herveryown

Nine Tenths

This stunningly crabby post was way in the back of cold storage, having been written on November 22, 2006.  I didn't post it back in the day because as I recall, I was kind of busy at the time and didn't have the energy or the inclination to moderate comments. Now, however, in the throes of NaBloPoMo (what the fuck was I thinking?), I'm much more willing to start digging through the storage closet and start throwing out and/or posting the skeletons.  Enjoy!

Oh, there are so many people lining up to tell us what to do.

Since I'm not currently cycling, I do what I always do when not otherwise occupied: Stay up late Googling things I shouldn't and then get vaguely pissed off. If you suffer, as I do, from transient insomnia, do yourself a favor and don't ever Google 'designer babies' in the wee hours of the morning. You'll get over nine million search results, and if the first ten links are any indication, most if not all of them will be completely worthless, although the ads to the right are a hoot.  Did you know that Designer Babies are available on eBay?  Don't be taken in, though.  It looks like a couple of competing websites might be offering better deals. 

For about ten minutes, this article was good for a laugh, especially when it claimed that IVF is the simplest procedure offered by Reproductive Endocrinologists, which is news to me, since I thought Clomid and Fucking sounded a hell of a lot less complicated than injecting drugs for weeks months the rest of my damned life and then undergoing surgery. It then went on to say that these procedures are performed by people with no scientific background. Um. I'm sure Dr. BrightEyes and his collegues would be surprised to hear that, especially since I think a few of them still might be paying off their med school loans. So, I giggled at the idiocy and poked holes in the logic (or lack thereof) and overlooked about twenty improper uses of the word 'implant,' and then it hit me.

People READ these articles and think they're true. Oh, shit.

To make matters worse, people read these articles and then use them as a basis to weigh in with opinions about my reproductive life, and yours, and (worse still) they expect us to give a crap about those opinions.

"What's IVF?" Well, the Internet says that IVF is how you get designer babies and stuff, and that pretty soon you'll be able to pick hair and eye color and whether or not your baby is gay. "Oh." Only not really.

"What's PGD?" Well, I read this article on Yahoo that says PGD is a service offered to people doing IVF so that they can pick the sex of their baby. "Oh." Only not really.

"What's embryo adoption?" Well, that's the thing Bush was talking about a couple of months. Apparently there are half a million frozen embryos that nobody wants, and other people can adopt them and then have babies. "Oh." Only not really.

It's the last one that really cheeses me off, because hey, as of January, my husband and I were the legal owners* of six of those half million, and I can tell you that they were not surplus by any means.

Once upon a time, we had six embryos, and I was too sick to have any of them transferred. We froze them, adding them to this bullshit 500,000. They were not surplus. They didn't need to be rescued or 'adopted' by anyone.

When I was well enough, we transferred two embryos. One wasn't viable and was discarded. The other stuck around for almost two months, and then died**, leaving us with four frozen embryos. None of them were surplus.

Since that was so much fun, we decided to do it again. We thawed three embryos. One died***. One wasn't viable. One stuck around for almost two weeks, and then died****, leaving us with one frozen embryo. It is not surplus.

What I want to know is what percentage of these allegedly surplus embryos is actually left over, and what percentage just hasn't been transferred yet? Do we declare all remaining embryos surplus when a woman gets pregnant? What if she miscarries? What if the couple wants more than one child? More than two? More than three? What if the couple is still discussing how large their family should be? Is there a deadline for this decision*****?

Did our embryos revert to this imaginary 'surplus' status the day I limped out of the clinic after retreival?

There are hundreds of thousands of people who would love to tell us what to do with our embryo. Transfer it. Donate it. Destroy it. You're going to hell for creating it in the first place. I'd really like to tell most of them to fuck off, because they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know the numbers involved. They don't understand what IVF is like, really. They know nothing.

