ChezPerky

So, you’ve all read Tertia’s blog, right? What? You haven’t? Well, what are you waiting for? But I assume that those of you who haven’t read Tertia’s blog are few and far between. In fact, I’m guessing (hoping) that the vast majority of you have read Tertia’s incredible book: So Close: Infertile and Addicted to Hope. The title, I believe, says it all. Something we can all relate to.

After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t that why we all hang on? Why we all keep jumping through the hoops? We just keep going because, after all – that next cycle might be the one. And for Tertia, hanging on to that hope was the right thing to do – her ability to hang on to hope got her out of the Land of If with what all of us hope we’ll leave with: a baby. (Or, in her case, two babies)

Tertia went through more than most of us probably believe ourselves capable of enduring throughout her travels in the Land of If. She paid her dues in the infertile world a thousand times over, and she did so with grace, humor, tears, support, and the kind of stength and fortitude we can only hope that we display ourselves in the face of this infertile monster. If you’ve read her blog and her book, you know what I mean.

Mel gave five questions to those of us participating in this here book-shower for Tertia, to “jump start” our posts… but I clearly need no jumpstarting to talk about this amazing, wonderful, moving, heartfelt, deeply moving book. I spent so much time reading this book laughing along with Tertia, crying along with her, praying for the future (even already knowing how the ending turns out!), and turning the pages as quickly as I could. My husband, I’m certain, quickly grew tired of me shouting, “Of course! Exactly!” or “That’s precisely how I feel!” Tertia put into such eloquent words what so many of us spend a lifetime trying to articulate. Brava, Tertia, Brava!

Still, never a girl to completely shirk her responsibilities, I won’t avoid Mel’s rules of the road for this here book shower, so I’ll pick a question, just to humor her. 😉

On page 20, Tertia has a moment where she predicts that her journey to parenthood may be more difficult than she thought even though nothing has happened yet to point in that direction. Have you ever had a moment of premonition like that and if so, did it come true (this moment of premonition can be about fertility or any other aspect of life)?

Well, honestly, I’m not sure that I agree that by page 20 “nothing has happened yet to point in that direction”… After all, on pages 8 and 9, Tertia spends a fair bit of time explaining the signs that should have clued her in to a problem right from the start. And hey? by page 20, she’s having a laparoscopy for a reason – she’s seeing an RE by this point. And the RE did find endometriosis. So that’s not exactly nothing.

But that point aside, I’ll concede that this early in the game, it was likely inconceivable to anyone that Tertia’s journey would take her through 9 in vitro procedures and the most horrific of losses before she finally arrived on the other side of the infertility journey.

For me, I don’t know that I’d call my own experience in infertility (and yes, I know that you said I could go with any other aspect of life, but this blog focuses on infertility and that’s where I plan to stay, so there!) … wait, where was I? Right. Um. I don’t know that I’d say that what I felt about my own infertility was a premonition… but I always believed that my journey to parenthood wouldn’t be the easiest. I had reason to feel that way, though. My mother had at least 7 or 8 miscarriages (that she knows of), eclampsia, and almost died having my brother. I knew going into my marriage that I had oligo-ovulation and probable PCOS.

But doctors all said PCOS was no biggie, you know? A little Clomid and bing-bang-boom, I’d be pregnant in no time, something I never, ever believed. When I got married, we played things pretty casual for a while, even though I knew I wanted to get pregnant right away. Not too long after that, I bought (at my fertile friends’ urging) Taking Charge of Your Fertility and began charting. What a frickin’ waste of time that was. Sometime thereafter, the first of my five Clomid cycles began; another waste of time, and I always believed they would be. IUI was supposed to be the miracle answer, too, but it took six cycles to have a successful pregnancy, and even that was a “failure” in the RE’s eyes – HOMs are never a success. (and it was a hellaciously bad pregnancy, too) And now? To have another pregnancy, the only safe way for me to do so is to to IVF with eSET (it’s not safe for me to have another multiple pregnancy- even twins).

So my strong belief, all along, that this whole pregnancy thing wasn’t going to be so easy? Yeah, I was right. It’s rare for me to be so sorry to be right about something as I am sorry to be right about this.

Aw, heck, that was so much fun, I’m going to pick another of Mel’s questions…

On page 35, Tertia explains where she draws her emotional support for the journey. Where do you draw your support?

Obviously, I draw a lot of my emotional support from my fellow stirrup-queens in the blogosphere. Those who have been there before me, been there with me, came after me, and are there again with me now. This is an amazing community, and it’s so vast and overwhelmingly perfect, I couldn’t possibly attempt to name all of the wonderful, amazing women who have supported me over the last 6 years of my journey, for if I were to start, I would surely leave someone off accidentally, and by ommission, offend them. But you are all amazing, and I love you for it.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I draw more emotional support and stability from my husband than even he realizes. While I don’t turn to him for every bit of day-to-day blithering and detail-venting (he wouldn’t understand all those blasted acronyms anyway, would he? I certainly don’t), the fact is, he puts up with my shit day in and day out. He deals with the blind rage of the Lupron and, frankly, takes it mostly without complaint. He woke to me weeping in the middle of the night days after my miscarriage and offered me the strength of his embrace, rather than the platitudes that others offered me (not YOU guys… I mean real life people who felt like things like “it wasn’t meant to be” would actually make me FEEL better!). The fact is, how many husbands would listen to their wife state clearly throughout her scary, scary HOM pregnancy “this is not my last pregnancy; I want another” and fully support her? How many husbands, after the seemingly endless, bleary nights of feed-a-baby-change-a-baby-feed-a-baby-change-a-baby-lather-rinse-repeat would still support their wives when they said, “no really, I wasn’t kidding! I want another baby!” Really? When I’m falling apart and at my absolute worst, he’s there to pick me up. And when I’m at my best, he’s there to shine with me. (Um, that’s assuming I’m ever at my best. Er… I’m not sure that’s ever happened).

Yeah. So he rocks. And so do all of you.

Now, seriously? I kind of want to answer the rest of Mel’s questions, but I just c
an’t find the time right now. Maybe later.

The bottom line? Tertia’s book is unbelievably good. I can’t believe you haven’t read it yet. Go buy it!

And when you’re done reading it, you should go buy Mel’s book. It’s also phenomenal. More on that later.

To see other posts for Tertia’s book shower, visit Mel’s Blog. Her post for May 4th should list all the bloggers participating in Tertia’s book shower, and the post should be up by 8am.

But now I ask you, as Mel did… Tertia’s book, like her blog, essentially chronicles her life through infertility. Our blogs do much the same. We chronicle the ins and outs, the tears, our fears, our hopes our dreams. We talk about our deepest emotions and our most difficult experiences. We use our blogs to give a voice to the struggle that deserves a voice. Tertia made the ultimate leap and took her entire experience and wrote a book – an extraordinairily compelling book.

It has long been my dream to write a book, but I’ve never felt that I quite have the voice to do so, nor the story to tell yet, whether first-hand memoir, or researched non-fiction book, or simply a fiction story (least likely). I know that it is unlikely that I will ever write a book, especially when I see far more talented writers like Mel and Tertia turning out such extraordinary volumes. But I know that so many of you out there have that voice, that drive, that story to tell. So I ask you:

Have you ever considered turning your blog into a book? And, at the same time, whose blog would you most like to see turn into a book?