Mommy cards?

I recently came across this ad (forgive the huge size):

What on Earth is a "mommy card"?

Nobody I know has attempted to give me one. Maybe because I do not need to plan on any playdates. Does anyone know how long these have been around? Has anyone actually met someone who uses them?

Here we are

My daughter, you were lucky not to come
my son, you were lucky to stay back
a crazy world ruled by crazy men
is no place for births

we will not mourn those absences
we would, of course if you were
among two fires or two bloodsheds
or dutifully preparing to be orphaned

here we are, the old ones, the witnesses
with that unintended privilege
of watching planes and other vultures go by
with lethal messages as trophies


my daughter, you were lucky not to come
my son, you were lucky to stay back
and since we have been orphaned of children
let us drink to your awaiting souls.

                         Mario Benedetti

Wins and Losses

You know what's back? The sex drive. I never knew it was gone. One morning I woke up and thought the spouse looked very handsome and I should make love to him, so I did. Only later did I realize that I had not felt like that in a long time.

I also got back my grooming instincts. I looked down and noticed that I had not shaved my legs in ages, and that the war zone had not been waxed and trimmed properly except for the occasional benefit of Dr. Careful. The worse part is, I have not had a manicure & pedicure in two years. I am not about to have one, because the eczema  is still troubling me, but two years is a long time, isn't it?

One thing that is fading away, I think, is the hope of conceiving and carrying to term a healthy baby.

I always thought hope was a beautiful thing to hang onto during harsh times. But six years of infertility and miscarriage taught me that hope is also a shackle that makes you put yourself through painful procedures and humiliating tests. It takes away your freedom to eat and drink what you like, have sex whenever you want, do whatever exercise you like and treat other medical conditions that you might  have.

Hope has made me move too quickly into the next cycle, accuses me of not trying hard enough, makes me ignore my boundaries, has made me be available at all times for his benefit, insists that I stop spending time with friends and family, insists that I stop participating in leisure interests and, worst of all: seems too good to be true. And what has Hope given me, after putting me through all that? Bad bruises, physical and emotional hurt and even a visit to the ER. Oh, and bitter disappointment. That, too.

Hey, I guess I've been in an abusive relationship with Hope. So if this thing with Hope does not work out and he dumps me, well, good riddance. I'm just not ready to dump him first. I still like hanging out with him.

Syringes for a reason

Long ago, my father and I were in a foreign country and he had sinusitis. He sent me to a drugstore to get him a syringe, which he intended to use, as he explained, to shot up warm water into his sinuses and clean them up. Now, I'd never heard of such a revolutionary idea but well, he was my father, he knew best.

So there I was, babbling in a foreign tongue at the drugstore, making a saleslady laugh with my awkward explanations and gestures to explain what I wanted a syringe for. In our defense, where we come from, anyone can buy a syringe at any drugstore.


I failed. They would not sell me a syringe, not even one without a needle. My father had to make do with the antihistamines I got for him instead. I now know that in civilized countries people use a Neti pot for that same purpose.

Well, I don't have a Neti pot. But I have a few extra syringes from my last cycle. I also happened to have a bad combination of a really bad cold and opera tickets that we could not exchange.

So I trusted that memory and injected warm water through my nostrils. I immediately felt better. At the opera, I discreetly blew my nose whenever there was a round of applause and I made it through the night.

You know what people of faith say, I had to hear it over and over through each diagnosis, failed cycle and failed pregnancy:  everything happens for a reason. Does that mean that I went through two unsuccessful FSH cycles just so that I would be able to clean up my sinuses and not miss Renée Fleming?

Hmmmm.

Still not convinced.

Telenovelas

This week I was mostly sick in bed with a bad cold. I ended up with my email account open, which resulted in a few friends inviting me to chats. These I gladly accepted because I wanted to catch up with them.

And all the conversations sounded like the convoluted plots of the stupid telenovelas I always hated. It does not help that all conversations were in Spanish.

• L broke up with his girlfriend of five years, because she finally told him she does not want to have kids with him (she has kids from a previous marriage).
• K is still unsure on whether she should divorce, though it is clear she and her husband do not love each other anymore. She feels staying together is what is best for their son.
• M is still fighting for full custody of three kids that treat her like sh*t, have no respect for her and do insulting things that no mother should tolerate.

It all made me think that we all want kids for different reasons, and are willing to do really illogical things for the sake of those kids (ending what was otherwise a good relationship, staying in an awful relationship, going broke in lawyer fees and tolerating horrible teenager behavior).

As for me, complaining about the torture of  artificial hormones, scheduled sex and having stuff shoved up my vagina, all for nothing... do I also sound like a stupid telenovela to them?

Someone like me

Conversation with a friend who is also foreign, speaks a different language than mine and has an entirely different accent from mine:

Me: The squirrels ate all my zucchini.
Friend: You need to get them at night. That's what I do in my garden.
Me: Huh? How?
Friend: Well, they usually come out at night, so I go find them with a flashlight, pick them up by hand and throw them in the trash.
Me: .....
Friend (helpfully): You can wear gloves, if they're too disgusting.
Me (finally getting it): Oh, I meant SQUIRRELS, not SNAILS.

Please don't ask me how on earth I was pronouncing "squirrels" that I made it sound like "snails". Having foreign friends is fun.

This is one friend that I only get to see once in a while. She also went through infertility and totally gets it. She chose to stop treatments and also chose not to adopt. She is now doing everything she can to be happy with her choices, which is not always easy. She does not patronize me and tell me everything will be fine. She does not think I am baby obsessed and I should just move on. She is, in fact, very supportive about my current indecision.

I wish I could see her more often, but she now lives far away. I wish it weren't so.

The Endowment Effect

It was not a bad anniversary. Thank you for the happy wishes. We ended up having dinner at home and not doing anything special, that is the problem when your anniversary falls on a weekday.

I'm trying to remember where I read about the endowment effect. I read a lot of stuff but then I forget what came from where. Anyway, it all boils down to a good being worth more when seen as something that you might lose than when it is a potential gain.

The example I remember is the Duke University experiment with basketball tickets. Students enter a lottery after standing in line for days. Those who actually get a ticket, when asked, say the would not sell it for less than, say, 500 dollars. Those who had also stood in line for days but did not get a ticket said they were willing to pay 50 dollars.

The bottom line is that  when you actually own something you think it is more valuable.

Under this light, I see why miscarriage was emotionally more painful*  than the negative pregnancy results I used to get month after month of trying to conceive. And negative results were also more painful after going through the trouble of Clomid/FSH injections and IUI. It is as if going through all that trouble entitled me to a baby.

And so, at the risk of offending someone, I wonder if people with kids simply cannot fathom life without them, and when they read all those studies that indicate that people without kids are happier, they convince themselves that they are the exception.

If it is so, maybe, being childless is not going to be so bad.

* Let's not talk, for now, about the physical pain.