*Legal Owners? Oh yeah, I fucking went there. You know why? Because under current US law, those embryos were and still are classified as property. In the event of our untimely deaths, our embryos were listed as property to be distributed to our heirs before they were even created. Most importantly, despite all of Bush's showboating about Snowflake this and Microscopic Americans that, and no matter how times the right wing wants to flog the rotting horse of ART ethics, not a single person came forward to offer us six little tax deductions in April. They may want to use our embryos to make a political point when they're behind a microphone, but none of them wants to put their money where their mouths are.

**Yes, a Microscopic American died while in my care, and I wasn't even charged with a crime. Shocking, isn't it, that the right wing is so dedicated to granting embryos full legal rights, and yet they don't even send jackbooted thugs to kick down my door when I repeatedly kill them? Oughtn't I be investigated for Negligence or Manslaughter? Embryonic Homicide? No? No takers?

***Have you ever been offered bereavement pay and time off when one of your frozen embryos died? Me neither, which is odd, since Bush insists that embryos are children.

****Holy crap, I'm a serial killer.

*****Is the deadline different for fertile couples?  If a typical fertile couple goes more than a few years between children, do we get to assume that they don't want to have more children and promise their theoretical future children to couples waiting to adopt?  "Congratulations, you're pregnant!  Unfortunately, it's been five years since you were pregnant last, and your fetus is now considered 'on backorder.'  Please sign this paperwork placing it for adoption.  Thank you."  Do you think that would fly?

Citation Needed

To paraphrase Han Solo, "I got a bad feeling about this, kid."

While toodling through IVF Connections this morning, I came across a link to this article discussing this book, Everything Conceivable by Lisa Mundy.  This just can't be good for my blood pressure.

"The story points to the dark side of multiple births: damaged children suffering long-term effects of severe prematurity, terrible miscarriages, infant mortality, grieving families, parents who are overwhelmed. Over the past three decades, prematurity rates have risen by 33 percent in this country. According to a 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine, one in every eight children born in the United States is now premature. Assisted reproduction is a major reason why."

If this were a Wikipedia article, there would be a notation next to that: Citation Needed. 

Are we expected to believe that a 33% rise in premature births is due solely to ART? Primarily? Mostly? Kinda sorta? Could we get a supporting statistic, here? A list of causes of prematurity other than ART, or is ART the only reason worth mentioning?

I hate to judge books by reviews, so I read the excerpt provided.  It was fun. 

"The March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have both issued papers pointing out that the explosion of multiples has resulted in more children born prematurely, more children with low birth weight and the developmental issues that follow. "When we first started looking at the statistics for perinatal loss, we expected to see that it's low-income women," said one perinatal nurse who assisted the D.C. area March of Dimes in conducting a study of death of children before, during, or after birth, in that time known as the perinatal period. "Instead, it's the corporate, thirty-five and over women." "

Oh, I see. ART causes perinatal loss, and your supporting data is the fact that corporate, 35 and over women experience perinatal loss. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense. Because, you know, all corporate women over 35 utilize ART. No non-corporate women under 35 utilize ART (for the love of cheese, please note sarcasm).

"The full impact of conceiving multiples is rarely understood in advance. A study done by the March of Dimes found that only 35 percent of the American public appreciates the severe risks posed by prematurity. But the statistics are cold and unforgiving. Fifty percent of twins are born prematurely. Ninety percent of triplets are premature, as are virtually all quads and quintuplets."

I'm not going to argue this, but could we get some additional information? What percentage of twins and HOMs are the result of ART? I know it's a significant number, and I know I could jolly well Google it (and have before), but if I'm reading a book that is trying to make this type of point, I kind of expect the author to have done the legwork for me. What am I supposed to do, read while holding the book in one hand and the mouse in the other? "Hang on, let me verify the truthiness of your statements between paragraphs."

To be fair, maybe we're reading the worst pages of the book. Maybe the rest of it is factual and well supported. That would be nice.

I lost track of the times I said "Where is the supporting evidence for this statement?" while reading the excerpt.  "Citation Needed."  "Citation Needed!" I felt like I was in church saying "Can I get an Amen?" "Amen!"

Yes, some of the statements the author is trying to make are true. Absolutely. Does ART increase multiple gestation? Yes. Does multiple gestation increase prematurity? Yes. Does prematurity increase medical problems? Yes.

