The Martha Stewart Life: pursuit of normalcy

I've almost always had this aversion to average people. I didn't want to aspire to be like everyone else. I wanted to do what felt right to me, and made me the most happy. Following the crowd just because it's the "norm" or because that's what's socially acceptable is not my dream! I'll admit, I've fallen in this trap a few times when life had me down, day dreaming about what it might be like if I could just be normal like everyone else, only to realize later how wrong I was. Being average isn't the answer to all my problems.

I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again, what is so fulfilling about becoming average?? Have we gone that far south now that this is an actual goal for people?! Who wakes up in the morning with the dream of becoming an average wife/husband, an average mom/dad, or average career woman/man? Yet people are so proud of these things!  It's sad!

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, and the kind of people who drive me stark raving mad! They are the stereotypical soccer moms who drive their top of the line minivan or SUV, married to the average John Doe (who used to be the envy of every girl in high school, of course, except now he has a beer belly and looks more like a species of gorilla than a human, but soccer mom still likes to brag about him), they've got 2.5 kids and live in a newly developed suburb, in a lovely 2-story home: granite counter tops, central air, stainless steel appliances, bedrooms for each kid and a master suite complete with a soaker tub they never use, and I bet you they even got to pick the colors and carpet style! It comes with the picture perfect backyard, rolled out sod, of course, not a dandelion in sight, bark chips and tiny shaped shrubs, and an entertainment size deck complete with a BBQ. The kids are enrolled in just about every possible thing there is: karate, piano lessons, swimming, ballet, girl/boy scouts, t-ball, and of course soccer. And they probably have some type of super common religion they practice just because they were raised in it and think its a good way to bring up their kids. Because its common, not because they actually searched their souls and believe in it or anything. It's like they got a Martha Stewart package deal on life, you know? Even when bad things happen, they somehow manage to make them seem cool, like they are "down to earth" because little Aidan got diagnosed with a speech delay, and little Sophia has asthma, dad has hypertension and mom is diabetic. See? They're not perfect after all, they're average! Everybody has problems once in a while, so it's perfectly acceptable, and because it's so common, that makes it okay!

What it is about these people that drives me the most crazy is that NONE of them are thinking for themselves!!! We have billions of dollars worth of advertisements in our world, from billboards to magazines to TV to Internet to other people living as examples that create this unconscious urge to be like them! They are the ultimate consumers! They are "do-gooders" who tend to make the biggest impression on others. Why? Because on the outside, they make it look like they have the perfect life, and because they are average, with average jobs, average paychecks, etc, their lives seem totally doable! Anyone can be like them and be living the dream life with their family. All you have to do is go shopping and start buying every best rated product on the market and the rest will follow! It's completely psychological, the way people live. They actually think they want to live that way, but really it's because they are being influenced to live that way by greater powers of indoctrination carefully placed into society for that specific reason to manipulate our choices. And then they say that we're "free" and chuckle under their breath because they know that most people will fall for the traps of influence.

It's interesting to find that when I tried to find groups of like minded people who saw this too, they described a moment of "awakening" where they suddenly realized they were slaves to the system. I felt that too when I started to look into it deeper. But as I said, I've always kinda felt a little off, as if my subconscious was trying to tell me something. Then I wonder, who's to say everyone doesn't have that feeling buried somewhere deep inside themselves?

Of course, the kicker to this whole thing is that most people who read this will think I'm off my rocker insane. But in fact, just because you're among the majority, does not automatically make you correct. My favorite saying is "Just because it's normal doesn't make it right". So, if you think I'm insane, remember that hypnotherapy is a pretty good business, and the idea of hypnotizing a person is subconsciously manipulating their mind to believe something they didn't necessarily believe before. Given that it's fairly successful, I think I can safely say that while I may be in the minority here, I am not the crazy one.

What is more fulfilling than being a sheep and living the highly glorified average lifestyle? Well, how about being yourself and getting in touch with your true self instead of doing what everyone else is doing this year? Listen to your inner soul. Push passed all the propaganda and find what truly feels right and really makes YOU happy (not what makes your BFF or mother-in-law happy)! I found that getting back in touch with nature, the way things were meant to be, was the easiest way to connect with my true self. It can be a hard battle, because putting your old life and all your old desires behind is tough, since it means putting behind you almost all the things you were used to, but it's so incredible to be honestly free from outer influence, and know that I am awake, and living to achieve a real dream now, not one put in place by Martha Stewart.

College Prep: From 18 Months to 18 Years!

As a parent who I think might obsessive about my child's future and success a little more than the average, I've been thinking a lot about schools.  I know my daughter is only 1.5 years old, but I'm anxious. I've already started one of those Gerber college funds for her, and am looking for new ones that will help her earn a little more than $10k, because who knows how high tuition rates will rise by the time she's 18!! 

