Final giveaway: FertiliTea. And the first winner.

Here's my final Fairhaven Health giveaway: FertiliTea, an herbal tea "designed to support the entire reproductive system and help increase your chances of conceiving." It contains chasteberry (vitex), red raspberry leaf, green tea, ladies mantle, nettle leaf and peppermint leaf. Just leave a comment on this blog. I'll select a winner at random, and announce him or her at the end of the month.

Sounds so good I'm tempted to try it myself, even though I'm no longer TTC. Although in a cruel irony, my boobs hurt so much right before my period that I actual went and bought an EPT. I was filled with dread; my husband, not so much. But as soon as I took the test (literally as I was waiting for the result), my period started. It was like my body was saying, "Ha! Got you again!" Anyway. Back to FertiliTea.

Again, my standard disclaimer: I'm in no way endorsing or suggesting you use this product; the kind folks at Fairhaven sent me a free sample and asked that I give it away to one lucky reader. Consult with your doctor before taking this or any other supplement.

DVD Winner!
Back at the end of July, I offered up a copy of the Bend, Breath, and Conceive Fertility DVD. I'm happy to report that the winner of my random drawing is The Single Hussy! So if you're reading this, Single, send me your email and snail-mail addresses by going to my website, www.cwgentry.com, and sending me a note through the Contact form.

A trip I'd rather not have to make.

I got a call from the vet's office yesterday. Isabelle's ashes are ready to be picked up. It's funny--I had been wondering whether I should call. I told the vet I would pick them up today, thinking I'd swing by on the way home after picking up my son from preschool. But how do I explain to him the purpose of our errand? He thinks that she's in Heaven, where God is playing with her.

On Wednesday, I came across some of her medications in our downstairs medicine cabinet. I thought I'd given them all back. I suppose reminders of her will keep cropping up. I keep thinking I see her out of the corner of my eye.

This Week at Preschool

I live for the almost-daily email reports that we get from my son's preschool teacher. Seriously, it's almost pathetic how excited I get when I see them in my Inbox, and how disappointed I am when she misses a day.

These updates are interesting only to me and a close circle of my relatives (as in, my husband, my mom and my mother-in-law), but I'm still going to post them here.

Tuesday 6/9/09
Our weather man Cameron had fun working with the connector blocks this morning. He made a sun with lots of hot rays coming out from it. He told me that today the sun is hiding in the clouds but that soon it will get too bright and it won't be able to hide there anymore. Then, after a long day of shining on people it will go down and the sky will get dark.

Wednesday 6/10/09
Cameron got out all the Legos and built a long train this morning. There was a lot of detail on his train. The cars were in a pattern: yellow, blue, yellow, blue. He had a seat for the conductor and he even included a smoke stack (because it was a steam engine).

Thursday 6/11/09
In the afternoon we did our Apple sensory investigation. It was so much fun and the children loved trying all the different types of apples….Cameron said his favorite part of the experiment was getting to taste all of the different apples. He told me that he thinks we should eat lots of different kinds of apples everyday for snack.

Friday 6/12/09
Cameron was really interested in puzzles this morning, he spent a lot of time at the table working on them all. He really liked the occupation puzzles and the emergency people puzzles. He would take one all apart and then put all the pieces back before moving on to the next one.

As the Noggin commercial puts it, wouldn't it be great if life were more like preschool?

Classroom Doctor Visit

My son's preschool lesson plan for the week is "Healthy Bodies." Today they talked about their health with their "classroom doctors." Here's my son's health check-up sheet:

In case you're wondering, my son is 3 1/2, not 10 or 100, although sometimes he does seem wise beyond his years. He does weigh a lot (hello, 95th percentile), especially when I have to carry him upstairs to bed. And he does in fact have all 10 fingers and 10 toes. OK, maybe accuracy isn't his strong suit at the moment, he is 3/12, for god's sake.

What's the best story your preschooler's made up?

Guilt.

This is not going to be a funny post. I'm just warning you.

My book deadline is bearing down on me, while at the same time, my day job is beyond crazy.

I'm kind of screwed. At night, I try to write for at least an hour a night, but then I feel guilty because I'm not doing "work" work. But when I do work, I feel guilty for not writing.

