April 2013 ICLW

I have not participated in ICLW for quite a while now.  If this is your first time visiting, or if you haven't visited since the last ICLW I participated in, I should tell you first that I am pregnant after my second try at IVF.  If this is as far as you read, I completely understand.

I haven't done ICLW since being pregnant because I always recoiled a bit (sometimes a lot) when I landed on a blog during ICLW whose author was writing about pregnancy or parenting.  I felt betrayed by the (albeit wonderful and supportive) commenter who stopped by my blog, where and when I was writing about miscarriage, whose link I clicked on to return a supportive comment or learn more about her, only to find out she was 30 weeks pregnant after IVF #1, or IUI or whatever (it doesn't matter).

It is different, however, if you choose blogs to look at from the ICLW page.  Most people accurately describe what they have been blogging most about recently.  If you want to avoid 'pregnancy after IVF', for example, or 'parenting', or whatever you might not feel strong enough to read at any given time, you easily may. 

But returning comments is part of ICLW.  So what do you do when you are deep in the trenches and someone leaves you a really thoughtful comment and you want to return the sentiment but doing so brings you to a blog with pictures and tickers and nothing but weekly updates about pregnancy?

I don't have an answer. 

I only know that I can't blog about general infertility right now.  I am not an activist right now.  It is still too scary. When I think too much about my experience with IVF and miscarriage and statistics, I worry that even this pregnancy might end without a live baby. I do however think about pregnancy after infertility all the time.  When my friend says she feels like a failure as a woman because her breast milk never came in adequately enough to exclusively breastfeed, the bitter infertile in me awakens (Even when she immediately realizes what she has done and says, "Oh my god, that was such a shitty thing to say in front of you; I'm so sorry). 

I don't really know how many people from the IF community are still listening. I do know what I have sought from infertility blogs, past and present, during the last 7 months. Weekly reassurances, common fears, how to accept good news and normalcy, and in many ways, how to leave infertility behind.