midnight (well, 2am) musings

I should be asleep. Or writing something more “real” and “important” than this. That is, if I plan to complete my graduate program sometime this century. Instead, I’m designing my ideal job in my head and noting how grad school and academia don’t seem to fit in the picture. This should tell me something, but I don’t think it’s as clear cut as it seems. Or else it is, which is too much to deal with right now.

It’s the beginning of J’s crazy time of year - back to back projects that require a lot of hours and stress and that keep him from having the energy or attention span to engage in any lengthy meaningful conversations. Which is a shame, since I have to decide really soon if I’m going to stick this out or throw my hands up in the air and say I’m done.

This is not what I envisioned for myself, or for us. I think I had assumed I’d get pregnant and take a leave of absence at that point, and then decide if I really wanted to finish. But without the pregnancy, I have to just decide - or take a leave without the pregnancy and sit around in my pity puddle.

Just the bright post you came for, right?

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Okay, here’s something. I heard a program on infertility on our NPR station today. (The audio is available from the link, if you’re interested.) The hour-long episode of “Health Dialogues” featured a fertility doctor, a medical ethicist, a therapist specializing in infertility, a member of RESOLVE, and author Peggy Orenstein, who is apparently writing a book about her struggles with infertility. (IIRC, she got pregnant naturally at age 41, after 3 failed IVFs.)

[Peggy Orenstein wrote a beautiful piece published in the New York Times Magazine about (one of ) her miscarriage(s). Her other articles are also quite interesting - moreso than her books, I think - at least more than Schoolgirls, which I read in college at some point.]

Anyway, the radio show spent what felt to me like too much time talking about factors such as maternal age, especially in the discussion of ethics and insurance coverage. They didn’t mention PCOS at all, even when talking about common known causes of infertility. I didn’t expect much, since talking about ICSI (which the woman prononced “ick-see” -- is that normal?) is way sexier than talking about overweight hormonally imbalanced anovulatory PCOSers like me. It’s easier, and cleaner, to talk about IVF and the ramifications of PGD or the benefits of ick-see than to deal with the messy nature of my kind of infertility.

The show wasn’t all bad, though. Mostly what was good was that the show aired at all - perhaps this will have some kind of advocacy effect. Maybe this will help catalyze a political movement to mandate insurance coverage for fertility treatments, and to increase the availablilty of support systems such as child-care, though these were touted as important in convincing women to begin TTC sooner in life (as Orenstein suggested).

Or maybe this is just a day for me to be living in a bit of a fantasy world. And not the good computer-game kind. Though maybe we should make one, kind of like Ollie’s board game.

Going to bed to dream of a job and a pregnancy. Not necessarily in that order.

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p.s. I have no idea why the links are behaving so weirdly. I apologize, but I can't fix it. Any hints?
** UPDATED: I've fixed the links. Not that anyone cares, but still. I triumph over technology. Yay. **