But another thing weighs on my mind regarding school.  The way I was brought up was less than ideal for my education.  My siblings & I were pulled in and out of all different kinds of schools all the way throughout our childhood, from public to private to home-school and back. I didn't do so well.  I was anti-social, labled "shy", "not living up to my full potential" by teachers, and always had a hard time, academically.  I kept getting lower and lower grades the further on I got in school, and worst of all, I was never very well accepted by the other students.  I was bullied and harassed daily.  By the time I graduated from high school, I was adamant that I would never go to college, because of how "stupid" I was and how much I just bloody hated school.  Of course I have since changed my mind about college and have gone, it wasn't until much later that I decided this, and I feel it could have been much better for me to have gone to a 4 year university straight out of high school instead, because it is the perfect dedicated time for college in your life, and the only one you'll ever get.  Try going back to school later and even though you may succeed, it's going to be 50 times harder because you'll have things like a marriage, kids and a job to deal with also.  Because of that, drop out rates skyrocket, and the possibility of gaining a college education with degree significantly lessens.

So, when it comes to my own kids, I worry and agonize over this issue a little psychotically, some might say.  I don't want my kids going through that.  My husband & I already know that our kids are going to college.  We both agree there will be no question.  So, it seems only natural that in order to do that, I am a firm believer (I have first hand experience with this after all) we need to assure that they are getting the absolute best kind of education as children first. Something that will for sure prepare them for not just the ultimate college experience, but the desire to go in the first place.

So, I started researching it.  First, I looked into where the best schools were in our area.  It's a strong desire for me that we stay in the same school district and not move while our kids are in school, and preferably ever.  I believe stability is extremely important for kids because schools not only have different teachers, students and rules, and schedules you need to get used to, but they teach differently, and at different levels for the same grade.  I struggled so much at new schools because of all this.  In the middle of my freshman year in high school, we moved from a public school in Hawaii to a private school in the state of Washington.  I was in the first half of pre-algebra in public school getting straight "A's" and jumped into the 2nd half of algebra in the private school.  They didn't have any other options for me, and I failed.  So that messed me up for the rest of my high school career.  During my junior & senior years of public high school, I was taking predominately freshman & sophomore classes just to "catch up" on what I failed in private school, and almost didn't graduate.  It was so incredibly hard on me, and I lay the blame for everything I've done in my adult life on my childhood school experience.  So, I made it top priority to research this for the sake of my daughter's future.  What parent ever wants their kids to go through the same crap they went through?  I don't believe anyone does, really.  That's why we all struggle with trying to find the "best schools", etc, and push the college thing on them.  I'm probably not as different there as I think in that respect.

It all started with me looking for the best school districts.  Ironically, the best in the area we live now was the same district that I graduated from and very well could be the reason I actually graduated at all, I thought.  But I wasn't going to stop there.  I wanted to see more.  I wanted to learn what makes these schools "the best".  By what standards are they rated?  What I found turned my innocent wonder into complete controversial shock!  Not that the test rating system they used to determine if they're the best was at all bad.  It wasn't that at all.  It was just the fact that in doing this research, I came across a lot more information about schools than I ever thought possible.  The more I read, the worse the picture became, and I tried so hard to find other sources that would smooth this out for me, but it only got me in deeper.  Public school systems are run by so many unbelievable counterproductive union rules, it's a wonder kids even learn anything in them at all!  They're run more like prisons than places of childhood education!  In some parts of the country, only 10% of the kids actually graduate from high school!  Obviously, that's in one of the worst parts of the country, but the rest of the country isn't that far behind.  What they did was just lower the standards at which kids can graduate and therefore give them higher rates of graduation, and make the students, teachers and parents alike thinking that they're doing well, when they really aren't.  Even so, the truth is, there are just way too many restrictions that make it hard for a teacher to do their job.  Strict rules prevent bad teachers from being fired and good teachers from being required. No public school teacher gets paid enough to be able to afford to teach properly because they nearly all have to supplement their income with 2nd jobs to make ends meet.  This leaves them no time to prepare the lessons, etc.  They also don't have the time to be available to the students when they need help because there are far too many students to spend individual time with in class or after class. 

Unless I simply could not find any other option, I decided that public schools and private schools were out of the question. I would home school, except that I would cause my kids to lose out on the whole social aspect of schooling that I find so important in order to survive in a social society, so where did that leave me?  After watching a couple of very enlightening, yet devastating documentaries on schools, I discovered charter schools.  Highly successful, free to the public, and exactly what I was looking for in preparing my daughter with a quality education for college.  The only problem: They are space limited, and enrollment to them must be determined by a lottery of drawn student names, and they aren't in every state.  Luckily, Washington just happens to be one of them that just in this past election, got the popular vote to legalize charter schools in this state.  I don't know where they are, or if there are any at this point, but I intend to find them and at least try to enroll my daughter in one when she's ready to start school.

