i have never....

....been more sad about being barren as i am right now. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS THING!!

its called the baby keeper. you hang it over the bathroom stall door and it suspends your kid 3 feet in the air while you drop a deuce!

i swear... the second i have a kid in my life im gonna walk.... nay, im gonna RUN...to the store to buy this so i can continue my new commitment to no-shame-pooping!

(i wonder if they sell a package-deal that comes fully equipped with a baby inside. *fingers crossed!*)

i am woman, hear me _ O _ _!

man, it feels good to be back. like most folks, i have been traveling like cuh-ray-zee for the holidays and sadly i didnt have access to the internet while i was away. i have enjoyed spending the last few days getting caught up on everyone’s good (and sad *sigh*) news. *cyber hugs for all*

i thought about dedicating my first post of the new year to a list of things im looking forward to in the 360 days to come.... but that would be positive and optimistic and cheerful and then you all might think that barren lesbo was abducted over the holidays and this hack blogger is simply an impostor trying to infiltrate the TTC community (yes, im a conspiracy theorist. humpty dumpty was pushed.) so.... i decided to keep it real and start the year off right.

ok... first gripe of 2010... the use of the title “feminine hygiene products” for the section of the store that contains tampons and pads. “feminine hygiene”? seriously? as though our period is some dirty little habit that needs to be sanitized before it can come out and play safely with others. it should be called “female necessity products” or something less related to salad bars and subway benches.

next gripe... what is with the friggin cost of a box of tampons?? i mean come on! why is it that i can spend $1.99 on an ENTIRE MEAL (read: bun, beef, cheese, ketchup, pickles, onions, freedom...err, wait, bush is gone so i can say FRENCH fries, and 16 ounces of high fructose corn syrup) but i have to practically spend $12.00 on a wad of bleached (read: unhealthy for the vajay-jay) cotton and a dry ass cardboard applicator? and why is it even called an “applicator”? it doesn’t “apply” anything. it should be called an “inserter”, damnit.

*deep breath*

in 1978 gloria steinem wrote a piece for ms. magazine titled, “if men could menstruate”, where she playfully imagines how the culture around menstruation would change if men (the holders of social and political power) were the ones who bled every month. she argues that men would brag and boast about how long and how much they bled… even creating slang like “im a three pad man”. she argued that men’s menstruation would result in federal policy making all tampons and pads free.

i totally agree with her and in fact, i believe that menstruating men would never ever believe that bullshit we were told about only producing “2-3 tablespoons of blood during a menstrual cycle”. who are they fooling with that crap?? i swear, teenage menstruation manuals must have been written by buffoons because any woman knows that 2-3 tablespoons is total BS.


i want to yell, “listen, buddy. while your penis-wielding-ancestors were out there getting jobs and voting, my female ancestors were handcuffed to the kitchen. which means we became pretty damn good at approximating the size of a tablespoon. and after years and countless months of bleeding i think i might have a slightly better idea than you do about how much bleeding i do.” grrr. and to think they have the nerve to tell us, “it might seeeem like more than 2-3 tablespoons but trust us, its not”.

um, no. trust US… it is. jerks.


next gripe…female shame. wtf...women act like natural bodily functions are something for us to be ashamed of! and relax… im not about to go all second wave, flower-power, monthly-bleeding-is-a-beautiful-symbol-from-the-mother-goddess-of-your-fertility, on you. i am, after all, the barren lesbo. key word being barren.

all im saying is that i am sick and tired of the ways that we as women lower our voices when asking to borrow a tampon from a friend or do the secret drug transaction handshake when passing a pad across the table at a restaurant.

if men could menstruate they would let tampon strings hang proudly out of their back pockets… would puff out their chests and say, “shit bro… can i bum a rag off yah” *grabbing crotch and spitting* then they would saunter off to the men’s room and take care of business with their foot up on the urinal…. proud and public and for all the other men to see.

