Much delayed baby announcement!

Our baby boy arrived August 13, 2011! Sorry for the delay in posting - he was 12 days late (!!) and then we've been contending earthquakes and hurricanes on the East Coast! But we have arrived safely home. When I can catch a breath I will post more about the experience. I feel wonderful and relieved and thankful. This infertility journey has completed with two beautiful kids. Though this seems like a big end, really it's just the beginning.

Family of Four

We are leaving next week to wait for delivery and I realized how little I have written about this pregnancy. The first child, especially after infertility, was a moment by moment documentation of how I was feeling. I savored every step. I analyzed every stage of the complex emotions of surrogacy and egg donation. The second child after infertility has been rather surreal. It is like an unbelievable prize, something not expected or understood, almost to a point where you just really can't believe it's happening.

Amidst this summer daze of denial, fear, shock regarding the new baby, I got a jolt from the universe to snap me out of it.

There are phone calls that change your life. I had many during the course of my IVFs but I have also had more than my fair share of those phone calls before trying to conceive. My family has survived a lot of tragedy and so when I received a call July 4th weekend about a serious health scare for my sister, I nearly collapsed. I hadn't felt that much despair since all my pregnancy losses. All those negative and scary thoughts of doom came into my head about loss, suffering and pain.

But this dramatic wack in the face has a happy ending. My sister is going to be okay. I am not going to have to deal with yet another family tragedy as I begin my 40s. I look back on my life and realize I have recovered from a major tragedy almost every decade of my life. I was hoping to be spared this decade. But we all know those phone calls can still happen.

The sudden shift in luck with my sister somehow was the best cure for my fear about our new baby. All that undercurrent in my heart, still asking myself, "Am I a fraud?" even though I know rationally surrogacy and egg donation don't rob me of legitimacy, I was still very much struggling with it.

I can't say those insecurities won't creep up again down the road, but life now seems so short and precious. If my sister could almost be struck with an illness so randomly and yet escape its devilish hands, then why the hell am I worrying whether I am really my kids' mother? Why am I putting that burden on myself when in the greater scheme of things life is flying by?

So as the days draw nearer I am getting back into a space of peace and joy that this little boy is joining us. My family of four is feeling very real and very life affirming. Let the countdown begin.

Happiness

Lately every time I open a magazine there is an article on happiness. Whether it's how to get it or why it's an illusion, I seem to be in a mode where I need to understand it. In the past there were studies concluding that people with children were happier than people without children. But more recent studies have shown the opposite. So as an infertile who loaded all of her ammunition towards equating happiness with children, I see now that motherhood is more complicated than this.

Day to day crankiness can accumulate. I have noticed this about myself. The little things that go wrong drive me nuts and make life much harder with a toddler who is now defying everything you try to do in her daily routine. She fights the bath, she fights the nap, she fights getting into the stroller, etc. In your exasperated state, it's hard to even contemplate happiness. I finished my day and I can't wait to roll into bed and close my eyes.

There are so many things right now to be happy about. Our baby boy is thriving and A. is doing fabulous. Our daughter is walking and talking and developing more and more personality. But I was still letting little things piss me off all day. I was also getting isolated. I am not really spending time with other mothers because I don't want to have to explain how it is possible that I am not pregnant but will soon have a newborn in my arms.

I battled the idea of positive thinking all through infertility, but I still seem to be challenged in this department. So one of the articles I read talked about an exercise for "positive emotion," which is one of the pillars of a happy life. Every night you are suppose to write down or say three things that day that went your way. It can be pure luck or it can be something your sought to do and got it done. It's a way to counter the feeling that the universe is against you. So my husband and I have been doing this every night before going to bed and I think it is really working. I don't complain as much, I am putting more effort to meeting other moms, I am enjoying my daughter more.

So I highly recommend this if you are feeling flustered and tired in the juggling of motherhood or you are so burned out from the insanity of infertility treatments. It can't hurt to try.

Forty

In a couple months I will be turning 40. It's waiting there for me. In the fertility world this marks a big cut off point as to whether a fertility doc will take on an old broad like me or toss me aside with no hope.