Is ART solely responsible for multiples, prematurity and medical problems? No.

Several posters on IVF Connections said that the author's Salon article was much less...uh, what's a synonym for "sensationalistic and jerky"?  It was definitely less that, but it did have its moments, like this one:

"Just the costs of delivering multiples are exponentially higher than the costs of delivering singletons. But fertility doctors always say, "Patients want twins, patients want triplets. And we just can't argue them out of it." I find that absurd."

Whoopie, common ground!  I find that absurd, too!  So, Reproductive Endocrinologists make all of their decisions on medical treatment based on what the patients want, not what is responsible or ethical or medically sound?  That does sound like a problem.  Of course, we can't determine how prevalent that practice is, because, well, I can't find her supporting evidence.  Record.  Broken.  Gah.

And then there was this:

"Well, there has been some effort on the part of fertility doctors to limit the number of embryos transferred -- to stop putting in, say, five. But for a long time in this country they're still going to put in two."

What was missing immediately after that was the mention that transferring two does not equal twins, that there is not a one to one correlation between number transferred and number gestated/born, and that the majority of IVF births are singletons (I'd cite a referrence or two for this statement, but doing so doesn't really seem to fit in with the spirit of the article, so eh, fuck it).

And then there was this:

"One thing that would help cut down on the really high-order multiples would be if insurance companies were required to cover IVF."

Okay, you're forgiven.  Let's be BFF and stay up watching chick flicks and eating pizza, Lisa Mundy!  Except that...wait, from reading the rest of the excerpts, I kind of got the feeling that ART was evil and wrong and irresponsible and must be stomped out like a rat in a bakery.  Hmm.

Which of these angles will be played up in the book, I wonder?

What I would have liked to see in the excerpt, and very much hope is present in the book itself (although I suspect that hope is futile), is the analysys of a collection of well documented facts, not just a hodge podge of conjecture and misleading statements.

"Can I get an Amen?"

Perfect Young Ladies Are We

You don't have to look far to find people with their underwear in a bunch about IVF.  Hell, I've got my underpants in a bit of a wad myself, but it's mostly figuring out how to pay for it and timing it so that my boss doesn't completely crap a cow when I'm out sick for a few days two weeks an undetermined amount of time and also whether or not Sam will panic and take it as a bad sign if I update my will before stimming again (yes), but that's not exactly what I mean.

I mean the people who declare, without a scrap of humility or doubt, that our No-Fruit-Of-The-Womb situations are 'God's Will'.  I mean the people who say that they hope ART never works for us, because we're all shrill, desperate harridans who don't deserve to have children.  I mean the ones who call us infertile bitches.  I mean assholes.

Let's dispense with the first category straight away, because these people are boring.  I always view allegedly religious folk who claim to speak for God with a healthy dose of skepticism, because without some pretty cool parlor tricks (turning water to wine, raising the dead, inventing a sugar substitute that isn't reminiscent of licking a dirty shower curtain), they simply don't impress me.  If they believed what they claimed to, they'd have to be fairly fast on their feet to avoid the inevitable lightning bolts, and yet they never look concerned.

Returning our attention to the latter category, one can't help but notice a pattern in these ravings.  We don't deserve to bear children.  We're unnatural women.  We're infertile bitches.  What do all of these statements have in common, or rather what do they all lack?  A Y chromosome.

I find it peculiar that our husbands and partners are almost never painted with the infertile bitch (or bastard) brush, despite desiring children as much (if not more) than we do, despite being active participants in the IVF process, despite having signed enough paperwork to stretch to Topeka, and despite being the cause or contributing factor to infertility in 40 to 60% of cases.  No, no, apparently there's nothing wrong with men persuing ART, but there is something terribly wrong with us.

You see, our crime is simple.  ART isn't very ladylike. 

Yes, yes, I know.  It does revolve around our lady parts, but this isn't enough.  ART is a very involved process.  ART is something that is actively pursued (which requires either comfortable shoes or running in a dress, neither of which is very dainty).  You have to drive the process, become an active participant in your own health care, educate yourself, make hard decisions, ingest dangerous drugs, swear like a sailor, and rarely (if ever) do you fall upon a fainting couch and fan your delicate brow.

