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Arabella is having surgery today to improve her chances of getting pregnant. Teebs has spent a remarkable amount of time with her feet in the stirrups trying to get to the bottom of her infertility. Brooke has suffered four gut-wrenching miscarriages and is trying to line up financing for IVF. Untitled has been trying to conceive baby number 2 and despite shots in the ass and sex on a schedule, she’s let down each month. I have close friends and family who have lived through these cycles of heartache, including a sister-in-law who had a viable pregnancy and lost it unexpectedly when she was about five months along. She almost died in the process. Her only child died in her arms.

For all my whining about back pain, heart medication, PMS, and life in the slow lane, when it comes to reproduction, my body has pretty much done the right thing. I was ambivalent about having kids for 12 years, but when we finally decided to give it a try, everything went smoothly, more or less. Mr. A decided to be born on Labor Day weekend instead of close to Halloween, when he was due. Yeah, delivering a premature baby was traumatic in its own way, but I thank God his life was never in danger and he was spared major complications.

I had a miscarriage and D & C with baby number 2. My doctor gave me Valium because I couldn’t stop crying. And while there was sorrow and questions associated with that whole sad experience, I quickly became pregnant again and had a healthy pregnancy and birth that brought me my darling E-Grrrl.

I have no comforting words for those of you who have been beat up and broken in a hundred private ways by infertility. I have no advice on getting pregnant, no clue how or if your situations can ever be bearable, no idea if you’ll ever have peace or the babies you desperately want. In short I have absolutely nothing to offer—and that helpless feeling as an observer of your dilemmas gives me the tiniest glimpse of how enormously frustrating and disappointing it is for all of you to live with a sense of powerlessness in the face of infertility.

So today’s blog is for Arabella, Teebs, Brooke, Untitled, KK, V, and L and all those who have been put through the wringer of infertility. A portion of sympathy. A large dose of prayer. Hope that things will get better.

May 3, 2006