I began this journey at the tail end of 34 years of age and I can't even believe that I spent the second half of my 30s spiraling into infertility hell. Through those horrible years, 40 was the big dreaded dead end for me. Even though plenty of women get pregnant after 40, I knew that if it wasn't happening by 40, I would just have to welcome menopause and call it a day.

So I had been planning, in theory, to arrive at a fuller acceptance of what happened to me in my 30s and begin 40 with a clean slate. I really want to do this. But it's seriously not helping that for some reason 2011 is an explosion of pregnancy all around me. Everyone from younger friends, same age friends, infertile friends, to even older friends (40 plus!) are all getting knocked up.

But the kicking and screaming and feeling like I got screwed is not how I want to start this next decade. I really want it to be a starting point. My father used to say to me when I was young that he couldn't believe he was this old - he didn't feel any different than when he was a young man. I would just shrug my shoulders and now I feel the exact same way. Putting wisdom and knowledge aside, internal aging is this weird invisible thing. Yes, my eggs are crap and are withering away for good, but the essence of who I am doesn't feel like it's aged at all. There has to be something too that. Aging is not the most fun thing, but I have to hold on to the parts of aging that still open doors and breath life into us. I mean, if our essence deteriorated like our eggs then we'd be some seriously cranky toxic people.

Having two young children at this "mature" age also swings expectations to a younger mind set. Most women in their 40s have long started their family and are well into having tweens and teenagers. I, on the other hand, will be searching for preschools this fall. But being immersed in the baby and toddler world sometimes fools me into thinking I am younger. I breath among young mothers all around me and then I start to believe I am a young mother too.

There is good and bad to this, as many illusions of youth might suggest. On the one hand, I can live a young mother life because that's the reality of where I am in motherhood. But at times I remember when my daughter goes to college, I will be nearly 60 years old. It makes planning your life a little different knowing that you are going to have to still be 100% parent at an older age while others might be having their first grandchild.

But I promised myself I would end this post on a positive note, as this is the new theme I am striving for. It helps that I now have 40 followers on my blog, so thanks for that symmetry! But back to my positive ending. I do recall when I turned 30, I went to an astrologist on my birthday who said to me that my saturn renews every 30 years. It's like a clearing out of an old room and refurnishing. So at 30 years, I cleared my internal room and began again. She said my next clearing out will be at 60 years old. As it turns out, just in time for when my daughter goes to college. So in the end, 40 is just another year of living among hopefully many more to come. My room still has bad pieces of furniture from those awful painful years, but it doesn't mean they have to take over the whole space. It's time for some reupholstering - get me a stable gun.

It's a...

BOY!

Never thought I would post such a cutesy sort of picture, but feeling like the stork, funnily enough, is the way I experience having babies. That mythological bird is quite real in my world. Everything is looking good with our baby boy and A. is doing fabulous as always. It's really unbelievable to me that we will have both a daughter and a son. A truly double blessing.

As my new family is transforming, I feels like I sometimes need Olympian strength to manage so many balls in the air. Though I've been lucky to have storks in my life help carry the weight, the downside is sometimes your own body becomes sort of a second class citizen. I spend all this time thinking about my daughter's bodily functions, and then A.'s body, and then the new baby's body. I've found my own body to be rudely neglected. It gets no exercise; it feeds when there happens to be free time; it doesn't get much adult mental stretching; it doesn't groom that much; it doesn't sleep much. So this winter has been brutal to say the least. My immune system is clearly down. I've gotten the stomach flu 3 times, in between countless colds, and now currently recovering from the 4th bout of this damn stomach virus. I am realizing that as much as I am responsible for other bodies in my life, I am not much use if my own body is limp and exhausted. So today is a day where I celebrate storks but remember that my own body shouldn't be orphaned either.

New vocabulary

I seem to be entering into a new world of vocabulary. When I first fell into the bleak arena of infertility I had no idea what the hell these acronyms meant - ER, ET, BFP. BFN, IUI, DH, AF, etc. I eventually used words like "sticky vibes" and "embies" as if we lived in an IVF elf land. These need no explanations, as I am sure dear readers, you are for the most part IVFers or veteran IVFers. But in my naive state, it was a world to decode. Then sadly, soon enough this was my language.