in fact, im surprised to hear that men’s bathrooms even contain stalls at all. men seem to brag about bathroom related topics all the time. “you should see how good my aim was!” or “man, i just dropped the kids off at the pool”. we women on the other hand are supposed to walk through this world acting like we don’t bleed and we certainly don’t poop. good lord, anything but that!

im amazed at the lengths we go to in an attempt to disguise what we do behind a closed bathroom stall door. seeecretly opening the tampon rubbish bin…careful not to rustle the paper bag which might notify all other patrons in the bathroom that we are in fact, bleeding. *gasp*someone get her some “hygiene products!”

we act like bandits trying to secretly open the bank safe without setting off the alarm alerting the female shame police. we painstakingly (and using only the veeery tip of our pinky finger) struggle to push open the lid… praying that the hinges on the receptacle are greased enough to allow for a totally silent deposit of our “waste”.

but then, on the other hand, in those panicked moments when we need to poop and cant hold it till we get home, we sit in the stall and alternate slamming open the tampon rubbish bin… rustling the paper bag… cough, cough, cough…. blowing of the nose…. looouuuddd yaaaawnnn…. cough, cough, cough….slamming the tampon rubbish bin lid again....all in an attempt to mask the sound of a “plop”.

the best public bathroom experiences are when we find ourselves 100% alone in a bathroom… nothing but vacant stalls as far as the eye can see. finally, after hours of holding in farts, we have the chance to free ourselves…. to drop our own kids off at the pool for a change. when suddenly… *gasp*… the stuff that nightmares are made of… the scrape of the main door, followed by the click-clack of women’s heels. we are no longer alone. we begin to sweat as we frantically try to figure out an exit strategy…

im sure she just has to pee… ill wait her out.
but what if she has to poop and decides to wait me out?
we could be in here for hours, waiting each other out.
if i take too long, the people at the table will for sure know that i came to the bathroom to poop.
then ill be forced to make up a lie, “aww, heck. those gosh darn lines in women’s bathroom” *forced roll of the eyes, cough*
no, ill just skip pooping and try to go again later
but what if i get back to the table and cant hold it? i certainly cant go to the bathroom TWICE in one dinner service! people will think i have to poop!
shit, what am i gonna do?!?

last week i was in a public stall peeing… hey, i swear, i was only peeing!... when a woman came in and sat in the stall next to me. apparently my stream of pee must have found the magical harry potter black hole because suddenly it stopped making the traditional pee-touching-water noise. there we were, in. total. silence. me suspended above the shitter silently peeing and panicking that she might think im trying to poop. i took a slight step forward and the sound returned to the water bowl. *wiping my brow* whew! disaster averted.

but then suddenly, i heard a strange noise next to me. a sound that i have never heard in a public restroom before. a straining of sorts that bordered on a full-fledged grunt. and then it happened… like the kick of a loud base drum… PLOP. followed by a beautiful concerto of ratta-tat-tat-tat and another plop.

that’s when i realized… holy crap (literally) this woman is totally pooping next to me... with no shame.

man, forget oprah.

this. is. my. new. hero.

so from now on i vow to use my grown up voice when asking to borrow a tampon… to open and slam the tampon receptacle with pride but only after actually depositing waste in there… to toot and grunt and refrain from masking plop sounds with synchronized coughs.

no more shame.

i am woman.
hear me poop.

like a paper cut between my fingers

i spent saturday afternoon at my first baby shower since the end of my TTC journey and all i can say is....woah. i have read other people's posts about how painful these events can be for folks who are struggling to get prego but good LORD... it felt i had given myself 10,000 paper cuts and then jumped into a giant vat of my own salty tears.

i should start by saying that the baby shower was awesome... it was co-ed, the food was great, the games were fun, the mom-to-be looked amazing, the dad-to-be was attentive and sweet, the rest of the guests were charming and fun to be around. if i weren’t such a barren, barren lesbo, i would have thought that the whole event was amazing. i should also say that i am TOTALLY happy for the expectant couple and i totally dig them as friends. so, this grumpy-bitter-woe-is-me diatribe has nothing to do with them or how happy i am for them.

