Now is the time to start reflecting on the beginnings of PFM. This time last year it was only an idea. I printed business cards on my computer and began telling people our plans of a non profit. It is hard to remember but I think I found Stirrup-Queens and Weebles Wobblog in November or December. The Parenthood for Me blog began somewhere around then as well. My main goal at this point in time was marketing. Word of mouth and building my web site and blog proved to be the best ways to get the word out to the public. F.book has been a great tool. I hooked up with several people from my younger days and was able to help them through their challenges of infertility.

We stand now as a NYS registered non profit corporation. Our 501 c(3) tax exempt application is in and awaiting approval. To date through fundraisers, individuals donations, sponsors my $45. bank account has reached roughly $6,000. These are baby steps needed to launch our organization from grassroots to the national non profit we are building ourselves to be.

I am not doing a full on “look back at our first year” yet because it’s not quite time. What I need is a push in the PR direction. I need more people to find out about PFM and help spread the word. We will be posting our grant application on http://www.parenthoodforme.org/ in January. Our first grants will be awarded in June 2010. The more people who know about our charity, the more people we can help. Thank you to everyone who has helped me thus far. I would not be here without you.

One winner of the giveaway will receive 2 sets of our “Artwork for Building Families” note cards. The first set is our black and whites and the winner will also receive the landscape note cards. Check out the website for a look- “Artwork for Building Families“

Here are the rules:

1. Post about PFM. Attach a link to our website and blog.
http://www.parenthoodforme.org/
http://parenthoodforme.blogspot.com/

You can cut and paste this in your post to make things easier for you.

Please check out the national non profit Parenthood for Me. Their mission is to provide financial and emotional support to those building their families through adoption or medical intervention. They will be accepting their first grant applications in January 2010. The first set of grants will be awarded in June 2010. Visit the website FAQ page to find out more details.
Feel free to add any other details you would like.

2. Post about the Giveaway to Raise Awareness.

3. Notify 7 people that you feel may not know of PFM or would be willing to continue the chain. They can be bloggers or simply contact them through email, Facebook or Twitter.

4. Make sure you let me know you have done these things. If you are not a blogger, that’s okay. Leave a comment to let me know.

Winner will be announced October 12

Cheers!

I recently read an article in People Magazine about a couple who had the wrong embryo transferred to a woman’s body. She became pregnant, and briefly after telling her the good news, another call came notifying them that the embryos transferred were not theirs but another couples. The couple decided that they would not abort the fetus but carry it to term and then have to give up the child to her biological parents. According to them there was no other alternative. Without much thought I know I would do the same thing.

Both families are outraged by the mix up but the biological parents of the baby in gestation are relieved, thankful and excited to be able to add to their family. Besides the obvious pain, the woman carrying the baby has been notified by her RE that she will never have another chance to carry a baby because of a condition she has, and therefore, the five embryos they have frozen will have to be put in a gestational carrier. The news is a doubly whammy for the couple.

The big question is how do things like this happen? Just because we are dealing with vitally important circumstances such as life, death, surgeries, infertility treatments does not change the fact that humans are performing these procedures and operations. Think about how many mistakes happen at the telephone company, restaurant, or airport. Errors are going to happen because they are inevitable. It’s not just the human factor, but poorly run hospitals, overworked staff, and new technologies that are slowly but surely gaining ground.

Think of changes hospitals have had to make in recent years because of unthinkable mistakes. They are now having patients take a magic marker and “x” which body part is supposed to be operated on because one too many times the wrong limb was amputated. Are these stories sensationalized? Sure. Does it makes it any less scary or thought provoking? Hell, no. If your blood lab isn’t already doing this, make sure they check your date of birth and name at least twice when they use a vial to draw blood. Babies have notoriously gotten switched at the hospital from the nursery to mom’s room for feeding etc. Not so much now, but in the past it was very common- yes, really I know a personal story.