When we reached the extreme state of third party parenting, I couldn't believe I was in a state of mind where the words "Third Party Parenting" was the norm. The words "surrogate" and "gestational carrier" were as common to me as haircutter and dentist. Then "donor" became the new word to practice getting used to. It still doesn't quite roll off the tongue as naturally as I would like, but there is deep seeded baggage.

Entering into motherhood, I faced the mommy club I so longed to be in, yet hated at the same time. Products like "breast friend" made me cringe. "What the hell is a boppy?" I once said. Then my words devolved into sing song baby talk - "Night, night!" "Do you want your baba?" "Who is mama?" "Who is dada?" "Did you do a poopy?" But alas, these mommy sounds coming out of my mouth were a welcomed change after the spectrum of weird words flowing from me for so long.

Now as I enter the stage of 2 children so close in age, I am finding another set of vocabulary I didn't know about. I had never even heard of the expression "2 under 2" until a friend congratulated me on the new baby. I didn't know there were things called tandem strollers. I found a great blog called Baby Bunching which is about back-to-back pregnancies. Me and celeb moms are doing a thang now called baby bunching. Who knew? There are even recommended "picks" for us. Then I kept seeing "twibling" floating around? Apparently it is when two babies are born around the same time from two different surrogates or two babies are born from the same batch of embryos.

So I guess I am having twiblings. I never really considered the fact that since the embryos were created at the same time that they are some how "twins." That seems rather absurd to me. That would mean all of us IVF girls are constantly having twins but they are years apart. Sorry, doesn't quite fly in my book. But the article in the NY Times "Meet the Twiblings" by Melanie Thernstrom was a very honest account of her journey with donor egg and surrogacy. The fact that she used two surrogates I am sure made the NY Times lick their lips. But I am glad she wrote it in first person instead of the usually crappy reporting they do on fertility. I didn't see a comment section which is usually where you hear the insanity out there. But I feel like I can say with authority that she got it right.

This new terminology is still strange, still fresh, still finding its way. In some ways the creation of new words like "twiblings" carves out a space for new forms of reproduction and family building. But we won't know for a long while if these new words will be alienating or inclusive. Will the world adopt these words as legitimate and not as some sort of mockery. In the meantime, "twiblings" or no "twiblings," my kids will be 18 months apart and will be from the same batch of embryos and are from the same donor and same surrogate. I think I will just stick to for now saying they are brother or sister.

Happy 1st Birthday!!

On this very early morning a year ago A. gave birth to our beautiful daughter. It's unbelievable still to me that we managed to come out of this journey with a family. We are truly blessed. As time used to move for me at a torturous snail's pace when waiting for betas or periods or fertility reports, this year has had a sort of stop clock feeling. It's gone lightening fast at moments and then very long and exhausting at others. The first 3 months in some ways felt like a lifetime and in other ways a total blur. The 4 month to 6 month period was fast as hell. The 6 month to 8 month was a tough spell of trying to survive on the accumulated lack of sleep and trying to find outlets for myself. The 8 month to 12 month period was filled with joys of watching my daughter move to a new level of awareness and watching myself come to terms with the not so perfect daily life of motherhood. Let's see what the next 12 months bring as we bring another member into our family. It's becoming more and more exciting to think of our family growing and for a new person to enter our lives. As always, it's will be juggling act, but an act worth every effort.

Has it really been that long?

Wow, I gulped when I glanced at my blog archive and saw the stack of years, one on top of each other like a huge puffy layered birthday cake. This year, 2011, marks my 5th year of blogging. Could that be possible? Could all those years have gone by full of angst and misery and now I finally approach the dreaded 40? A whole year has passed by and my daughter is entering into toddlerhood? I am not sure whether to celebrate the dedication I have had to writing or to cry thinking of how long infertility has been the main subject of my life.

Now that we are officially entering 2nd trimester for baby #2, it seems ironic that infertility is still in my life. It was never more apparent when a friend announced she was pregnant with her own eggs after years of failure, including with a donor and with a surrogate. Another friend just told me she was pregnant with her own eggs after 5 failed IVFs and after she received the expected "donor egg speech." She went to a different specialist who magically told her it was not her eggs, it was just a hormone issue. She proceeded to get pregnant this month with just an IUI and clomid. This is definitely a WTF moment for me. Why must the universe taunt me with such success stories after I have done everything in my power to put my eggs in a wooden coffin and nail it shut?