For shame, ladies, for shame!  Don't you know that if you kept your mouth shut and stopped voicing desires and opinions, if you just stopped thinking and relaxed, if only you knew your place, you'd be pregnant in no time?  But no, you've gone and fucked it up.  You've openly and assertively declared that you want to have a family with your partner, even if it doesn't come easily, and now you can't take it back.

So many platitudes are teeming with misogyny. 

Just relax.  Surely, you can't expect your brain and your uterus to function at the same time, can you?  Why, that's just crazytalk.

Be patient.  Be passive.  Wait. 

Rub my belly or hold my baby.  Perhaps my femininity and fecundity will rub off on you, you unnatural thing, you.

Just adopt.  The people who say this never seem to have any idea what adopting actually entails, instead believing it to be the ultimate in passive procedures, going something like this:

1. Want to adopt 
2. Have your fitness as a mother evaluated by others 
3. Put on waterproof mascara so that you'll look pretty in the pictures when they put a shiny new baby in your arms

The truth is that infertility doesn't care how many times you've read Emily Post or whether or not you're properly shy and demure.  The people waiting in the wings (and the Internet and the churches and the news rooms) to judge you would have you believe otherwise, but they're wrong.  Just plain old wrong. 

The truth is that infertility has nothing to do with your feminine wiles, but it has become a feminist issue, and the way you face it has everything to do with your strength as a woman, which frightens some people.  You, my sisters struggling to conceive or pursuing ART or adoption, you are beautiful, strong women, and your partners are wonderful, strong people.  Infertile bitches, my ass. 

Now, do you think it would freak out Dr. BrightEyes if I started humming "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman" while in the stirrups?

I Have Nothing To Say

Hello, and welcome to another round of explaining to friends and family that no, IVF generally doesn't work that way, and no, you won't be doing anything like that, and no, you won't be having four babies, and no, a surrogate is not a realistic option for you, and yes, you did read that article.

Now, in the interest of public safety, I should warn you that they say 'implant' instead of 'transfer' approximately nine thousand times in this article, and if this is the sort of thing that annoys you, you might want to take your blood pressure medication and say 'ohhhhm' a couple of times before you click.  On second thought, what the hell, the implant/transfer thing is the least of the problems with this article.

I really have very little to say about this that isn't expletives and fist shaking, but I do have questions.

1. Why transfer multiple embryos into a surrogate with a proven record of success, pregnancy-wise?
2. Why subject any woman, let alone a friend, to a potential high-risk pregnancy if you aren't fully committed to surrogacy?
3. Why transfer six embryos into two women simultaneously?  Why not wait a month and do a FET?
4. Is it worse from an ethical standpoint if the RE performed the transfers believing that none of them would take, or that all of them would take?
5. More specifically, did the RE have a good faith belief that the surrogate and the original patient would both get pregnant?  If not, why go through with both transfers?  If so...for the love of God, why go through with both transfers?
6. Why does the clinic mentioned in the article have no reported CDC stats, despite having been in business for over twenty years?
7. What in the fucking fuck?

And in closing, I would like to say that in the future I am totally going Elk hunting while eating pineapple, drinking some sort of tea, kissing my elbow under the full moon, and relaxing.  Thank you.

Worst Infertility Show EVER

I gotta tell you, the manic depression is just kicking my ass lately, leading me to do some seriously lazy things like edit up the emails I send people at three in the morning and try to pass them off as posts.  Observe:

And now 'House' has jumped on the 'Let's have an infertile patient but not actually bother to do a lick of research about infertility first' bandwagon. 

Fifteen minutes in, and we already have:

• The Infertile Woman fondly rubbing her friend's belly
• ...and chirping "Nope, no luck for us yet," without a hint of bitterness.
• The Infertile Woman being a high powered career woman, very Type A, very 'must have it all-y', because we're all like that, right?
• Said Infertile Woman being AS THIN AS A GODDAMNED TWIG and perfectly coifed
• ...and not wearing sweatpants
• ...despite being "on a fertility regimen for 13 months."
• The doctors suggesting Tamoxifen "to counteract the estrogen and eliminate the fertility drugs."  Wow!  Tamoxifen as a systemic de-tox!  Nifty idea!

