Working, working

Sorry I haven't updated. I've been super busy. I've been busy at work writing a proposal where our deadline is right around the corner. I've also been busy advocating for health care reform.

Remembering

Eight years ago I left my house on a bright morning. I walked the 25 minutes to work and it seemed everything had changed. I entered my office and my officemate told me a plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Her sister works in the World Trade Center and she was trying to get a hold of her. We didn’t know what happened, but I saw the pictures online and wondered if it was an accident.

Soon a second plane hit the other tower and we knew it was no accident. Just outside my office was a conference area in our office with a wall of windows that looked down over 20^th street, just blocks from the White House. My boss called someone he knew at the CIA and came over to tell us they are saying it was terrorism. A co-worker had an instant message from a friend saying there was fire at the Old Executive Office Building (where many there are many executive branch offices and even closer to us than the White House). Someone else was on a cell phone saying there was smoke in the national mall. Another instant message: the military was taking over Lafayette Park. I’m not sure if these rumors were actually true, but at the time all I knew was everywhere I turned there was more fire and bad news.

The only (somewhat) good news that arrived: my officemate talked to her parents and found out her sister was not in her office that day. While it gave us some comfort, there was not much comfort for the many who still have loved ones there.

Word arrived that a plane hit the Pentagon. It was across the river, but almost due south of us. Immediately we all went home. I walked the 25 minutes back to my house in a sea of people who couldn’t get on the metro or their bus and somehow had to make their way back home, in some cases all the way to Maryland. Getting on a bus wouldn’t have helped anyway, as the streets were packed and cars barely moved. A woman walking with me borrowed my cell phone. I walked up 16^th Ave NW to my house; walking just a bit faster every time I remembered the White House was just below us at 16^th and Pennsylvania.

I spent the rest of the day glued to my television and trying to call my family. My sister in New Jersey, just in case she or my brother in law had decided to go into NYC that day. My friend who was studying there. My family in California to let them know I was back home. Neither of my roommates were able to make it back to our house. But one of my roommate’s friend came by around noon. I had only met him once before. He couldn’t get his car out of the underground parking garage and our house was the only one he knew in walking distance.

We watched the devastation together that day. I didn’t really know him at the time, but I felt connected to him. Both my roommate and I have moved to new places now. I don’t see her often, let alone her friend. Yet I still think of him sometimes and wonder where he is on this day.

Throwing out the calendar

Before we got married, we both agreed that we wanted children eventually. But that eventually seemed very far away to both of us. The truth was that while we both wanted children in the abstract, neither of us were really emotionally ready to take that step. So we waited.

A few years into our marriage, I was about to finish my Ph.D. and start a new job, we were moving to a new city that was closer to family, and my sister had just given birth to a new nephew and DH had his first chance to see a newborn. The confluence of these events made us move from thinking about children as an abstract concept to something that could actually be real in our lives. We decided that once we settled into our new city, we would start trying.

Now, we are both planners by nature. It seems like the IF community is filled with natural planners, which is funny since this process is a lesson in what can't be planned. But we are planners and once we settled in, our first move was to get out the calendar and figure out when it would be best to have a baby and then work backwards to see when we should start trying. We thought we had a real shot at getting pregnant our first time trying, or at least in the first few months, and even worried that it would happen too soon according to our preferred due date.

I started charting my cycle a few months before our "go" date. From that point on, I always had an expected due date in the back of my head. I bookmarked a due date predictor on my computer. I thought the distinction between a due date based on the first day of AF or based on ovulation was a big deal. Every month when AF came, I figured out a new due date, and after I ovulated, I figured it out again, secure in my knowledge that this due date was more accurate. It's not that I thought babies were always born on their due date; I considered the normal range of when babies came with a certain due date. I started hoping that the baby would come a little early to be here by Father's Day. Or even if the baby was a little late, I could still count it as a great birthday present. Over time, I saw my due date pushed back. March 30. April 29. June 9. As we moved past our preferred to time have a baby, I thought about how I would make accomodations for each new due date.