Hope is a funny thing that way. It is suppose to be such a beautiful thing and yet it can pierce like a knife. I haven't cried about my eggs for over a year. Certainly not since my daughter was born. But this brought me to tears. This brought up the anger again of, "Why me?" This so easily tore the wounds open again after I had painstakingly sutured them up, bandaged them, and supposedly healed.

But the reality is that these wounds are with me for the rest of my life. The longing for a biological child seems wrong and selfish as I have been blessed with a daughter and another baby on the way. So I try to give myself an emotional slap in the face and say, "You can't always get what you want." I do find comfort that it was not until these triggers of miracle pregnancies that I got so upset all over again. On a day to day basis I am not angry or sad, so I suppose it's just a lifetime of managing those triggers.

A book I would highly suggest is Little Bee. It's a beautifully written and compelling story with voices of two women from very different worlds. One quotation sticks out right now as I think about this life long pain:

I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

 -From Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

Happy Holidays!

I was reluctant to put a pregnancy ticker on my blog, but in all this holiday cheer I decided to not be a grinch and worry about jinxes and dark clouds and caution, but instead put out some baby holiday cheer. We are 8 weeks and still going strong. A. is feeling very tired but powering ahead as always and I am beginning to envision life ahead with two kids. I still can't quite believe I will be one of those woman I've seen banging around the city with those God awful double strollers. I use to look at them struggling to get down the street or into a taxi and think, "Wow, I'm glad that's not me," and lo and behold, now that will indeed be me. But a friend of mine who has two daughters explained that if you can look at that life of baby frenzy as temporary, you will survive. I had more confidence in myself last year with my daughter that I could handle anything after infertility, but I am somehow doubting myself more when it comes to managing two so close in age. But in life there always needs to be a next challenge and I am taking a deep breath getting ready for 2011. Peace and good health to all of you dear readers.

How do I HEART thee? Let me count the ways.

The things I never got to do when I used my own body - 1) Feel pure, unadulterated, naive, confident joy finding out I was pregnant ; 2) Have the doctor say, just come back in 6 weeks ; 3) Feel my boobs and tummy swell with life ; 4) See a heartbeat on an ultrasound that was actually in my own uterus.

Today, for baby #2, we saw, via iphone, the round blob on the ultrasound with the heart beating strong. Up until now "the sibling project" has only been an abstract idea that seemed to "make sense" as the next step. It was almost something to be put on a spread sheet to layout all the steps as dryly and as rationally as possible. But seeing that it's for real and just may grow into a healthy baby is finally sinking in.

In many ways, going through this conjures up all the same old feelings of failure and loss my own body suffered over the years. It squelches any irrational hope that a mythical "oops" baby following adoption, donor egg, or surrogacy might arrive at my doorstep. I will never have a biological baby. This is how I have babies. These wonderful women are an extension of my own womb and eggs, and this is just how I make babies. I had one this way, I will have two this way, and I will have no other baby any other way. So does this leave me crushed? Not really. It makes me think about all these aspects of myself again, but I have managed to put that person so deeply hurt by that failure in a memory box that I don't feel is me.

A lot of people have commented that I have courage to go through surrogacy again, but I don't feel very courageous. I think I felt more courageous when trying with my own body knowing how much loss there could be, knowing I would have to live in constant limbo. For this second surrogacy journey, I feel like I know it worked well before and so it's not taking my entire soul to muster up enough courage to do it again. It's a different kind of launch pad. With surrogacy #1 it was still in testing mode with all the same potential disaster as using my own body. I know I am not free from tragedy and loss, but there is a feeling that my reproductive team at this point has become a well-oiled machine. Now I feel like the real courage I must find is to not let myself become the Tin man and not feel anything at all. I want to make sure that this seemingly disconnected way of having a baby still remains connected to my own heart.

BFP!

I am a bit in shock, but looks like my daughter will be a big sister next year. To our surprise, A. did an early beta right before Thanksgiving so we could know the good news as we stuffed our faces with turkey. Could she be more awesome? Beta is more than doubling and we'll see how the first ultrasound goes next week. So the journey begins again. Stay tuned.