On top of that, I feel like I'm neglecting my husband and son because I'm so tightly wound up by stress. (Thanks to the joys of email and the Blackberry, I was almost in tears by 8:30a.m. this morning.) I've started having sharp stomach pains occasionally after I eat.

Please don't tell me to exercise, meditate or do yoga. I miss doing all those things. But there's not a spare moment in the day. That I could give up without feeling guilty, that is.

How do other writers handle it, this juggling act, this guilt?

A conversation I never thought I'd have (or share).

"Cami, do you want to come here and go potty before your nap?"
"No thank you!"
"I'm going potty, and I'm going poo-poo, too!"
"Good job, mommy!"

Who says we're not reading?

I belong to a group of women writers. Once a month, we meet at someone's house to eat, drink wine, and talk about "the craft." We try not to discuss "the industry," but inevitably, the talk turns to marketing and publishing, and how horrible the situation is. (Then we drink more wine.) This past Sunday, when the talk turned to the supposedly dire state of the publishing industry, someone in the group announced, "No one reads anymore!" Cue chorus of agreement.

But I disagree. While I can understand where my fellow (fella?) writers are coming from, I think people are reading. How else do you explain the popularity of book groups, and conferences like Book Group Expo dedicated specifically to people in book groups? How do you explain the fact that every week, I get an invitation to a new book-related social networking site? I now have my lists on GoodReads and Shelfari, to give a few examples; I've gotten to the point where I can't even keep my virtual bookshelves up to date.

There's something else I wanted to tell my writers' group. From the time our children were blastocysts, almost every mother I know has been inundated with the importance of reading to her child. My niece has belonged to a book-of-the-month club since she was about 3 (she even picked out her own books). I could swear to you that I remember hearing a suggestion that I read to my son while he was in the womb as a way to get him used to the sound. I didn't do that--although I was reading The Apple's Bruise by Lisa Glatt when my water broke--but I did read to him from about the time he was born.

Here he is thumbing through his book collection at 15 months, looking for the good parts:

He's now almost 3, and yes, I was thrilled beyond words when one of his preschool teachers termed him "the class bookworm." He also likes to watch trains on YouTube, but he still loves his books. I have now read Where's the Poop more times than I would like to count.

Granted, I will admit that I'm part of an overly educated demographic. You could call our kids "Generation 529," so concerned are we about getting our kids into (and being able to pay for) good colleges. When I lived in San Francisco, I belonged to a mothers' group where women were frantic about getting on preschool lists before their children were actually born. Every family I know has shelves of children's books in their home. I realize, of course, that many families are not so fortunate.

There seems to be a disconnect between the dire predictions about American education, and the fact that many colleges have to turn away qualified applicants. Stanford received 24,000 applications for its Class of 2011--a record high (but accepted 10.3%--a record low). A "a significant fraction" of those accepted, says President John Hennessy, are "prepared to do Stanford-caliber study." Test scores and GPAs are higher than ever.

How can that be, if no one's reading? I'm curious to know what you think. Like I said, I realize that I'm part of a particular demographic, and that the picture isn't so rosy for a large segment of the population. How can we instill a love of reading in all children, regardless of income? And I don't think the answer is more computers in schools or access to the Internet. But we shouldn't throw up our hands and say "no one is reading," either.

It's not going to stop writers from writing, anyway.

Parenting and sex (and the lack thereof).

Spot-on post today on SFGate.com's "The Poop" blog about parenting and sex. Or the lack thereof. The comments are almost as good as the actual post. I particularly like the M&Ms solution used by one parent.

But what if your problem is not lack of time (say, for example, your son is reliably asleep by 9pm for the rest of the night), but...well...sheer exhaustion?

If after a full day of work, daycare pickup, dinner and bedtime routine, all you want to do is flop on the couch with your TiVo remote? Would it be any wonder if one's libido was MIA?

Not that I'm naming names.

BlogHer '08 in San Francisco

Just signed up for the BlogHer '08 Conference, July 18-20, in San Francisco. I'm pretty psyched. I attended Web 2.0 Expo in April (seems like it was just yesterday), and really enjoyed it, but women were a definite minority.