But none of those due dates ever came to fruition. Indeed, none of those cycles ever resulted in pregnancy so there was not even a reason to ever calculate a due date. But I did. Every month. Usually multiple times a month.

Slowly my attention to the due date waned. When AF came I just waited until I ovulated to figure out the new due date rather than calculate it twice. A few months later I didn't bother to find the due date until I had reason to hope that this time the due date would actually matter.

I realized yesterday that now I don't remember the last month I calculated a due date. I no longer feel the need to figure out each new due date. Worrying about how I will accommodate a maternity leave into my work schedule has taken a back seat to worrying about whether there will ever actually be a due date and maternity leave. The idea that this cycle would actually be successful seems like such a faraway proposition. I am starting to feel like I did in the early days of our marriage, where us having children and being parents is more of an abstract concept. It's not that I want to be a parent any less; I do very much so. But after all this expectation and constantly changing expectations, it feels less real.

So I decided to calculate a due date should we be successful this cycle, just for the heck of it. June 11. I don't want to hope that this date will actually have a big red circle around it on our calendar. But there it is.

Orphelia's clock

It seems I can't escape thinking about IF, not even watching Shakespeare in the Park.

It wasn't the park setting that made me think about it. We arrived early to have a picnic before the play started. Sure, there were plenty of pregnant women also enjoying the nice weather and a picnic. But that didn't bother me. I was determined to have a good evening.

The play started out well. It was the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged. And it was hilarious. By the end of the first act we were laughing very hard. The reminder of fertility treatments (Petruchio and Kate Plus 8 joke) just added to the fun. We spent the intermission reviewing the funniest segments and eagerly awaiting the second act. They were going to do an interpretation of Hamlet. They hit this part when Hamlet tells Orphelia to "get thee to a nunnery" and pull in an audience member for participation. To show her what to do they involve the whole audience. We have to act out various parts of her subconscious. One guy had to run back and forth. One part of the theater had to wave their hands in the air. Another part chanted something. A third group screamed the nunnery line.

We sat in the far left section of the theater. We were the last group to get our instructions for this participatory segment. And guess what what we had to do?

Yeah, that's right, we had to scream our biological clocks were ticking. And it all came back to me in that instant.

To be honest, I don't really feel my biological clock ticking all that much. I mean, I definitely wish we were parents by now and get sad when I remember how long we've been trying and how much longer of a road we likely have before us. But I'm only 30. I get frustrated that this process is taking so long for us, but not because I feel like we are quickly running out of time.

But sitting there, everyone around me yelling about their biological clocks, I started to wonder. Are we running out of time? Is this something I should be worried about?

Swine flu

Swine flu panic is making a comeback.

I work at a university. The semester started last week. Over the past several weeks we've received several notices (many emails, announcements in meetings, etc) about the importance of flexible attendance policies so sick students don't feel compelled to come to class and infect the rest of the class. I got a care package for the start of the year with some of the usual goodies (pens, dry erase markers, sticky notes, aspirin) and a bonus full-size bottle of scented hand sanitizer.

I also use our faculty/staff gym. For the past month, there has travel size containers of hand sanitizer available at the exit, not to mention the many hand sanitizer bottles placed around the gym itself.

This week they pushed it up a notch. Staff members have been stationed in the parking lot in the morning handing out hand sanitizers as we arrive. The dean's office dropped off several containers of sanitizer for various places in our office. Seriously, you can't turn around without seeing hand sanitizer.

But the most over the top thing they did was station people (doctors? med students?) at the entrance to the cafeteria (used mostly by undergrads, but staff can also go) to answer questions about the flu and remind people to isolate themselves if they feel sick. I know they are trying to contain the flu and there have already been some cases on our campus, but this is really getting out of hand now.