The thaw

I am amazed by the technology. I mean, these cells are frozen Han Solo style and then poof, they melt into growing embryos. Needless to say, I am happy to report that two "totscicles" thawed beautifully and we transferred to A. with amazing speed and ease. We felt like we were in line for an amusement park ride. They led us through and then suddenly we were in the transfer room and it was like "okay, buckle your seat belts" and then it was over.

The best part about it was of course seeing A. again. It was so fun to have her see how much bigger our daughter is and how happy she is. I am still amazed she wants to take this journey again with us. I made sure when we walked into the clinic with our stroller to loudly pronounce to reception- "She was made here!" This was out of pride but also out of remembrance for all those sitting in the waiting room. I remember being a bit perturbed by people bringing their bouncing babies into a fertility clinic. But I wanted to give some hope and I wanted to make it clear - Don't scorn me, I went through hell to have this baby! The cool thing was there were two other couples in the waiting room who were also using surrogates so it seemed to be surrogate day at the clinic. In the end, our daughter charmed everyone. She was smiling and waving at anyone who passed by. Perhaps she knew we brought her back to her humble lab beginnings.

So the wait is on. But I feel no stress. Partly because this whole cycle was so quick and the decision still seems so abstract. But also it doesn't feel like life or death the way it was the first time. It's like after eating a delicious piece of cake and waiting to see if they will serve me an extra one. Either way I win.

Beta is November 29th. Let's see if we'll be thanking our lucky stars this thanksgiving holiday. Everyone out there reading, thanks for the support and have a fabulous Turkey Day.

Top Secret Mission

I've been avoiding this post because I am in complete denial. But we have decided to try for a sibling project with A. With much trepidation, I relaunch into outer space again heading for planet IVF. I never thought I would do this again but circumstances worked out to be able to travel this road again with A. This time with our frozen embryos.

My hesitation stems from so many levels of emotions. On the most positive end we want to expand our family and my husband and I finally figured out the way we can successfully make babies. It takes an orchestral effort, but we know it can be done. On the most negative end, we open up old wounds - running from deep emotional pain of losing the ability to have a biological kid, to deep anxiety of experiencing more loss, to deep financial pains, to deep worries of having to explain surrogacy, to deep fears it's too soon to have another baby, to deep insecurities that we are being greedy. I mean one is enough, two would be icing.

But despite all these scary thoughts, we are moving ahead. We are blessed to work with wonderful A. again and I have opened myself to whatever is meant to be. Just like the first time around, I have all these unknowns that create anxiety but until you take the leap you just don't know what fears will come true. So full speed ahead, we have our transfer this weekend.

Really?

Now, it's not easy to write a children's book about third party reproduction. I understand the need to be cutesy or accessible, but when looking around for books and coming upon this one, I just got turned off. It's trying to explain the different recipes for making a baby. But I mean, the sperm looks a little creepy to me. The donated egg looks like a cabbage patch doll. The donor sperm in the book is even worse in that they just added a mustache to this guy. The adoption sperm and egg are badly drawn "Asian" faces which is just plain lame.

Not to rip on this author and illustrator. I am a visual snob, I admit. I know their intention is wonderful and I just wish I liked the book better. My daughter loves when I read books to her so I thought I might as well start up on some of these donor egg and surrogacy picture books, but I don't see a lot of choice. It's hard enough to figure out how to tell this story to your kid and I just wish there were better tools out there. I have an unusual case of having to explain both surrogacy and donor egg to her so I know there is no magic pill. If anyone has any suggestions of good storybooks, let me know. Maybe I will just have to write my own.

I'm back, and with a cup of coffee

I am remembering the days when I religiously took vitamins, did my meditations tapes, acupuncture, and yes, whole heartedly cut out caffeine. Well, all of that has been replaced with one big cup of coffee. Mind you, I was an avid tea drinker before the baby. I never touched coffee. But alas, even I couldn't resist the dark side. I have a cup of joe every morning now.

My last post is from August and I suppose life got so crazed that the energy to write takes a back seat to sleep, eating, and catching some good TV. I've had the urge to write, but my body just screams- SLEEP- every time my daughter naps. But I want to revive it. I want to keep the ritual of writing going, however sporadic if may become.