ok, having gotten the formalities out of the way, let me get back to....

holy SHIT, that was painful!

not only were there images of babies everywhere (baby toys, baby shaped confetti, baby paper plates, baby napkins, baby wall decorations and even a handful of actual live babies) but even harder was that every friggin conversation was also about... you guessed it, babies!!

i stood in line for food between the mom-to-be and another pregnant lady and like a game of barren-monkey-in-the-middle, i bobbed and weaved between updates about the latest in maternity pants and anecdotes about supportive/unsupportive dads-to-be.

when the mom-to-be was opening gifts i found myself entranced again by "the belly". (see THIS post about belly dodging in the supermarket). NM was all, "babe, what are you looking at?" and i didn’t answer because i was transfixed by "the belly"...locked into an almost comatose stare, mouth agape and all. so she tried again, "babe...helloooo?...can you hear me?" and i was all, "oh, sorry... im just reeeeally interested in the gifts. *cough, nervous laugh*" and she was all, "i can see that. you look like you’re watching a football game or something. at least close your mouth"

i managed to dodge most of the fun baby themed games, much to the dismay of the first person who greeted me when i walked through the door.

baby shower attendee: here... *pushing a giant roll of crepe paper towards me* make a guess!
me: *reaching for my mace* err, make a guess about what?
baby shower attendee: you know silly, how big her belly is! rip off a piece of crepe paper that you think will fit perfectly around her belly.
me: that’s ok, ill pass.
baby shower attendee: you cant pass, everyone has to do it.
me: no, everyone doesn’t have to do it. so ill pass.
baby shower attendee: don’t be a party-pooper... take a piece of crepe paper!

(at this point a "glimpse-into-the-future" bubble appears over my head. i begin to envision the end of the game when all the women line up to wrap their "crepe paper guess" around the belly of the mom-to-be while the rest of the room cackles and laughs at how long -and thus way off- the guesses are. i can picture myself at the front of the line as i approach "the belly", i bend down and put my cheek against it, wrap my arms around the belly's mom and pull the crepe paper taut. i pull and pull at the crepe paper but i soon realize that i don’t even have enough to go half way around her. suddenly there is a *gasp* in the crowd and someone yells, "is to too short??" *sounds of shock in the audience* "but... nobody EVER takes too short of a piece. what’s WRONG with you?!", at which point i stand up and scream at the top of my lungs..."im a barren lesbo! how the HELL am i supposed to know how to accurately guess the size of a pregnant belly?!" *sobbing and exiting stage left*

baby shower attendee: helloo.... are you gonna take some, or what?

*glimpse-into-the-future bubble pops*

me: *gritting my teeth* i swear. you better. get that paper. outta my FACE!!! i already told you that I AINT PLAYING!

aaand...scene.

the only other game i had to participate in occurred while i was innocently eating my lunch at one of the round party tables. the center of the table had lots of yummy cookies, baby confetti sprinkled on the tablecloth and little plastic baby bottles with nuts and candies inside. one of the hosts asked everyone to grab a plastic bottle. we did. then she said, "now look inside and see if there is a baby!". i opened up my bottle and poured the contents out onto the table...frantically searching for a plastic baby. im sure the woman across from me was thinking, "man, she must really want that prize" but in that moment all i could think was, "find the baby. find the baby."

suddenly i heard yelling and cheering as the "winners" proudly held their plastic babies in the air. i looked down at my pile of nuts and candy and realized that my baby bottle party favor was a sad sad representation of my barren barren womb... empty.