I guess we could take the approach my nephew and his class have taken. His 6th grade class also has hand sanitizer bottles all over it. The class has named them and given them personalities. Some of the hand sanitizers are dating each other. So funny!

Book review, part 2

I recently finished reading Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein. Unlike other IF books, the author and her writing was already familiar to me. Many years ago she did a study of early adolescent girls and their experiences in middle school. Several years later my mom's book club decided to read Orenstein's book about that research, Schoolgirls. As I was just getting interested in education, they invited me to read the book and join their group. As it turns out, I was in middle school when she did her research. Through reading about the experiences of these girls who were my age and my growing passion for education really connected me to the author.

So when I learned that she wrote a book about IF, I had to read it. And it did not disappoint. Orenstein is a feminist who, in addition to researching girls' schooling experiences, also has written about the difficulties professional women face in the work/life balance. Parts of her book deal with her conflicted feelings about both believing women should not have to make professional sacrifices while at the same time going to great lengths to conceive. She describes fighting for women's right to not be defined by their uterus while she is wondering if her dedication to her career meant she lost her chance to be a mother. I also identify with her frustration that she has been able to achieve everything else she set her mind to but pregnancy.

I would recommend this book to anyone in the ALI community. Through her journey, she experienced three miscarriages, several IVFs (including one with donor eggs), and went through the adoption process. I'm sure there is much we can all identify with.

I would not, however, recommend this book to those not in the ALI community as a way to gain insight into what we experience. Orenstein's journey, while touching on many different aspects of ALI, also conforms to the myth that if you just relax, not try so hard, or look into adoption, you'll get pregnant. Her several attempts with IVF all failed, but then she would get pregnant while on a break or while filling out adoption papers. I don't think this detracts from the story she has to tell, and she did not write it to highlight this fact, but I couldn't help but notice it.

Nieces and nephews

I posted yesterday about some thoughts on the child-free/childless blog. But there was something else that bothered me about that post. She dismissed the joys some of us get from our nieces and nephews.

Logically I know of course that my love for my nieces and nephews is not that same as the love my sisters have for them. But that does not diminish the joy they bring to my life. And they do bring real joy. Take just my oldest niece, for example. I remember being at work the day my sister started having labor pains. I called home every 20 minutes to see if it was time to drive to the hospital. I remember reading to her for the first time. I remember feeling lonely while studying abroad halfway across the world and hearing her say my name for the first time. It was a misprounounced toddlerized version of my name, but it still made my heart soar. And it brought even more joy when I learned she remembered those phone calls and started saying my name every time her mother was on the phone.

I laughed when she was three and clomped around in my way too big for her tennis shoes. We laughed together when she was 11 and gave me a pair of too-small-for-her-but-just-right-for-me tennis shoes. (yes, her mother has really big feet as well)

There are moments of sadness, though, when I think of my nieces and nephews. Not because of what they do, but because they remind me of the joy that children bring and that I wish dearly could be in our house all the time. I get sad when I think that any kids we do eventually have won't have same age cousins to play with. I enjoy seeing my youngest niece and hearing her updates, but I also remember the despair I felt when my little sister gave birth to her after we had our IF diagnosis.

My sister called me a few days ago and asked me to babysit her kids overnight. She works at Starbucks and when my BIL is out of town, it makes more sense for them to spend the night at our house rather than have her try to find a babysitter who is willing to show up at 4:30am so she can open the store. Usually that is fine, although this particular weekend I have a big event on Saturday and she also needed me to take my nephew to his soccer game so I wasn't sure the logistics would work out. We each needed to double check some times, so we agreed to talk again the next day. In the meantime, I started thinking of the fun I could have with the kids: playing games, making blueberry pancakes. When she called the next day and said it might too much work and she would find a babysitter, I was disappointed. I want to spend this time with them. I don't want to miss out on this fun. So we worked it out and the kids will be here in a few hours.

And then I read the blog about how nieces and nephews just don't cut it in terms of providing joy in our lives. That is something I won't accept.