I feel like most of the blogs I was reading regularly have moved on with life or I can't seem to find them. I promise to find the time to read more and support new people embarking on this journey. Funny how when I actually was going through the zillion IVFs I had no friends (in the non-online world) who were going through infertility. Now that I have my daughter and life seems a bit more normal, I have three friends going through IVF. Where were these people when I was feeling so isolated and on the edge of despair? Now, instead of feeling like the one who is fucked, I am the one trying to be supportive and optimistic for others around me. I find myself a little jealous that they all are trying with their eggs at our age and have a good chance of it working. I can't help but feel like I am the only one who had to do the crazy stuff and everyone else will get pregnant the good old fashion IVF way.

But pity party aside, parenting has become the new focus and comes with its own frustrations. Though I've mastered the daily needs of my daughter, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the sleep training, the constant stream of energy towards her, balancing my career, and my husband's sometimes clued out behavior. Even though he tries to help out, it's still mommy that she wants. So there are times I am snippy and snappy at him, probably out of sheer resentment that he gets to maintain certain things about his life that I can't anymore. Battling my exhaustion, there are days where little things all go wrong and you want to just cry. Then there are days that it all gels - the universe lets the day unfold smoothly and with ease. Of course the joys and highs of parenting are sublime, but lately I am just cranky. I sometimes feel frazzled and old. Other times I can't believe how good I've become at soothing my baby. So that's a snapshot of life right now. I teeter between awe of my child growing so fast and astonishment of how far I have to run on an empty tank. I like to think it's the vast personal growth I've achieved that gets me through the tough days, but perhaps it's just the coffee.

Made with love

One of my fondest memories of my own mother was all the crafting she did to make me lovable things. She made me pajamas, toys, and blankets that not only came straight from her old clothes but more importantly came straight from her heart. So now it's my turn. Finally.

First, I made my daughter this sac dress from an old skirt of mine. It's about the easiest thing you could possibly sew for a little girl. You literally just need a rectangle of fabric and some ribbon.

1) Just sew the sides of the rectangle together up until the sleeve area and then finish the seams of the sleeve openings.

2) Sew the top of the rectangle leaving room to thread a ribbon through.

3) Scrunch up the fabric to make the neckline and then sew the edges to hold tight. Then hem.

This is so easy my daughter will be wearing these until college, or until I get through all the scraps of fabric I have lying around.

Next came one of my all time favorites- the yarn octopus. My mother made me a purple one with blue button eyes that I fondly called "Oscar." I cherished that little thing for a long time over all of the other toys and their bells and whistles. Again, such a simple toy but so full of love. So here is the one I made for my daughter. Not the best thing for her teething period but it sits atop her window sill harkening to my 70s childhood.

1) Lay several strands of yarn on top of each other. Use a styrofoam ball as a base for the head.

2) Place ball in center of your pile of yarn strands. Wrap around ball and tie at base of ball after spreading our yarn around the sides of the ball.

3) Split up the yarn strands below the ball and braid into 8 legs.

Finally, Harry the Dirty Dog is one of my favorite kids books. I have been reading this to my daughter since birth and she seems to have the same enthusiasm for this little rascal dog. She can't stop cracking up when she sees the book cover and so I had to make a little pillow for her to grab on to. Instead of trying to shove the book in her mouth, she can now at least cuddle with the pillow.

1) Get some iron on paper. Scan your kid's favorite character and iron in fabric.

2) Sew around the pillow and stuff.

Of course, this warms my heart more than my daughter's right now as she is still too young to know that I made these, but the hope is that she will cherish these things someday. It feels good to just be a mom. I am taking a break from the labels of surrogacy and donor egg and just being me. All the drama of biology, genes, blood, heredity, fertility, uterus, womb, blah blah blah. These days I am just seeing how much of myself I am already giving.

Oh my, the irony.

Your baby's first exersaucer means so many things. It means they want more stimulation. It means they want to stand and jump. It means you finally can have free hands once in a while. In my case, while visiting her grandparents, our little girl was elated to get her first plastic micro-world of fun. However, she was a little too short for her feet to reach the ground. After searching around for just the right size foot boost, my mother came back with the perfect size book - My dad's old "Atlas of Pelvic Operations."