Now I just have to ask, why does everything I ever look into turn into a controversial battle that ends up making me believe that society as a whole really has no rights.  We are only deceived into believing that we're a "free" country, but in actuality, it's the freedom it's self that has caused us to lose it!

Diaper Wars: Cloth vs Plastic

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, all the world used cloth diapers because, well, there was no such thing as plastic.  Now, all the earth only wishes for there to be no such thing as plastic. States are trying to pass laws to force people to stop using plastic bags in grocery stores because of their negative impact on the environment.  Plastic does not decompose.

I didn't always know I wanted to use cloth diapers with my babies.  In fact, I never thought twice about it.  I always totally assumed I'd be crazy NOT to use disposables!  After all, wasn't that the reason they were invented in the first place?  To save poor mothers from the day-in, day-out laundry, folding and constant leaky diaper changes?  It would be like comparing old fashioned cloth rags to modern tampons!  (!?!?!?!!!)  But strangely enough, the years of infertility led me to stumble upon the world of all things natural.  I thought it just made more sense to stick closer to nature rather than rely on drugs and chemicals.  Over time, the "green movement" developed, and it became even easier to choose these more environmentally friendly options.  I read more and more and thus became more passionate about it.

In the beginning of my journey with diapers, even though we had registered for cloth diapers on our baby registries, most people didn't read them and we were given packages upon packages of the all too common disposable diapers.  Huggies, Pampers, Kirkland, Luvs, and even the "natural" brands like Earth's Best, Seventh Generation, you name it, we had them all.  Our little girl was very small as a newborn, and for the first 3 months of her life, she wore newborn sized diapers, and being as we were not the most wealthy of families, we took full advantage of the trillions of free newborn diapers we were given and used them all.  But the disadvantages grew fast.  It blew me away how quickly her diaper pail would fill up with dirty diapers.  We were tossing full bags of used diapers twice a week, and using up 72 count packages of disposable diapers in a single week or less!  It was outrageous to me, especially once we ran out of the free gifted diapers and had to start buying our own.  72 count diapers costs roughly $20.  That's $100. a month and $1,200 a year.  Holy crap!  Literally!

Knowing already that regular store costs on diapers are insane, I went online and decided to do my research.  Diapers.com and Amazon Mom were the two best choices.  Their prices aren't a whole lot cheaper, but they usually have deals you can get, like $10 off your first order plus $5 off every order over $50 thereafter from Diapers.com.  And Amazon Mom offers "Prime" benefits, which include prices that are cheaper than regular, quick 2-day shipping, and give even more discounts if you commit to "Subscribe & Save" to have automatic deliveries.  Both places also offer free shipping. But even after all the discounts, it is still overwhelmingly expensive to use disposables.  It isn't just the diapers themselves that cost, it's the diaper pail & liners that add up the monthly price you have to factor in.

So, just to make things easier, I decided to make a list of pros & cons for diapers:

Disposables: Expensive
Cloth: Economical

Disposables: Wasteful
Cloth: Reusable

Disposables: Environmentally Harmful
Cloth: Environmentally Safe

Disposables: Toxic to Skin
Cloth: Gentle on Skin

Disposables: Harder to Potty Train Early
Cloth: Easier to Potty Train Early

Disposables: Convenient
Cloth: Inconvenient (debatable)

Disposables: Quick & Easy
Cloth: Time Consuming

Disposables: Absorbent
Cloth: Not as Absorbent. (May leak through if not changed often)

Disposables: Frequent changing of baby outfits (Flimsy designs do a poor job of keeping in runny poo--which, by the way, is roughly 90% of your diaper changes in the first 6 months of life)
Cloth: Less outfit changes with proper use (Snugger cloth pants & waterproof pouch designs prevents leaky poo disasters amazingly well)

So, for me the argument was easy, but people always go a bit farther with this argument and ultimately end up making it sound like it's a "toss-up" which diaper is actually all-around better to use.  Take the environmental argument, for example.  Cloth is usually made with cotton, a crop that is often heavily sprayed with pesticide & herbicidal chemicals if not grown organically, then transported and processed in several factory plants before it finally becomes a cloth diaper, after which it is packaged and stored in yet more facilities before being shipped to manufacturers who finally sell them to us.  However, after they are bought, they are used, washed and reused over and over and over again for the entire time your child is in diapers, and will last  for years beyond that.  Many people factor in, as they should, the impact of washing cloth diapers, taking into consideration the extra use of water and energy used to machine wash & dry them.  Though you can cut down on these impacts if you use plant-based detergents and reuse the laundry water to water your garden, for example, and of course line dry instead of machine dry.  But even if you didn't take any of those extra "green" steps, the comparison is hardly notable to the vast damage disposables do to the environment in their life cycle. Bottom line, the fact that cloth is a reusable one time purchase makes it the best choice in my book.