Think about other fields where the public have gotten royally screwed because they put way too much trust in the “professional” they hired. Financial planners and banks are the first to come to mind. In this day and age we are forced to think twice maybe four times before we make a commitment to anyone. As always it is the 2% making the other 98% look bad, but none of us can afford these scandals- financially or emotionally. And, if we do not learn from others have have suffered, then there must be blame placed on ourselves.

There are things you can do to help prevent you or a loved one from being a hospital/doctor/nurse/ blunder in particular.

Education, Advocacy, and Trust.

ART is new as far as medical technology is concerned. Surgeries and procedures are still being tweeked and developed. Labs holding sperm, eggs, and embryos should be holding this responsibility to the highest regard considering that they are dealing with creating human life. This is where the trust has to lie. However, you can make sure your genetic ties are in the best place possible. You can still ask to see the lab, ask a million questions, read statistical data, bug the crap out of the doctors. You have to because this is your health and your life.

The days of fully trusting your doctor to know what is best should be far behind us. We are an educated public, we are consumers, we have been given tools to find more information.
There will never be a 100% guarantee that when you are under a doctor’s care that something bad will not happen. But, maybe you can lessen your risks of being wrapped up in a medical mishap. We should learn to partner with our doctors. We should learn and have the confidence to know that just because we did not go to medical school does not mean we do not know our own bodies and do not have the capability of learning about biology. And, our doctors should be evolving to the point where their patients will put them to the test and they are ready for the questioning attitude. Medical school isn’t over with residency. They will be held accountable, forced to dig deeper into problems, and should have their heads in the right place and not up in the clouds simply because they are the doctor.

The second I ever get the feeling a doctor is patronizing me again I will be out the door in a second. It’s my life, my body, and my future. No one knows me better than me.

This post is written by my friend at An Unwanted Path. This is a very touching and eloquent post about her struggles with infertility.

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I’ve been at this for awhile now- it’s been 29 months, October officially marks the 2.5 year mark. I find that the longer I travel this long dark road, the harder it gets. Not just with finding the inspiration, the courage, the strength to continue- I mean the motivation, finding bravery in the face of all this loss, failure, and fear.

See, so far I have ovulated 3, maybe 4, times. I have experienced that positive pregnancy test twice now. I have experienced that excruciating pain of pregnancy loss twice as well. I have learned that fertility treatments can make dreams come true, but for some of us they feed false hopes.

There are a great many things this journey has stolen from me, things I will always miss. I will never again look at a positive pregnancy test with a sense of joy. I will never feel excited and carefree as I tell people that I’m pregnant; I never even had that, and I never will. I will never have that naivety in pregnancy back. My first pregnancy will not be remembered with joy. I will never feel confident that I am having a baby until I have a living breathing child in my arms. Holidays are filled with dread, because I fear that someone will happily announce their good news- and I will have to hide in the bathroom because as strong as I am, I am not strong enough for that. I resent that I can’t be happy for other people the way I used to be, because I feel too sorry for myself and I can’t seem to get past that anymore.

Our family relationships have been forever changed- I will forever resent the way my family decided to treat me after my first miscarriage, and how hard it was on me. I will resent how my husband’s family act like all this is so easy, how all of them knew about the miscarriages and that only my mother-in-law said anything, and how even she did not speak to me after the second one. I will resent their insinuations that we should adopt even though they can’t begin to understand how difficult that really is- and how they seem to think that we will just let them in our lives when we have children, even though they have nothing to do with us at all as we suffer. I’m resentful because they love their grandchildren so much, and they dote on them so much at Holidays that I feel even worse, because I can’t give their son a child. And because I know they didn’t like me to begin with, I can’t help but wonder if they hate me even more now because of this.

I’m resentful because I am so bitter. I don’t want to be.

I used to be confident that I would be a good mother. The longer I walk this road, the more I doubt this. I haven’t changed personally- I mean, I’m more weathered and my life situation has improved since we started- but I doubt my future parenting skills now. And it all boils down to this- the longer I have to think about what it means to be a parent, the more terrified I get.