Incidentally, I was unaware that all fertility treatments were just elaborate schemes to increase a woman's estrogen levels.  Because, um, high e2 = fertility, right?  No, wait, it doesn't?  You mean it's more complicated than that?  Well, damn.  Whodathunkit? Now, where was I?  Ah, yes:

• Now The Infertile Woman is cooing "But do you think I might be pregnant?" at the hospital, as if she wouldn't have already peed on everything that was pale and remotely stick shaped, including the Candy Striper's fingers.
• And isn't it just a little implausible that The Infertile Woman never made any sort of mention of what Cycle Day she was on, just that she'd been on fertility drugs for a year?
• The Infertile Woman just went batshit crazy.  Of course.
• There are numerous references to The Fertility Drugs, but no mention of what they actually are, because apparently everyone knows that there are only one or two, and everybody is on the exact same kind, right?

What the fuck?  It's not like the particulars of fertility treatment are some closely guarded secret.  I mean, the writers of this schlock could have just watched this schlock and been considerably closer to reality, and I cannot tell you how disturbing that entire concept is.

Sixteen minutes in.  I'm unpausing the TiVo.  If you hear an explosion from the west, that's just my fucking head exploding.

At thirty minutes in, we have:

• "It must be Endometrial cancer.  Everybody knows Those Fertility Drugs Cause Cancer."
• "Let's do an Endometrial biopsy."
• ...and let's spend a lot of time explaining the procedure to The Infertile Woman, because she wouldn't already know the basics.
• The Infertile Woman is all wincy and dainty during the pelvic.  Riiiiiiight.  At that point, come on.  She'd be perfectly fine if they drove a damned lunch cart through her vagina, and she'd be directing them on appropriate drugs (complete with preferred brands and dosages) required for painful procedures.

Also, I can't help but notice that Dr. House has not consulted The Infertile Woman's records from her fertility clinic.  Why not?  I mean, we all know that infertile women are monitored more closely than half of NASA's projects, so why not send away for the unabridged version of her chart?

At fortyfive minutes in:

• It was a big tumor in her liver
• ...caused by BIRTH CONTROL PILLS
• ...WHICH SHE WAS TAKING ON THE SLY BECAUSE DESPITE BEING ON 'THE FERTILITY DRUGS' FOR THIRTEEN MONTHS, SHE DIDN'T REALLY WANT TO HAVE BAYBEES.
• See, she was just humoring her husband and couldn't bear to tell him that she didn't want to have kids.  Because you would totally do that, right?
• Now they're telling The InFertile Woman that she can't take The Fertility Drugs and The Birth Control Pills at the same time.
• Because doing that will totally fucking kill you, apparently.
• (ka-BOOM)

But I'm Always Willing to Make an Exception

Okay, despite some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary, I do not actually hate men.

I do kind of hate this guy, though, who I found via this blog. 

"I think the male power structure demands that men be more fully clothed than women, so when we have to take our clothes off and interact bodily with someone else in a clinical setting, it is more embarrassing for men than it is for women."

So, let me get this straight.  His theory is that it's less traumatizing for women to go to the doctor than it is for men, because women are used to being disempowered and violated? 

That because we wear strapless evening dresses, that it's not embarrassing to have a total stranger stick their hand up your vagina within five minutes of meeting you?  How about having a stranger put their hand up your vagina within five minutes of meeting you while your husband is standing next to you?  I gotta tell you, that's an awkward experience that I don't think either of us have really gotten used to.

He also goes on to complain about commercials for popular products that I am not going to list for fear of showing up on even weirder searches (although this one is still hard to beat).  My, it must be so emasculating to have to watch vague commercials about pills to cure the sexual problems of men.  I would feel his pain, really, I would, but there are currently no non-snakeoil pills available to cure the sexual problems of women.  Imagine that.