BlogHer has several breakout sessions devoted to "MommyBlogging": I'm not so sure I'm crazy about the term (I haven't seen many references to "DaddyBlogging"), but I'm very interested in the topics: "Is MommyBlogging Still a Radical Act?", "Public Parenting and Privacy," and "Mirrors: Ours, the Media's, Our Cultures' and Our Kids'."

And there's also a session on infertility: "When the Road To Motherhood Is Anything But Smooth: Infertility, Adoption and Miscarriage Bloggers."

Oh, and there are even birds-of-a-feather sessions on "Sex and Relationships" and for "Entertainment Bloggers." So it looks like I'll have all my bases covered, no pun intended. And you thought I was just indecisive in my choice of blog topics.

If you're going to BlogHer '08, let me know!

The China earthquake.

First Burma, now China. And with this latest disaster, the stories that break every parent's heart: schools buried under tons of rubble, entire families lost. I just read a CNN story about the tragedy at Juyuan Middle School, where hundreds of kids are still trapped. The sound of firecrackers fills the air each time a body is found; it's a Chinese tradition to ward off evil spirits.

A reporter says he hears firecrackers every five or ten minutes.

I think of China's one-child policy, and I almost can't read any more descriptions of grieving parents hurling themselves on their child's body.

The truth of the matter, which a lot of people don't talk about, is that when you have a child after miscarriage and infertility, one of the things that makes you want to have another child is the fear that something will happen to the first. Not that the second child could make up for the loss of the first. Nothing could. (Note: I didn't say that these feelings made sense. That's why another word for these feeling is "neuroses.") In fact, one of the feelings you have to manage, as the parent of a "singleton" (especially a singleton who almost didn't happen in the first place) is fear. Because if you don't find a way to manage the fear, you'll live your life like you're walking around with a gun to your head.

So in an effort to do something other than drive myself crazy and make donations to disaster relief (which I've done), I asked my brother the architect a few questions.

Cynthia: So why did all those schools and buildings collapse? Other than the magnitude of the quake. Don't they have building codes in China? Give me your architect's opinion and I'll put it on my blog. [Editor's note: If this sounds a bit like a sisterly demand, remember that this is the brother whom I once threatened, in my diary, to sue for ruining my childhood.]

Cynthia's Brother: The media is saying it's because of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Just kidding. Don't put that on your blog.

Seriously, I don't know enough about the facts to offer any type of opinion. [Editor's note: As you can see, my brother does not live in Silicon Valley.] It could be due to the amplitude of the quake, just as much as the magnitude. Amplitude is the measure of the quakes wavelength. Imagine ripples across a pond. Either they come in big rolling waves, or short frequent ripples. A building has amplitude also. If the amplitude of the building matches that of the quake, it's bad news. Thats what happened in Mexico City back in the 80s when that big quake hit, and why there were so many failures of a certain building type, such as newer 3-to-8-story apartment buildings, while a 150-year-old cathedral right next door was left undamaged. Sometimes it's just bad luck.

Cynthia: OK. But I don't understand how a building can have amplitude? (Sorry, English major here.)

Cynthia's Brother: A building is either built extremely rigid, or designed to flex. It depends on a lot on the structural system used. Imagine a Bundt cake taken out of the mold. One cake is Jello, the other is regular flour cake. Then you shake the plate it's sitting on. The Jello one wobbles (at a certain frequency/amplitude), the other one stays relatively rigid.

Cynthia: Which is better? The one designed to flex (Jello), right?

Cynthia's Brother: You want the building to flex to a certain point, but again, you don't want the amplitude of the building to match that of the quake. You have to shake pretty hard to get the flour cake to fall off the plate, but if you get the jello one going just right, it will wobble-roll right off.

There's one state-of-the-art high rise being built, I think in Taiwan, where they are placing a giant suspended counter weight at the top of the building to counter the oscillation of the quake.

A structural engineer would really be able to give you better information. If you'd like I can put you in touch with my structural engineer and she could fill in the blanks. [Editor's note: This is loving brotherly code for "I'm busy, sis, get back to work."]

Cynthia: Thanks, dear brother. (OK, I really didn't say that. But I should have.)

So now I understand the science of earthquakes and building a little bit better. I still don't understand the why. Not "why are there earthquakes?" I get the stuff about tectonic plates and all that. I don't understand the why of children buried under earthquakes. The why of firecrackers.