"Are you kidding me?" I thought to myself. But it was indeed, the perfect height. Having a father as an OBGYN is already ironic enough. Having grown up playing with a plastic uterus wreaks with irony that I, in the end, got a shoddy uterus. Now as I finally have my own baby, how peculiar to watch her jump happily on top of a book of pelvic operations. So what did I do? I of course looked up my own pelvic operations.

There, as I suspected, on page 81, was the description and diagram of my ectopic surgery. I studied the old fashion medical drawings. I looked carefully at how they rummaged around my ovaries and cut into my fallopian tube. It looked like a foreign world, a world that defeated me. It was my internal self laid out before my very eyes. Where, in these weird sausage-like organs was I? I didn't really know whether to laugh or cry. How could my body cause me so much pain? How could this fine-tuned reproductive system have gone so wrong?

I poured over them, examining the diagrams as if they were a treasure map. I wanted to find the golden key to unlock the mystery. My eyes traveled through the tissues and vessels and ligaments. With each sketchy line, I dove deeper into the emptiness of my loss.

I could only imagined the many embryos stuck inside that threadlike tubal space. I could only see these ovaries pumping out crappy eggs. I could only see this space continuing to bleed out every month failing to grow anything. These so-called nurturing life-giving organs very easily looked to me monstrous, alien, aggressive. This couldn't possible be inside of me.

As I caught myself falling down a dark hole of regret and sadness, I tried to focus on the dancing feet on top of this book. I could look at this strange visual juxtaposition of my baby and my past horrors in several ways. For one, it could be a reminder that sometimes great pain and loss gives birth to great and unexpected joy. It could be a reminder that despite my failing reproductive system, a baby symbolically grew out of me. But my most devilish side likes to see this as a big fuck you to infertility. Just as a person might dance on an enemy's grave - outliving them and celebrating their demise, my daughter was doing a dance on my infertility with the exact same sentiment.

I hope my kids are all right

"The kids are all right"

I loved this film. I went in with apprehension. The story line of a donor coming into a family's life gave me the jitters. Did I really want to see a potential nightmare of mine on the big screen? But I was truly engaged and entertained by this film of a lesbian couple whose children seek out their sperm donor. Granted there had to be drama or else why make a film, but it was good to see more stories about alternative families. Although I highly doubt my egg donor will come into our lives and wreak havoc on my family, there is a tiny tiny minuscule ball of fear in me that my decision could come back to haunt me.

Like most donor parents, the idea of your donor somehow being considered more the parent is horrifying. If you choose to disclose, then you know there is potential of the day your child wants to meet their donor. I try to imagine my daughter at 18 years of age and feeling curious about this side of herself. I try to imagine myself being the cool and "on it" parent that calmly supports her finding the donor and welcoming her into our lives. But it's a long shot. No matter how much I can try to prepare, I think I will be devastated.

On some level, all parents face potential explosions. It all depends on who the child becomes. I do try to convince myself that there is no sense in stressing now when this day may never come. My daughter might not feel any need to find out more. But I can't help but feel that she might have a sense of loss not knowing her other genetic half. Will my family and their history be enough?

Of course, taking on this alternative family building, I have to believe that nurture is tremendously strong. But there are days I really wish I didn't have to feel this fear.

What's your adversity quotient?

Shawangunks, New York

When I was writing in the heat of despair, the words just flowed. I was on a mission to vent. There was of course much to vent about. The need to express what was happening in my life through words, graphics, video pressed all my creative buttons. It's funny how pain can be so inspiring. It was like I would implode if I didn't get it out somehow.

Now that life has become semi-normal again I have a feeling my posts may not be of much interest as comments are dropping off and more and more Chinese spam coming in. The support I got from cyberworld was immeasurable. Not only was it such a comfort having people write me kind words about my struggle, it also felt supremely good that someone was enjoying my writing. I feel like my infertility awoke the writer in me that has long been asleep. My younger more bright-eyed self had once thought I would win the Pulitzer for journalism. I would then go on to write my novel or memoir. As the years went by, and more and more insecurity set in, I lost the will to write. So in some ways I have to thank my infertility for forcing me to write regularly.