*begin violin music*

fun with the 2009 target catalog

omg... my besties gave me a copy of the target toy catalog for 2009 and pointed out the front cover.

at first i thought it was just your typical run of the mill gender socialization propaganda...

white girl on the cover? check.

is she wearing pink? check.

is she wearing a tiara? check.

is she wearing a tutu? check.

is the tutu pink? check.

is she smiling? check.

is she playing with barbie? check.

is there a little boy in the image? check.

is he doing one of the following: making a mess, eating something or expressing anger? check.

ok, the basics are covered.

but upon further inspection, i realize that the barbie is holding Lego flowers.... and...wait a minute...are those church bells i see?! is that a priest/pastor/bishop/knight/pawn getting ready to perform a marriage?! (clearly i know very little about church officials...or the game of chess)

holy shit... that little boy isnt just upset because she is playing with his (read: a boy's) toy... he is mad because she is marrying them!

so not only do we have an image of a smiling white girl wearing a pink tutu and tiara playing with barbie while a little boy is expressing anger...but we can add heteronormative relationships and male aversion to marriage to the list. yay! the only things missing are caption bubbles:

as a silver lining i like to look at this image and imagine that the little boy is upset for other reasons...

or maybe the little boy is a radical activist:

the idea of the little boy being a big ol' queer or a radical activist was quickly squelched when i turned the page to find the following images....

page 18...

page 21...

*sigh*

thank god im barren and dont have to deal with toy catalogs.

life is good.

10 thangs i dig today. drum roll......

1. ginger molasses cookies from Pioneer Woman. i baked them last night and mmmm.... they turned out so good!

(these are not my cookies... i forgot to take a picture so i jacked this one from PW)

2. this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZfzch8vDo

3. this one too. it makes me want to quit my job and make videos like this for a living.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=17543732


4. ugly thrift store dresses. i recently bought a dress for $3.00 that NM thought i was planning to wear for halloween. imagine her surprise when i walked into the kitchen the other morning wearing the dress, ready for work. in her defense, i think the dress technically is an actual costume of some sort but since i cant figure out what the costume might be, i say "fair game!".

5. the blog Sociological Images. they have some really cool stuff on this site. check it out.

6. my dogs.

maddox doing circus tricks with follistim.

Gully rolling her eyes at me.

7. the movie Hard Candy. if you haven't seen it yet, rent it. now.

8. this picture of my mom. she was pregnant with me. my halloween costume for this year was supposed to look similar to this. NM said it was "bad taste" for me (barren lesbo) to dress as a pregnant woman for halloween but i disagree. if people can dress up like witches and fairies...then i should be able to dress up as something equally as imaginative and unrealistic!

9. bjork. whats not to love?

10. public transportation.

wouldnt you like to be a goddess too?

*peeking my head out from under my rock*


so.....its been a while. my last failed cycle proved to be much more difficult to cope with than i had anticipated. i have logged on many times with the full intention of posting something new, but i end up staring blankly at the screen. i didn't realize how much this blog was tied to my process of TTC. i mean, i always knew that writing and reading other blogs helped me with my past failed cycles but now that i have experienced my last attempt to get prego, i am realizing that it is hard to separate this blog from my feelings of disappointment. those of you who have struggled to get prego....you know the panic that sets in when you find yourself at opposite ends of the same grocery store aisle with a big ol' pregnant belly? even though the belly is undoubtedly attached to a human female person, all you see coming your way is a lush, fully functioning womb. your heartbeat races and you begin to have the internal dialogue that sounds something like this:
ok.
there is a pregnant belly
coming this way.
take a deep breath.
pay
attention
to the sale items.
dont stare at the belly
the lady attached will think you are strange
dont
stare
dont
stare
look at the cake mix
count the different types of icing
1- chocolate, 2- vanilla, 3- cream cheese
anything to
keep your eyes
off of
the
belly.