Dance first!

Every day, my son's teachers write a few lines about how his day was. Here's his report from yesterday:

"Loved to dance with his friend. Went [sic] I said "Snack time" he answered "Dance first"*

Indeed. One should always dance first.

* (Note that my son loves music more than anything, except maybe trains or books or his grandmothers. )

Unnecessary play, and an a-ha moment.

About a week or so ago, I attended Web 2.0 Expo. Lots to talk about there, but that's not what's important right now. What is important is something that happened after the conference one day. Something that had nothing to do with the conference, and yet it did.

On Thursday of the conference, I left early to go to a meeting at my son's school for the parents of kids in "junior preschool." The director of the school, Rachel, has these meetings about once every three months to give us a chance to vent about what little monsters our children are. Ha ha. Not really. The meetings are to talk about child development, and anything else we have on our minds. On this day, the topic was "The Necessity of the Unnecessary in Play," based on a newsletter article Rachel had sent us recently.

So Rachel, a very cool woman who has cropped white hair and great African jewelry, started out the meeting, as per usual, by showing about eight of us "junior preschool" parents video of our kids. And there, right off the bat, was my son, building a Lego tower. We all watched as my son's tower kept breaking apart, pieces flying off out of camera range. He continued to rebuild it, unperturbed, while I waited for him to scream in frustration, which is what he would do if either of his parents were in earshot.

But no, he just kept working on it, even though it broke again and again. I couldn't believe it. "He's so focused," said one of the other parents.

Then Rachel pointed pointed out that my son wasn't building a tower. He was just building. Just building, for the sake of building.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had just come from a conference that was all about social networking, and blogging, and Twittering--all for a purpose, whether that purpose was to get recognition, or sell something, or make a fortune, or whatever. And I had been drinking the Kool-Aid. But now I thought, When was the last time I did something just for the sake of doing it? When was the last time I wrote something just to be writing, and not to meet a deadline, or sell books, or get people to link to what I had to say?

When was the last time I watched a movie without thinking about the review I was going to write? Went for a walk without calculating how many calories I was burning? Helped someone without hoping to be thanked? Or, most poignantly for anyone dealing with infertility, when was the last time I made love without trying to get pregnant? When everything you do has a goal, your whole life is living in the future, and you don't ever get to play, and you very rarely have much fun.

"Children aren't busy," I once heard someone say. Yes. And I'm jealous. I want more Legos, and fewer deliverables, in my life. I want more fun.

New book targets cost of baby gear.

Heard an interesting story this morning on NPR: Steve Inskeep interviewed author Pamela Paul about Parenting, Inc. , her book about the baby gear industry. Listen to it here.

The book's already in my Amazon shopping cart, and I'll review it in a future blog post. Because oh, how this topic hits home. When I was pregnant with my son, I became well-nigh paralyzed by the amount of "stuff" I was supposed to buy. Changing tables! Swings! Baby carriers! Strollers costing $800 or more (yes, I'm talking about you, Bugaboo)! Cribs costing over $1,000!

This is why I became a Baby Gear specialist on Lootist.com: to help new parents sort through the marketing and figure out what they really need, as well as to overcome what marketers call FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Because when you have a newborn and haven't slept for more than a three-hour stretch for the previous three weeks, FUD becomes a way of life.

Speaking of sleep (and I do, often), I completely agreed with the author when she said that in spite what she first thought about sleep consultants (i.e., that it's the most ridiculous idea ever), in the end it was absolutely the best money she spent. (Noelle Cochran, if you're out there, you saved my life and probably, my marriage.) Next to my Lasik eye surgery, it was the best investment I ever made.

The unfairness doctrine.

One of the most frequent, and most heartbreaking, complaints you'll hear from anyone suffering from infertility goes something like this: "It's not fair that [insert name here] gets to have children, and I don't."

And by "[insert name here]," I don't mean that we begrudge our families or friends their pregnancies, even though there's always a pang when you hear on the day of a negative pregnancy test that your cousin-in-law, say, is pregnant with her third.

