Starry starry list

I’ve been following, with interest, the various discussions about pregnant infertile bloggers. I get the whole survivor’s guilt thing. And the not knowing how to talk about it. Heck, I'm not even sure how to talk about my impending IVF. But I also get the desire to follow the story, to maintain the connection. Pregnant infertiles (and infertile moms) are like little rays of hope - reminding me that pregnancy and motherhood are possible, and achievable in many ways, and that’s encouraging and inspiring. It’s also painful, sometimes. And that’s okay, too. I want to know that the stories are there. Most of the time, I want to keep up with the details - the news, the progress, the ups and downs. Sometimes, when I’m not feeling particularly strong, I want to take a break from those stories. But even then, knowing the stories are out there when I’m ready to pick them up again helps me envision a place beyond where I am right now.

You may have noticed that I’ve recently annotated my blogroll. I know this sort of reorganizing is sometimes contentious, but in the interests of self-preservation, it was something I had to do. I didn’t want to break up the blogroll, but on those days when I’m feeling really fragile, I wanted a way to remind myself to tread cautiously. Some days, I’m fragile hearing about pregnancy symptoms. Some days it’s baby stories. I don’t want to stop reading these stories. I feel incredibly invested in their outcomes. But I need to be able to control how and when I catch up. Hence the star system. [I’ve indicated pregnant bloggers with a * (generally waiting until well into the pregnancy to do so, as much for superstitious reasons as anything else). I’ve indicated blogs that are largely about babies with two **. ] It’s rough, and it may change with time (hearing about babies - at least those whose conception was not taken for granted - is sometimes uplifting, actually) but for now it’s my imperfect attempt to buffer the world I’m in from the one I long to join. It’s also my way of putting a warning on blogs so those bloggers don’t need to warn me each time a post contains mention of pregnancy. Because, really, once you’re pregnant it seems reasonable that many of your posts would contain mention of pregnancy.

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Oh, and the pregnant friend whose impending delivery I mentioned in my last post? She delivered a healthy, HUGE (really, majorly huge) baby by c-section a couple of days ago. I was fine, initially. Caught up in the sheer size of the infant. And then I went to look at the pictures, and found a chronicle of the whole pregnancy, and comments from the adoring grandparents (this is the first grandchild on either side) and I lost it. Sitting in my office, sobbing quietly because I didn’t want to upset J, I couldn’t help but think, again, how unfair this all is. I don’t begrudge these friends their joy, at all, but it’s still So. Damn. Hard.

Countdown: 8 days until Lupron.