The Start or the End?

I know. Where have I been? I was all revved up for metamorphosis and my butterflying sort of got caught in a lengthy net - a sort of Hamlet moment of  "To use a surrogate, or not use a surrogate: That is the question."

I'll get to how I answered that question a little later. But first, my little craft glue project. I know maybe you were expecting some great mittens and scarves or some crochet throw, but it's been like a bazillion degrees in New York so the thought of such things makes me want to vomit. Sooooo, I went in a different direction. Inspiration can come from all over the place and this time it came from a soon-to-be expired vitamin bottle.

My little craft glue project represents what I title: "The Start or the End?" Now we all know the first tiny little invasive step we take with our bodies when we begin to dream of our beautiful baby is the good old folic acid increase. Some go straight for the rocket ship of prenatals, but I went for a wimpier mix of multi-vitamins and folic acid tablets. I started this regimen in December 2005. I took those damn pills everyday with the few exceptions of bleeding/miscarriage/ectopic times. The folic acid was just the beginning of my hopes for having a baby. I've been off duty since my last IVF disaster and those pills have remained in the pantry untouched. So I've found a better use for them.

Now for all the folic acid pills I have popped, I would expect a baby by now with a brain size of Texas with absolutely no neural tube defects. So my little glue project is here to represent this fantasy of "Folic Acid Woman=Folic Acid Baby." The irony is clear. I have no baby. My folic acid pills are about to reach their end date and so have I expired too? Does this starter vitamin really represent the end of an era, the end of innocence, the end of carrying my own child? 

This brings me to what we've finally come to decide. After much flip flopping, agony, stress, and opinion polls among family and close friends, I think we are going to move forward with a surrogate. The start and end points of infertility get so blurred along the way. You might be ending one kind of treatment and then starting a new treatment. You might be ending IUIs and starting IVF. You might be ending using your own body and starting a better road in another body. We are all starting and ending on a regular basis in life. After being paralyzed by indecision, neither starting nor ending anything, I've forced myself to both start and end with a decision. I'm still not sure we are doing the right thing. But the fact of the matter is, I will never know until something actually works. The REs can make their case for trying another IVF on me and I can certainly make the case that I don't need more losses, more ectopics, ruptured tubes, and endless guesswork about the whys. Like any major decision, you have to look clearly at what you want and what you need. I WANT a baby. I NEED to do this in a safe and healthy way for me and the pregnancy. So now do I really need folic acid anymore?

Craft Therapy: Paper Cutting and Metamorphosis

As I said before, I need to get back to myself. I need to feel like I am creating things even though I am unable to create life. I would say I am certainly needing some kind of metamorphosis. As I face my 37th birthday this Saturday, I need to rejuvenate and reinvent. I've been cocooning myself since my ectopic to self-preserve, but it's lonely in here. When I was in Pingyao, we met a master paper cutter who's the Edward Scissor Hands of my dreams. If only I could cut paper like this and create these magical forms! Wen Tao learned paper cutting at the age of 7 and studied decorating design. She now designs and creates paper-cut works and keeps this art alive. She made these amazing butterflies for me for free and I think the video says it all. 

I chose to actually buy from her a beautiful paper cut work with a pattern of peonies and pomegranates. A pomegranate is suppose to symbolize fertility because of its many seeds. I found that there is so much hope and wishful thinking embedded into all these symbols in China. Good fortune, health, long life, and fertility seem to come up in so many images. A lot of it comes from the way Chinese language is structured. For instance, the word "carp" in Chinese is similar sounding to the word "profit" so it therefore becomes a symbol of good fortune. English really lacks that kind of relationship. The word "luck" can sound like fuck, stuck, muck, suck, yuck, which is pretty accurate to my own special relationship to luck, but certainly doesn't resonate its true intended meaning.

So since being home, the culture of signs, symbols, and superstitions have made me look around for signals of change. Most of my life remains the same as when I left for China so it's been hard to not feel stagnant. Even my two single girl friends who've been struggling to find someone for years are both suddenly happily dating people right now. It's like I am waiting for something, anything, to change in my life for the better instead of for the worse and I'm feeling left out in that department.

In the solitude of my infertility cocoon, I've been trying to understand how to better myself in ways that have nothing to do with my uterus. I've taken up violin again. I'm digging out an old book proposal I never actually sent out to publishers. I'm emailing old friends to reconnect. I'm looking at job listings. Summer is pretty much here and it's strange to have no IVF to plan since I've been going at this non-stop. I realize my entire life structure has been so reliant on IVF that I'm not sure what to do with myself. So I am trying hard to find a sense of change and progress besides menstruation, drug doses, ultrasounds, and egg retrievals so that maybe, just maybe, my "inner butterfly" can be set a flight.

Besides looking for a better a career direction, I've made a pledge to start "Craft Therapy" to hopefully satisfy this need for progress. This means I will be getting back into all my crafting - knitting, embroidery, sewing, silk-screening, and yes I'll even try some paper cutting. I think there is a very deep-seeded therapeutic benefit from making things with your hands and having that object have function, beauty, or symbolism. I think it has a lot to do with setting a goal and making it happen - something that baby making has failed to live up to and causes nothing but utter frustration. I think having projects that I can actually finish will give me, on a smaller scale, that emotional satisfaction that infertility seems to be draining from me. I welcome you all to join in!

Assignment #1: (For myself and any other infertile crafters out there) Create a craft project that either expresses something about this infertility journey or creates a symbol of hope (Remember Little Miss Positive? She misses all of you and hopes to reemerge soon).