I'm talking about the people who abuse or neglect their kids. Who abuse or neglect themselves, when they have kids. Here, a certain fallen pop star is often mentioned. Example: After the failure of our most recent, and final, attempt to get pregnant, I whined to Dr. R something along the lines of, "It's not fair that Britney Spears gets to have two kids, and I don't." He chuckled sympathetically. "A lot of my patients are mad at Britney right now," he said.

Every day, it seems like I read or hear about some horrible thing some parent has done to their child. Just today, I read a news story about a Dallas woman who threw her two sons off a freeway overpass. Miraculously, they all survived, but I can't tell you how many similar stories I've read recently where the poor kids didn't. In fact, I could make a weekly feature of candidates for "World's Worst Parents." It's enough to make me start a self-imposed news embargo.

I'll tell you this now: I haven't met ONE infertile couple that wouldn't make great parents. These are the people who really want to have a child. They want to shower a child with love and affection. And for those of you who are going to say, "Well, you/they can adopt": yes, infertile people can adopt. But that doesn't take away the pain of infertility. And it doesn't take away the pain of hearing about people who abuse their kids, when you want one so, so badly.

It just doesn't seem fair, and I still haven't heard anything to make me feel better about it.

The ethics of eggs.

Came across this article, "Trading on the Female Body," in the newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. It covers a panel of speakers last November that called "for a moratorium on the exploitation of women through the trading of human eggs." They want "to raise awareness and promote safe research and regulation of this industry."

The issues the panel raised were real, and a little scary. I still don't know how I feel about egg donation. Even though I strongly believe that being a mom or dad is ultimately about parenting rather than DNA...I seem to have this primal instinct to want to bear my "own" children (even though now I'm apparently too old to bear more than one). My thinking is somewhat influenced by this article, "Your Gamete, Myself," by Peggy Orenstein, which appeared in the New York Times last year.

Of course, if I didn't have my son, I'd probably be giving egg donation much more serious consideration. I would want to have the experience of pregnancy (but is that only because I've been pregnant?).

This is much too much to think about on a Saturday morning, before coffee. Which, of course, I'm not supposed to be drinking, if I want to get pregnant again.

When toddlers get hold of your credit cards.

My son sent me a bouquet of roses yesterday (with a little help from Dad).

I really am lucky to have two such thoughtful males in my life, even if one of them doesn't quite get the concept of Valentine's Day yet. However, he did seem to like (for about 3 minutes) his Valentine's Day card, which featured a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine and made a very annoying "peep peep" noise when he opened it again and again and again.

In blog-related matters, yes, I'm really behind in my posting. I sent to the American Fertility Association's Family Matters conference on Sunday. Lots of news from that. Most notably, I found myself on all fours in a room with Brenda Strong. (Calm down. We were doing yoga.) Story to come, but let me just say that she is my new girl-crush.

Heath Ledger, R.I.P.

I don't know why the news of Heath Ledger's death at the age of 28 is making me so sad.

Maybe it's because he had a daughter about my son's age. Maybe because he was such an incredible actor. Maybe because he seemed like a decent person. His daughter should have had the chance to grow up with him in her life.

Lately, I've been grieving over the deaths of strangers more acutely, but this death, of such a talented person, at such a young age, really gets to me.

Insulin and its discontents.

This is going to be a serious post.

Today I found out that our friends' baby son has hyperinsulinism. The mom has been keeping a blog about it since January, but I just found out about it today through a Plaxo update. I feel badly that I didn't know until now (lost as we've been in little infertility drama, which pales in comparison), but I feel much more badly for them.

Because I don't know what else I can do to help other than offer support and lots of prayers, here are some links for more information on the disease:

Diagnostic tests
Athena Diagnostics
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Stories about kids with HI
Resources for families
Treatment of congenital HI

I don't understand why bad things happen to good people, especially to babies who haven't done anything to hurt anybody. In every picture of this little boy, he's wearing a huge smile, even when he has a tube in his nose. I need to have a little talk with God. Not that He owes me an answer, but what's He thinking?

Speaking of insulin, Dr. R thinks I have a "little" insulin resistance, based on the number of follicles I'm producing (I don't have the other risk factors, like obesity). He prescribed Metformin. I'm also supposed to cut down on carbs like pasta, which I don't eat that much, and sugar, which I do. I'd better get serious about cleaning up my act as we go into this last and final round.