The best part, of course, is when he talks about vasectomy.  Not that he's had one.  Of course he hasn't, because when asked by the interviewer if "there was something traumatic about the idea of rendering yourself infertile?" he said "For me, there was." 

Ha!  I find infertility a little fucking traumatic, too, even as a lowly woman!  Go figure.

"Potency is so delicate for men that anything that fucks with it is enough to give you pause."

For men.  Of course, for men, but apparently not for women.  Sexual organs and sexual function are not such a terribly delicate issue for women, or at least not if you ask a man.

The part that is really putting my knickers up in a twist today is that this guy's opinion isn't some fluke or anomaly.  He's not alone.  This attitude seems to be pretty well ingrained into the institution of medicine.

I wrote about this a long time ago, back when the doctors were repeatedly recommending that I get a hysterectomy to deal with my Endometriosis:

"Man, that whole hysterectomy thing is just pissing me right off. They don't just want the uterus. No, no. They want to do the TAH BSO (Total Abdominal Hysterectomy with Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy) which means they want to hack everything out, up to and including my cervix and part of my vagina.

Over my dead body.

I've tried, really I have, to think of some male disease or disorder that routinely results in doctors casually recommending the removal of perfectly healthy testes, all supporting structures, and then whacking off the end of the winkie just for good measure (I can only imagine the Google searches I'm going to show up on now). I can't think of a damned thing.

There isn't even an adequate word for what they want to do to me, and that in and of itself pisses me off even further.

There is a word for this when it happens to men: Emasculation.

Why is there no word for this when it happens to women, especially considering the frequency and flippancy with which this happens to women? Women get castrated all the time, and nobody seems to think it matters. Why should it? We don't look any different. We can just pop an estrogen pill and buy a tube of KY down at the local Try-N-Save and be just as good as new, right?

Wrong.

Why are our sexual organs and indeed, our innate sexuality, given so little weight that the loss of them doesn't even merit a fucking entry in the dictionary?"

Well?  Why?

I Don't Like Babies

Yeah, you heard me right.

When you see four women congregating around an infant, I am always the one hanging back, the one not begging to hold the baby, the one not cooing and squealing, the one clearing her throat and and looking politely bored.

I'm also the one conspicuously not begging for copies of the ultrasound, because unless your ultrasound comes with a pretty good punchline, I'm not all that enthralled.  Modern medicine has allowed us to view all sorts of things inside the human body, but that doesn't mean they're cute, interesting, or suitable for framing, as evidenced by my hysteroscopy (which Dr. BrightEyes kindly offered to videotape for us).

Because of my noticeable lack of socially expected enthusiasm, people tend to extrapolate my disinterest in their babies to a disinterest in my own personal reproduction. 

"You don't even like babies, so why do you want to have one?"

Well, see, first of all, Sam and I want to have children someday.  The baby (or, as it is referred to in the Buttmansion abode, 'grub stage') is an intermediate state, not the ultimate goal.  I look at it as the difference between wanting to have a wedding and wanting to be married.

"Well, if you don't want to have a baby, why don't you just adopt?"

Because.

"No, really, why don't you just adopt instead of doing all this stuff?"

Because.  Because there's no such thing as 'just' adopting, and if I have to explain that to you, this is going to be a really long day for me.  Besides, I never said I wouldn't like my own baby, I just said I don't like babies in general.

"That doesn't make any sense."

Sure it does.  Think of it this way.  I love Sam very much.  He is my husband, my comfort, my partner in reproductive crime.  The fact that I don't hang all over your husband and try to pinch his little cheeks (upper or lower) does not mean that I hate all men, it just means that I prefer the company of my own man.  Get it?

"Ohmigod, so you don't like babies, and you hate men?"

Have you even been listening?

"Yes!  Now, I was wondering, about those frozen eggs you have...?"

Frozen embryos.  Yes?

"When are they going to, like, implant those?" (actual real life question asked of yours truly this week)

Oh, for the love of...I'm going back to bed.  Wake me up when it's not so stupid outside.

