There’s no easy path to IVF, because nothing about coming to that decision feels good. Before couples choose IVF, they have had their hearts broken, maybe irretrievably. They’ve been on the receiving end of crushing news, perhaps more than once, perhaps many times. And they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that their family makeup had been decided for them, but for this one last Hail Mary. Continue reading “Part 4: Hail Mary”
Part 3: In the Bleak Midwinter
The anesthesiologist spoke with a slow, thick drawl I felt more than I heard. He was tall and sturdy, wide with muscles that flexed when he talked. He was a long way from our Tennessee hills, but he seemed right at home next to my hospital bed, laughing thunderously at his own jokes while a nurse threaded IV fluids through a tube to the catheter in my forearm. Continue reading “Part 3: In the Bleak Midwinter”
Part 2: And Then the Rains Came
I recall exactly zero details about how we came to know I was pregnant. I was still in a fog from having just become intimately acquainted with medical terms no person with access to Google should ever be in possession of, and while miraculously turning up pregnant should have cured my depression overnight, it didn’t, not exactly anyway. I was happy, or maybe relieved is more accurate, and I managed to forgive that bullshit fertility doctor who called me old when I am fresh and shiny as the morning dew, but I wasn’t over the moon. Edges were soft; a hazy sheen muted the good times.
Continue reading “Part 2: And Then the Rains Came”Part 1: The Heatwave
In 2014, I wrote a series of essays chronicling our son’s journey to us, and I opened the series with a vignette I figured would come back to haunt me, but I wrote it anyway, like an asshole.
Continue reading “Part 1: The Heatwave”We’re Working On It
We’ve been visiting our families last week and this week, giving our 2-year-old some dedicated, quality time with his grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. First we saw Randy’s family in South Florida, and now we are with my family in South Georgia. To get from there to here yesterday, we took a six-hour road trip with a toddler. Continue reading “We’re Working On It”
WTF Do We Do Now?
As you may be aware, I have been working my way through a lengthy to-do list since my last birthday. As you may also be aware, I haven’t written about my progress on that list in some time. (LOL at the number of minutes it took for me to forget about Or Else I’ll Forget Fridays.) Continue reading “WTF Do We Do Now?”
“Or Else I’ll Forget” Friday
I’ve been plugging away at the birthday list and am pleased to report I am on target for accomplishing just shy of an eighth of the list before I turn 38. The crux of my “writing to remember or else I’ll forget” practice is the writing and remembering or else part, and so here we are. Welcome to “Or Else I’ll Forget” Fridays, a not-at-all regular series wherein I try to remember what the hell I’m doing with my life.
Continue reading ““Or Else I’ll Forget” Friday”A Word on Co-parenting
“I can’t wait to read about this experience after it comes out of the spin cycle.”
That’s the last thing I heard Randy say as he disappeared into the lab, wrestling both a toddler and the giant bag of tricks I brought with us to distract Moses from the sword being aimed menacingly in his direction. I cowered in the corner of an adjacent file room, near Moses but out of his sight, plotting our escape. Continue reading “A Word on Co-parenting”
This Week Can Go Fuck Itself, Some Thoughts on Grief — or, Some Words About My Sister-Friend Jessica
Yesterday started out like any other day, as bad days sometimes do. I woke up after a full night’s sleep already tired. I nursed a toddler. I changed a dirty diaper. I went to work. I drank half a pot of coffee. Then my mom called, and I answered.
Continue reading “This Week Can Go Fuck Itself, Some Thoughts on Grief — or, Some Words About My Sister-Friend Jessica”Let’s Talk About Me
Since I became a mom, I have fallen prey to the one tragic thing I heard happens to some moms but never believed would happen to me, and that is the almost compulsive urge to put someone else’s needs first, before my own, all day err day. This is antithetical to my whole existence and it’s frankly a pretty cruel characteristic of parenting. Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Me”
