The Birds' Tale

Hi friends.  I've added a new page to this blog - see the link up there that says "our story?"  I wrote it for anyone who's wondered about the early days of our infertility journey, before I started writing about it.  And I wrote it for myself, to let all the words out so they can stop rattling around in my head.  If you're interested in the tale of Jenny and Mr Wren, you can click the link up top or this one here.

I'm Just Not That Into My Doctor

My doctor is not a unicorn, and this is not a fairy tale.  If it were, I would be the fair lady banished to the Barren Wasteland and my doctor would be, not the magical unicorn on which she rides safely to the Fertile Valley, but the scheming goblin who promises to remove the curse in exchange for all her gold and future riches and demands a series of impossible tasks. But after she meets all his conditions and masters his challenges through her outstanding determination strength and will, after she has given everything she has, he twists and grins and finds a loophole to slither through.  "Sorry, sweetheart, but you danced by the light of the full moon, not the new moon, so our contract is null and void. But if you want to try again I have another quest in mind.....bwahahahahah"

Another UnMother's Day

Awesome t-shirt idea from the Five Camels blog.
Hope they don't mind that I stole it cause I kind of love it.

Mother's Day is the infertile woman's day of reckoning. It presents a unique kind of torture to those of us who have been trying (and trying and trying) and failing (and failing and failing) to become a mother. Tomorrow will be my fifth consecutive I-am-NOT-a-Mother's-Day.

What Fresh Hell is This?

Oh hi, I'm back.

I stopped writing because for a long time I had no news to report.  Then, when I did have news to report, quite good news in fact, the very best news that an infertile bird can hope to get....well, I was afraid to write about it because I didn't want to jinx it and I didn't want to tell the internet that I was pregnant until I was sure it was going to stick, because I didn't want to liveblog my miscarriage, if that's what was going to happen.

It seems my instincts were sound.

Shopping for Eggs

For the past two weeks we've been trying to select an egg donor.

In some ways, it's not so different from shopping for anything else online.

On the Road

I just took a week off.  I declared a vacation from work and worry and went on the road with Mr Wren.  He had business in Chicago and I had never been there, so I asked for the time off work and packed my bags.

We were heading to the Windy City, so of course I packed a jacket. But in another (metaphorical) suitcase I also packed away all thoughts of babies, lack of babies, lost babies, potential babies, and the terrifying possibility of life without babies. This latter suitcase, and as much excess emotional baggage as I could shed, I happily left on the curb as we set off on our road trip.

The Big Reveal

I haven't written for awhile, because I've struggled with the writing of this post.  This is the post that I didn't want to write, that I was afraid to write, that I didn't know how to write.

You see, I haven't told you the whole story.

The Best Friends I Never Met

Infertility killed my social life.

The $500 word

For the past few weeks I've felt like a high-school girl with an unrequited crush.  I've been constantly  checking my phone, wondering: has he called yet?  Why hasn't he called yet?  Will he EVER call?

Come on Irene

Some things are bigger than infertility.  Not much, I grant you.  As we all know, infertility (and the quest to overcome it) takes over your life and changes the way you see everything.  But some things are bigger.

Like hurricanes.  I live on the coast. And this bitch Irene may be headed our way.  There's nothing like the threat of natural disaster to put things in perspective.

In-Between Days

Photo by David Speiser.
See more of his bird photos here

Years of infertility has left me with a split personality.  There's "Jenny on the Nest" and "Jenny In-Between."

So Long at the Fair

It's such a cliche it hurts to type it, but that doesn't make it any less true:  these past few months of IVF, pregnancy and miscarriage have been one hell of a roller coaster ride. There were dizzying ascents and devastating drops. I was thrown for a loop and spun around until I wasn't sure which end was up.

I'm only just beginning to get my equilibrium back.

Six weeks after the miscarriage, my hormones have leveled out and I'm feeling much more steady. It hit me today:  I feel like myself again. I'll always grieve the loss of our little boy (did I mention that last week I found out, entirely by accident and in a manner as casual as this parenthetical digression, that the baby was a boy?) but now that the hormones have stopped turning all my emotions up to eleven, I can deal with it much more gracefully.

Cupcakes at Midnight

Photo by Gary Cruz.
Click here to see more of his work.

I've been wanting to write about this essay by Holly Finn since I read it last week. Much of it describes my own experiences and emotions so accurately that reading it was like looking in the mirror.

The author and I are the same age, both started fertility treatments in the fall of 2008, have suffered through the same number of hormone injections, spent roughly the same amount of time on our backs with strangers poking around in our lady parts, and even have similar hairstyles.