When visiting family last month, there was a book on the table called Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities. The author is a climber, a rock climber. Being married to rock climber who pushed me to climb a 3 pitch mountain in the Shawangunks, I can take this to heart as a metaphor for life. The idea is that you are either a climber, a camper or a quitter. Those who quit are always thinking "It's too hard," "I am not good enough," or "why bother if I am going to fail." The campers are those who might climb until it's "just enough." They play it safe. They are content with plateauing.

The climbers are those who keep climbing in the face of adversity. They strive to reach their goals no matter how hard it might seem. They manage fear and make it through. These are people who don't look at adversity negatively. I am a negative person overall. I tend to see my adversities as unfair, burdensome, and down right infuriating. So needless to say I am more a camper than a climber. But when it came to my infertility, I was clearly a climber. I didn't stop. I didn't say, "This is good enough."I faced prospects of more and more loss but I didn't quit.

Anyone going through or finished with IVF can safely say that their adversity quotient is high. The past 3 years has made me look at painful experiences not as a set back. It's easy to say this in hindsight, but it actually sets you ahead. I used to be very  jealous of a friend who's life seems to be adversity free. I can't even think of one thing that hasn't gone as planned for her. I use to think that was success. But now I know that a camper's life is comfortable but not necessarily that full. I can see that climbing gave me creativity, passion, spirituality, empathy, gumption, tenacity, perceptiveness, humor, compassion, expression, maturity, and of course, my baby.

I don't have the fuel of infertility these days, though the fire hasn't been put out. I still grow angry when I hear of people getting pregnant with their second child. I assumed now that all of my friends are turning 40 next year that all their eggs would also be crap, but apparently not. I still get jealous when I hear someone's IVF worked. It still hurts. It still burns that I had to choose a different path. But what's different is that I am learning to let adversity push me to design my life so I don't settle for the campground.

The book said that climbers aren't climbing all the time. They take breaks at the campground to refuel and then set sights on a new climb. So I see myself right now taking a break at the campground. I just finished the baby mountain which certainly gives me the right to rest. I would say that my experience with surrogacy and donor egg might be likened to reaching the peak of a mountain and then being asked to skydive off of it. So I am due for some singing by the campfire. But I just have to make sure I don't settle into a nice sleeping bag and sleep my life away. Ultimately, as I venture into my 40s next year, I would like to think that there is more to climb. I like to believe that staying persistent with something will make it blossom. So as I contemplate finding work this fall and think about possibly trying for baby #2, I know I have to apply the same adversity quotient. It's the highest quotient so far in my life and so I know it's strength. It's really the hidden pistol in our pockets. Just remember that as you look at campers who get pregnant at the drop of a hat, or gush about their pregnancy, or pity you.

A mention of surrogacy

A little mention can go a long way. Just a short blip about surrogacy in Sex and the City 2 was kind of satisfying. Sarah Jessica Parker's character is talking with a fan who claims she has lived the exact same life as her [Carrie Bradshaw]. The woman announces she is pregnant via a surrogate and can give her the name of an agency. Carrie politely declines saying children are not for her. The woman is disappointed and slightly judgy (which I didn't like but beggars can't be choosers). In that one short conversation you see the stage set between the women who design their lives to be childless and the woman who design their lives to be mothers. She is juxtaposed against a mother via surrogacy. My guess is that Sarah Jessica Parker's real life surrogacy story is behind that script choice. I suppose choosing to not have kids and choosing to use a surrogate are sort of similar alternative camps - just on the opposite sides of the spectrum. But this conversation begins Carrie's journey in the film navigating her confusing expectations of a satisfying childless life.

What I like about the brief highlight of surrogacy is that perhaps it can plant the seeds in audiences that a woman can define her life however she wants. If she wants to use a surrogate to have a baby, so be it. If she wants to live her life just with her loving husband, more power to her. It's just two different paths. Sex and the City 2 reaches many many women. I hope that short exchange between the two women just reinforced that reproductive choices are exactly that- choices.

I know there is much criticism and poo pooing of the movie as a whole for other reasons. But expecting it to have some sort of cultural sensitivity or depth I think is a bit far fetched. You have to take it for what it is, which is candy. I totally was entertained. It was pure girl porn. The shoes, the clothes, the drama, the objectification of male bodies - I don't think you can expect more. But I give a nod to Sarah Jessica Parker as a fellow mother via surrogacy that at least she put it out there.