If You Live In Indiana, I Am Truly Sorry

What in the fuck is wrong with people Indiana Republicans?

Have they solved world hunger, cured cancer, won the war on drugs, balanced the budget, eliminated all war and strife and ended crime as we know it?  Has ART really become the most serious threat to truth, justice, and the American way?

Oh yeah, and who the fuck do these assholes think they are?

"According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every
woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted
reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation,
and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in
their local county probate court." (Laura McPhee)

So, because I am not as fertile as a crack whore, if I live in Indiana, I have to petition the government to allow me to become a parent?  I keep waiting to see some sort of 'April Fool's' tag attached to this, but I really don't think they're kidding.

What do you think?

(a) Before intended parents may commence assisted reproduction, the intended parents shall obtain an assessment from a licensed child placing agency in the intended parents' state of residence.

(b) The assessment must follow the normal practice for assessments in a domestic infant adoption procedure and must include the following information:

(1) The intended parents' purpose for the assisted reproduction.

(2) The fertility history of the intended parents, including the pregnancy history and response to pregnancy losses of the woman.

(3) An acknowledgment by the intended parents that the child may not be the biological child of at least one (1) of the intended parents depending on the type of artificial reproduction procedure used.

(4) A list of the intended parents' family and friend support system.

(5) A plan for sharing any known genetic information with the child.

(6) Personal information about each intended parent, including the following:

(A) Family of origin.

(B) Values.

(C) Relationships.

(D) Education.

(E) Employment and income.

(F) Hobbies and talents.

(G) Physical description, including the general health of the individual.

(H) Birth verification.

(I) Personality description, including the strengths and weaknesses of each intended parent.

Look, I don't live in Indiana, and after reading this, I think I may have permanantly lost the urge to ever set foot in the state, but this isn't just about Indiana.  If they're trying to pass these laws (sorry, pdf file, also sorry, creepy beyond reason)  in Indiana, whose state is next?  Yours?  Mine?  If these laws pass, you know as well as I do that they'll just white out 'Indiana' and scribble 'Your State' in its place.

Don't let them do this. 

If this bothers you, tell them.

Then tell a friend.

Don't Bitch About Your Mortgage At A Homeless Shelter

You know, I had this great analogy ready.

In it, the Internet Analogy Fairy appeared before two women and gave them each $50,000 to buy a house.  Woman A took the money, went to a realtor's, made a down payment, and bought a lovely house.  Woman B's car got a flat tire on the way to the realtor's office and while waiting for AAA, she was mugged and robbed of her Fairy Money.  She filed a claim against her insurance, but naturally, they said that Fairy Money wasn't covered under her policy.  They also said she was a raving lunatic and dropped her coverage.  Her boss got wind of the story and fired her.  Things rapidly went downhill from there, and she ended up homeless.

While standing in line at a soup kitchen one day, Woman B overheard the volunteer server (who just happened to be Woman A) talking about how hard it was to be a homeowner.  I mean, you have to worry about the mortgage, the taxes, cutting the lawn, fixing the toilet, replacing the roof...it just never ends.  It's exhausting!

How sympathetic do you think our homeless woman feels? 

A: She pats Woman A's hand supportively and says "Do go on, dear.  Your life sounds like a living hell."

B: She decides that, in light of the trials of homeownership, she is actually happy to be housefree!  What in the world was she thinking, wanting to have a roof over her head?  Why, homelessness is much better!

C: She glares at Woman A, takes the soup doled out to her, and eats it  It tastes bitter.  She never goes back to that soup kitchen again.

D: She dials 911 and says "Hello, I need an ambulance to the My Life Fucking Sucks Soup Kitchen.  We have a volunteer who needs a soup ladle surgically removed from her ass.  Oh, yeah, it's pretty far up there.  I can see a glint in her throat when she coughs."

I felt pretty good about this analogy until Sam said "Honey, anybody stupid enough to bitch about having kids on an Infertility blog is not going to get the finer points of analogies.  Let's face it, these are the kind of people who, when somebody's one year old child dies, will say things like 'Ooooh, you're so lucky s/he died at one because two is just an awful age'." 