*sigh*

well that's kind of what this blog has started to feel like. i have spent so many hours day-dreaming about the days when i could post a photo of a BFP prego stick, or an updated photo from ultrasounds or a belly shot of my own. but, since i wont have that experience, i think i had to step away from this blog and heal a little.


i want to say thank you so much to all of you who posted such wonderfully supportive (and funny!!) comments on my last few posts. i know its a total no-no to go this long without reciprocation but please know that im keeping up with all of your developments (both happy and sad) and am working to get back on the "how to be a good blog community member" horse again.


i dont really have much to update today. im still barren and the world still sucks sometimes. NM and i teach a class together and we recently had a panel of guests come in to talk about parenting. some panel members are the parents of teens and some have young kids. some identify as fathers, some as adoptive moms and some as bio moms. it was fascinating to hear the differences in parenting as connected to social identities like race, class, gender and sexual orientation. "sexual orientation".... i hate that word. it sounds so nautical or something. like my "orientation" could be plotted on some graph or something. *shrug*.

anyway, i digress....

one panel member talked pretty explicitly about her thoughts about being pregnant and child birth. she spoke so freely and it seemed like the mere reflection on the past experience of pregnancy still fills her with energy. she said that being pregnant and giving birth reinforced the notion that "women are goddesses". *nod* it was a super cool moment.

and.... it made me lose my breath. i welled up and felt like i couldn't breathe. i guess i just want to be a goddess too.

i have realized that some of the most difficult parts of coping with infertility are those unexpected moments where the wave of emotion totally sneaks up on you and knocks you on your ass. its like being clotheslined by a giant pregnant belly or something. it sucks and i kinda cant wait for this phase of the infertility grieving process to be over.

im currently not sure about what to do with this blog in the future. it has been such a great source of support for me but im not sure how to transition out of a TTC mode and into something else. if i cant transition it comfortably away from being a TTC blog, then maybe its time to close up shop and start something new. we shall see. in the meantime...thanks again for the wonderful support.

oh... a friend shared this post from get born magazine and i loved it. check it out.

word.

little pink soldiers in my downstairs

i have a theory that relates to my infertility. it goes a little something like this...

i am convinced that past trauma coupled with my current work with victims of sexual assault creates the most hostile womb in the world for anything male. I think that when the doctors inseminate me with sperm, my body goes into attack mode and kills them all.

“put on your pink helmets, girls…. There is a whole school of perpetrators swimming this way!!! Kill them!!!”.

*sigh*

it sounds silly… but after 9 inseminations, I cant think of any other reason.

sad.

ill warn my sister in law (and anyone else who reads this) that this post will most likely be a long one. feel free to skim to the summary paragraph if you want.

this morning i woke up at 5am with a ridiculous urge to pee. i was shocked to realize that i got my period. today is day 25 in my cycle. i typically get my period between days 28 & 31. not sure why the heck it is here a whole 3-6 days early.

NM is out of town for the weekend on a college visit tour with 20 of her high school students. i wanted to call her right away but was afraid that she would be in the middle of some meeting with the kids and would have to figure out a way to keep it together. i decided to wait until she gets home tomorrow night to tell her. then i decided that was a dumb idea. eventually, i sent her a text and asked her to call me when she gets a chance.

for me, telling NM about AF’s arrival is one of the hardest parts of the infertility roller coaster. i want so badly to give her the family that we have been working so hard to create… so no matter how many times she assures me that she is never disappointed in me, i still feel badly breaking the news to her.

as always, she took it like a champ. we both cried a little on the phone, she told me over and over how thankful she is for what i have gone through, told me it wasn’t anything i did wrong and said that she has faith in our future. can you see why i married this woman (twice!)?

my doctor told me to make sure to wait until at least 11 days after the insem to pee on a pregnancy test because the HCG shot can cause a false positive. since it is only 10 days post insem, i decided to pee on a stick in the hopes that it would read “pregnant”. even though i knew it would be a false positive, i still wanted so badly to have the experience of reading that word on a pee-stick. in the end, it read “not pregnant”. *sigh*

im supposed to be working on my graduate research paper today but i cant stop thinking about all this crap. i shift between feeling so terribly sad…. to feeling shocked…. to feeling angry. im not used to wanting something this bad that isn’t within my control.

typically my coping mechanism for disappointment is to find all of the reasons why i didn’t really want something in the first place…

“who cares, that job probably would have sucked after a year anyway!”