Still...blah blah blah. So I have to cut down on the M&Ms (and probably my nightly glass of wine) and hit the gym a little more often. It's a far cry from what my friends and their little boy are going through.

So, here's a note to self: Self, be grateful for what you have. In abundance. And when you start moping about what you don't have, it's time to think about what you can do for someone else.

A man's point of view.

One of the unfortunate things about infertility (as if there weren't enough) is that you seldom get to hear from the guys. This blog post from AceOfSpuds captures the male point of view. Captures it exactly, according to my husband, who says that AceOfSpuds put into words precisely what he has often felt, but could not express.

But AceOfSpuds doesn't just get what the men are going through. He also manages to portray the no-(wo)man's-land of secondary infertility:

I'll let you in on something that very few people really understand. Having a baby is every infertile couple's dream come true, no question. But the baby doesn't make the infertility go away. Infertility and childlessness are not the same thing, and it's really the infertility--not the childlessness--which causes most of the grieving. Which is one reason that "You could just adopt..." is a really insensitive response.

Here's the passage that really got to me:

And even if that one child is exactly the right number for your family, you still will never forget the pain of the struggle. Even when you gaze every night at that angelic, sleeping face, you are still an infertile couple. Even when you're awakened every morning by that little bouncy creature snuggling up in your bed and telling you he loves you, you are still an infertile couple. Even when you are unequivocally welcomed into the fraternity of parenthood by playgroups, schools and other rites of passage, you are still an infertile couple. All of the joys of parenthood cannot completely make the years of infertility recede into blessed forgetfulness.

Of course, as AceOfSpuds rightly points out, that's not always such a bad thing. Sometimes the memory of what you've gone through is a "wise counselor." Like when your toddler is having the Mother of all Tantrums.

I "met" AceOfSpuds by chance. Sort of. It turns out we work at the same large company, and belong to the same childcare email list. I've always been impressed by his eloquent, even-keeled responses to some of the more "interesting" messages on this list, and have had some very nice email conversations with him. So when he wanted to add me as a friend on Facebook, I glad accepted (usually I don't add anyone I haven't met in person).

Well, of all the things to have in common, AceofSpuds and I have this. He's been much more open with the world about his struggles, as he describes here. "We need to do something about the shame that surrounds infertility," he says. Yes. We do. Again: he gets it. I think most men going through this do, but they don't know how to say it.

Last night, my husband and I watched the episode of HBO's uncomfortably accurate "Tell Me You Love Me" where Palek tells a roomful of friends (two of whom have just announced that they're pregnant with their third child) that he and Carolyn are trying to have a baby as well, and have been for a year. Awkward silence all around, followed by an argument between Carolyn and Palek on the drive home, followed by a fight that ends in graphic and aggressive make-up sex. All generated by two very different points of view about whether infertility is a source of shame, or a fact of life, a medical condition, that should be shared with friends.

If you have cancer, it's generally OK to tell people. But if you have infertility--and studies show that infertility patients suffer depression on the same level as cancer or HIV patients--you keep quiet. Why?

Ma'am, your reservation in Hell is confirmed.

Can you use OpenTable.com to reserve spots in Hell? If so, there's a table for one saved for Maya-Anne Mays.

As reported in a jaw-dropping article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, in 2004 Mays bilked couples out of thousands of dollars by claiming that she was pregnant and going to let them adopt her child. But there was no baby: just a whopper of a lie about a stillborn girl. Mays was convicted in 2004 of three counts of grand theft, and served three years in prison.

Out on parole, she was arrested this week for doing the same thing again to couples in North Carolina. The lies she told? Well, the mind reels.

It takes a special kind of evil to cheat people who are trying desperately to build a family. One of her victims, who was defrauded out of almost $12,000, said:

"These are people that have probably tried every way to build a family. For lots of people, this is a last-ditch effort. They want to do anything to have a child, so they're especially vulnerable."

There are worse crimes, of course. I've been avoiding writing about some of the horrific cases of child abuse in the news recently not only because they kill me inside but also plunge me (and a lot of others suffering from infertility) into the "Why do some people get to have kids and I don't?" game.

It's quite likely that Mays is mentally ill. I don't really care. I just hope that she gets put away this time for a long, long while. And I pray that if I go the adoption route, I never meet anyone like her.