Grace Notes

The little one woke up with a fever yesterday after nap, and her temperature has continued to seesaw up and down despite the Motrin/Tylenol cocktail.  So we are home today.  After the frenzy of the pre-dawn dash to school to write up sub plans, copy vocab tests, and get all the administrivia done, suddenly I'm home with nothing to do but cuddle my little girl.  Well, I lie. There's plenty to do.  But right now, the most important thing to do is nothing.

Now that Ceci is almost one (One!  Where did the time go?), it's time to retire the "Fertility Follies" category of this blog.  I started blogging because, like so many other (better) bloggers out there, I was having a hard time getting and staying pregnant.  When my comments on other blogs (hi, Julia!) got longer than the posts I was reading, I figured it was time to get my blog on.  Funnily enough (and yes, funnily is a word; it's the adverbial form of funny - go look it up), once I started blogging the fertility stuff just wasn't as all-engaging as it had been.  It was nice to realize I had other things to talk about besides my lazy ovaries and pathetic pregnancy retention rate.  Not that I didn't worry my pretty little head on that front; shortly after we got pregnant with Ceci, I had a huge muscle spasm across my lower back that, for all I knew, might presage another miscarriage.   I remember turning to Warren and saying, "If this pregnancy doesn't work out, I'm taking a ... break."  "Like a rest-of-this-lifetime break?" he asked, hesitantly.  "Yeah," I said, "like that." Fortunately for all of us, it was just a muscle spasm, and we all know how that story ended.

After the five years of trial and (mostly) error that made up our childbearing years, the baby hunger is definitely sated.  Infertility seems like a place I knew really well once, like a town I used to live in a bunch of years ago.  I still can navigate my way around, but I don't know the street names the way I used to.  When I read infertility blogs, my reaction is more usually, "oh yeah, I kinda remember that," more than, "you just said exactly what I've been living through."  Lately, Warren's been joking (at least, I think he's joking) about what we're going to name our next and last baby, who, according to him, is going to be a boy and is going to be given a family name.  While some teeny, tiny segment of my brain thinks that one more baby wouldn't be such a terrible idea, the rest of me (the sane, forty years old and not getting any younger, tired of being sleep-deprived part) has a far more visceral reaction; e.g., what part of HELL, NO, don't you understand?  And that, my friends, is what tells me it's really over.  When I was still in the hospital with India, merely hours after the fun and excitement of pitocin-induced labor, I was already contemplating the next one - when we should try, how far apart they should be spaced.  When efforts at same were going pear-shaped in a big hurry, I felt just as desperate for a second successful pregnancy as I had for a first.  When Julie writes about the tension between being grateful for having a child at all, and longing for another one, well, I get that now.  It's irrational, it's illogical, it seems somehow ungracious, but there it is.  I'm lucky.  Thanks to Clomid, the basal temperature chart, and the frighteningly competent Dr. A., we now fit the two-kids-plus-station-wagon profile of the typical happy middle class family.

Well, now that I've written myself into a metaphorical corner, I'm not sure how to end this post.   I think Ceci has some idea - she's rampng up for the mid-morning fussfest that presages her 10 a.m. snack.  With no further ado, Fertility Follies comes to a close.

Comments

[Carrie]

I hope Ceci is feeling better very soon.

I had no idea you started out at an infertility blogger. I love Julia and Julie even though I can't really relate.