or

“screw them…. im too good for them anyway!”

anything i can say or think to convince myself that i am somehow better off. this strategy does NOT work with TTC. my thought process goes like this….

man, who wants a stupid baby anyway?!

they are all loud and poopy and expensive,

i would rather spend that money on traveling the world with my babe.

yeah but traveling with a kid would be cool.

too bad we probably wouldn’t ever travel with a kid.

we would sit home and fight about laundry and chores.

but NM and I rarely ever fight.

that’s what makes our family so cool.

we disagree… a lot… but we never really fight.

we would have so much fun raising a kid together.

too bad we wont ever have one.

we will end up the crazy lesbo cat ladies.

but without cats since NM is allergic.

my self mutilating dog is the closest i will ever become to being a mom.

who cares, babies are dumb.

i told NM that i am nervous about traveling to see my family over rape and pillage day (thanksgiving) because there will be a pregnant lady there. she and i are not related but she is coming to hang with our family because her husband is overseas. they have one kid and are struggling to keep their marriage together because he is a jerk. its hard to be around folks in that situation when NM and i have such a wonderfully stable marriage and a strong desire to raise a child. im not meaning to sound judgy… because i really am happy for her that she is prego again… im just saying that it will be difficult to be around. pregnant women inevitably generate conversations about pregnancy and that’s hard for me right now.

im also feeling so annoyed at my body right now. like WTF is wrong with me?! 9 inseminations and i cant get pregnant?! meanwhile other people smoke crack and have noooooo problem reproducing a whole herd of kids.

my frustration with my body is also knocking up against some of my feminist values that have taught me to stop hating my body. as girls we are raised to hate our bodies… the way they feel, they way they smell, the way they are shaped…. and i spent years working on healing my self-hatred and have come to a place where i am truly happy with my body. and then i encountered infertility. i cant help but get angry at my body for being such a big friggin failure!

its so strange to think that i will be the only woman in my family to not experience pregnancy. and although i have never been the kind of woman who has fantasized about having a baby since the time i was 6 years old.... i still feel such a great sense of loss.

summary: i got my period. i’m incredibly sad. i miss my wife. my body is a loser.

*southern accent*... "a dingo with H1N1 killed my baybeee!"

ok seriously... if one more person comes to work sick as hell, im gonna mace them with lysol! im not typically the kind of person to get all worked up about getting sick, i mean hey...it happens to the best of us. but this whole swine flu (my students call it the "cop flu". lol) epidemic is creepin me out.

i was in a meeting yesterday with someone who said she had H1N1 but since she stayed home for 3 days, she wasn't contagious anymore. yeah right lady... then why all the hacking and sweating and shivering?! wtf?!

i know there are conflicting reports about the severity of H1N1 on prego women but i recently read that the flu can lead to an early term miscarriage. that will be my friggin luck... ill FINALLY get pregnant and then some idiot will give me the cop flu and ill miscarry! i dodged the hepatitis bullet from the run-in with the crack head nurse, but i'm not taking any chances with H1N1.

so far on campus we have had 1200 students report to the health center for the flu. i was conducting a sexual assault prevention session earlier today and one of the students in the room was clearly sick. i wanted to scream "GO HOME DINGO! STOP PUTTING MY HEALTH AT RISK!! I GOT LIKE $8000 RIDING ON THIS CYCLE!!".

grrr.

really? i mean come ON!!!!

ok, i get it. im infertile. my womb is probably drier than the sierra desert. i walk past house plants and they shrivel up and die. i have plenty of examples of my barren-ness every day.

not only do i have to deal with friends who unexpectedly get pregnant... "oops, we weren't even trying! *giggle*"

*deep breath*

and an ex-boyfriend who suddenly became a parent... "as it turns out, the paternity test says that i have twins"

*rolling my eyes*


but now we have to deal with pregnant women getting pregnant?

come on universe...what's wrong with you?!?!

ALREADY PREGNANT WOMEN GETS PREGNANT