment cycles?

I don’t see it as bringing more pressure to our lives (Mel may disagree). I think it is sort of a deadpan punchline to a long joke. It is like the story of the boy who is humiliated at the circus as a small child when a clown squirts him in the face with water from his boutonnière. He plans his whole life around getting his revenge on the offending clown with elaborately orchestrated act of vengeance constantly percolating in his mind. He develops an acerbic wit, an arsenal of deadly put-downs, he has no friends because no one can tolerate the constant tongue lashings he administers, his wife leaves him, his children loathe him…so on and so on. Then one day he hears that the clown who so humiliated him is back in town with the circus. He buys a front row seat and when the clown approaches him to squirt water into his face from a flower in his boutonnière, he shouts, “Fuck you clown!” This is a much truncated version of this joke, for a fuller version click here.

Did he need to put his life through that ringer to get that result? No. The non-treatment cycles that result in living children are kind of the equivalent of that punch-line – without the psychotic bent of organizing your life around getting back at a clown. How can we ever make a child? After clomid, IUI, IVF, egg donation and cancelled adoption, the punch-line is: Fuck you clown. Not because it is funny. But because it is true. And it’s only true because it almost never is.

Orenstein's friend, Larry, says on p. 47, "you can only feel the loss of something you've had." Orenstein gives her thoughts on the matter on page 50. Do you agree with Larry or Peggy?

I agree with both of them. Larry focuses on the word “loss” and by giving that word its full weight. Larry decides he can’t truly lose it if he didn’t have it. It’s like asking a life-long vegetarian if they miss eating meat, or even better, asking a bird if they miss being a dinosaur. Peggy declares that Larry is wrong, but reframes the discussion from being about “loss” to “phantom longing.” Which is a very different thing. I can long for plenty that I’ve never had and never will have. I can even “long” for lost opportunities that never came my way – whether because I chose to focus on my career or because I wasn’t born into a community of Amish farmers. But it is not the same thing.