I mean, watching my niece run around like a wild-child who doesn’t understand the word “no”, and getting worn out from just spending an hour with her- I have to ask myself, do I have what it takes? When I actually think about my entire life focus would shift (Well, not entirely- right now it’s all focused on becoming a parent. It would just shift to being a parent.) I mean, afternoons watching television with my husband would be out, sitting on the computer and playing online as much as I do would be out, reading books and being absorbed in an art project, going out on a whim… all out. How would I handle situations that come up? What about stitches, school issues, babysitting, etc… We don’t have a good extended network of family, I have to figure most things out myself. Illness, weaning, potty training, child safety proofing my house, an active toddler getting into stuff, and the horrible horrible teen years… it scares the beejeezus out of me.

But then I remind myself, it all comes in it’s own due time. You adapt, you trade off. A night sitting in reading a book, becomes reading and learning time together. Working on an art project becomes arts and crafts time. Going out on whims becomes date nights, or family trips, or family nights in. Life would become different, but in a way you have (if you’re like me) desired for years. You learn as you go along- most people don’t have it all figured out before they become parents.

And then I stop hyperventilating.I want to be a mother- even if it scares me now more than ever.

I wonder if most people even think about what is really involved in becoming a parent- I mean truly think about it- before they take the plunge.

I am thankful for some things on this journey- I know that I will be a better parent now, I have had plenty of time to prepare, plenty of time to be more gracious, plenty of time to acknowledge that this isn’t going to be easy at all. I have longed and suffered so much in pursuit of this dream- I know it will be worth it. I now understand how much my husband truly loves me. I count my blessings, and mourn my losses, and keep walking- I have become stronger, more resilient, because of it. I’ve realized that my life really is wonderful, and even if it doesn’t work out the way I want it too- I can still be happy.

Am I glad I have infertility?

No- but life gives us what it gives us, and we have no choice but to either work with it, or to give up. So, I keep working with it- even if each step feels like agony.

Thank you to my friend, Lori from Weebles Wobblog for providing this wonderful post in my absence. Please visit her blog as it is inspiring and meaningful.

Lori is an adoptive mom who has quite a resume. She is an Examiner for Open Adoption, has written for Adoptive Families magazine, for regional newspapers. With Crystal, her daughter’s birth mom, she teaches classes and consults about how to build a child-centered open adoption. When she’s not writing about open adoption and parenting, she’s living it in Denver with her husband, Roger, and children Tessa (8) and Reed (6).

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With adoption, last means best

I had long struggled with the idea of adoption as a second choice — pregnancy being the default setting and thus the first choice.

Why the struggle? After all, I had ended up in exactly the right place. I wouldn’t want my family to be any different than what it is.

But how to explain this to my children, who are likely to ask questions in the coming years? Would they someday feel like we settled for them, that they weren’t our first choice, that they were second-best? I shudder at that thought.

I found resolution to this dilemma through Melissa at Stirrup Queens, who addresses the term “second” as a chronological term rather than an ordinal term. Brilliant!

Was Roger my first choice as a husband? Well, considering I kissed a few frogs before I even met him, Roger wasn’t chronologically my first choice. I wonder how my life would be now if I’d ended up with Alan, the boy who helped me collect worms when we were 8. Or Doug, the disk jockey turned radio-mogul, or Brad-the-farmer or Clay-the-slacker or Iain-the-commitment-phobe.

Roger was definitely my best choice. But I meandered to get to him. The meandering is what made me worthy of him and appreciative of him.

It’s oddly coincidental. Tessa developed her first crush recently at school. She is smitten with a much older boy, a 6th grader named Cory. She dressed for him, had me braid her hair for him, talked incessantly about him, and dreamed of him. She claims she’ll marry him.

Not bloody likely. Cory may be her first, but what matters is the last. That’s the keeper.

Just like Tessa, and just like Reed. My meandering to them is what makes me worthy of them. The process of our family forming was absolutely the best choice, even if we started out not knowing that.