Man's got a point.

Here's the bottom line.  I have nothing against people with children.  I hope to be one some day, and I even married one.  In real life, I am absurdly nice.  I buy really kick ass shower gifts.  I cover for co-workers who have to take care of their sick kids.  I offer a sympathetic ear.

I do these things because I have a firm belief that nobody's life should be made worse just because I'm having a bad day, or even just because I don't like them. 

I'm not the only one.  My fellow bloggers, even the ones who sound bitter and standoffish, are revoltingly nice in real life.

They're the women who take pictures of your newborn for free, who offer cookies and congratulations on your oopspregancy, who bring you baskets of baby clothes when you're broke, desperate, and clutching a naked baby.

We are able do this because we still have a safe haven online.  We have a place where we can be ourselves and not get lambasted for our bitterness, our pain, our loss.  Where we can be normal.

We love our readers with kids.  Sometimes, they are our favorite commenters, our source of email support in the wee hours.  We genuinely welcome diverse viewpoints and experiences.

However (and I can't stress this enough), don't bitch about your mortgage at a homeless shelter.  Don't be that person who tells us exactly how bad our lives are or aren't.  Don't tell us how lucky we are.

Just don't do it.

The Ethics of Pain

I am having a bad week.

If I were a sweet, socially polite little girl, I would sigh prettily, grouse briefly about my life and then apologize profusely for my unacceptable negative emotions.  I might even giggle.

Fuck that shit. 

I am having a bad week.  It's the kind of week where every day shovels out the basement of 'rock bottom' and then pushes you down the resulting hole.  It's the kind of week which would just be SO much more bearable if I were medicated, but I'm not, so here I am.

A question keeps coming up in my everyday life, and I swear to God, the next person to ask me this is going to receive The Full Wrath Of Akeeyu.

People keep asking me why we're moving on to IVF so quickly.  Why we're not trying naturally longer.  Why we don't want to try what worked for them, their cousin, their friend's sister's mother's college roommate that one time.

I have lost my patience with this line of questions.  The fun part is that I'm not just getting it from friends who should know better.  I also got it from Dr. DebateTeam (an OB/GYN) who should really know better.  I can't even begin to formulate an answer to this without employing the work "fuck" in one of its many forms.

Let's review: I have Endometriosis.  Untreated Endometriosis spreads and destroys internal organs (many of which I happen to be personally attached to, several of which are essential for life).  Trying to get pregnant requires Endometriosis treatment to be discontinued.

I am tired of being told I should try 'naturally.' 

I get (I absolutely totally 100% get) that when people encourage me to keep trying naturally, or try pineapple or singing the Mickey Mouse song backwards or whatever, that they're trying to be supportive.

I assume that they're trying to encourage me to "keep trying" because conceiving naturally is the best possible option in their opinion, or maybe the only morally acceptable one.

Guess what?  That fucking ship has sailed.  The S.S. Natural left port quite a while ago, and I wasn't on its passenger list.  There is nothing particularly 'natural' about having Endometriosis.  There's certainly nothing natural about its treatment.  There is nothing natural about having your internal organs cemented together and destroyed, one by one. Nothing.

So, for the next person who tells me to try naturally, here's what you're actually saying to me:

"I think you should be in more pain, and for much longer.  I think that Sam should have to watch his wife's health deteriorate much further.  I think being a silent witness to your wife's pain sounds like a fun way to spend the day your life.  I think you should wait until you're in pain every single day, like you were before when life was unbearable.  I think your body should be completely destroyed by the Endometriosis.  I think that losing an ovary or a fallopian tube to an untreated disease doesn't really sound too bad (as long as it's happening to you and not me, that is).  I think you should wait until you're completely incapacitated by the disease, and then do IVF.  I don't think you should 'give up' and try IVF until you're ready to collapse, both physically and emotionally.  I think you should wait until your odds are significantly worse than they are now. 

"I think you should be in much more pain."

Well, I don't. 

I'm not giving up.  I'm moving forward.