For the disposable diaper, the road is far bumpier.  Think of the list of vast ingredients in making a disposable diaper as a list of factories and processes used in it's development.  Each separate chemical must come from a different place. Many people forget that disposables also use cotton, among other things, in the making of their diapers, so the same process applies to disposables as to cloth, only with added processes.  There are toxic gels and plastics involved in creating disposables in order to assure their absorbancy, but at a large cost.  They are also shipped all over the place from factory to manufacturing plant, to store, to customer, etc.  But unlike cloth, the disposable doesn't stop there.  It's only just begun, really.  After your baby's bottom absorbs it's toxic substances and sufficiently irritates the skin, causing everything from an allergic rash to the development of cancer, it moves on to bigger and better things.  Solid waste left in the diaper and tossed away in the trash becomes a bio-hazard when it runs off into streams and rivers.  Plastic used to keep the diaper from leaking now keeps it from ever decomposing as plastic is not biodegradable.  And when you recall the amount of diapers needed per week/month/year, etc, for a single baby alone, you put this into perspective and suddenly understand what a disaster the disposable diaper is.

Even when you factor in cloth diaper services, the cost might be comparable, but the driving to and from local laundering facilities and the use of the facility's water & energy is hardly comparable to that of a disposable diaper, so I wish people would quit using that as an argument against cloth.  From what I understand, diaper service facilities use extremely hot water to sterilize their cloth diapers, not chemicals, and actually use less water than you would laundering them at home, so if you wanted to spend the extra money on the service to save yourself on the "inconvenience" of cloth, it's not a bad deal, in my opinion, and you can still feel good about it since the pick-up & delivery costs (money and environmentally alike) can't be any worse than that of shipping & handling on an Amazon order of disposables or a comparable trip to the store and back to buy them!

And lets not forget the wipes!  A folded stack of wet wash cloths in a tupperware container makes for a fantastic alternate to disposable baby wipes.  In fact, they are even better at doing the job.  First, if you use the terry cloth kind, they are perfect at wiping away sticky poo and messes, and 99% of the time only need one of them.  Secondly, they do not contain anything but water, so there is nothing irritating constantly rubbing against your baby's tender bum.  Then you just wash them right along with the cloth diapers.  Thirdly, again, they are CHEAP!  Here's a little story for you:  When I was a CNA, working for a nursing home/rehab center, I learned one of the biggest costs of running that type of facility was the adult diapers or incontinent pads and wipes.  In order to cut down on costs, the owners decided to eliminate the disposable wipes and re-train the staff to use wash cloths and water.  I figure if a large facility like that concluded the benefits of using wash cloths & water over buying disposable wipes was less costly enough to warrant the big change of procedure, it must have been a considerable amount less!

My daughter is now 18 months old, so I've been using a combination of disposables & cloth diapers for about 15 months!  We used disposables whenever we went out of the house because of the fact that toting around dirty cloth diapers can be a stinker.  But for argument's sake, I did get myself a wet bag and tried it for a while.  I didn't like how it made everything else in my diaper bag smell like pee, and it didn't hold very many at a time, so I begrudgingly went back to using disposables for long outings and trips where we didn't have access to a laundry. I kept the wet bag to hold soiled clothes from the disposable diaper leaks.  I'm sure there are stricter cloth diaper parents who would dispute that, but I'm just telling you what I did. You can make your own decisions.

So, after these 15 months, I can say with complete certainty that cloth diapers are no harder than disposables.  I swear.  Yes, they may take more time when you are washing/folding/assembling them yourself, but when it comes down to it, the best benefits are that cloth diapers are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY cheaper, they NEVER cause a rash, they NEVER leak poop up my baby's back like disposables, and honestly, they make me feel good to use them.  I love all the cute colored pants my daughter gets to wear.  I don't mind the extra time it takes to wash, dry & fold them, because quite frankly, I hardly notice it with all the other baby laundry I'm doing anyway!  And here's my bottom line: cloth diapers are no more difficult to use than disposables.  I have them all pre-assembled and ready to use at the changing table, and can whip them on in the exact same amount of time it takes for me to use a disposable diaper.  Even my husband can do them, and believe it or not, he is quite partial to them as well!

gDiaper (3 months old)

Flip (8 months old)

Grovia (12 months old)

Of course cloth diapers, as disposables, are not all alike.  We have our favorites and we have our hates.  My discovery was that while the old fashioned style pre-fold diapers with stretchy plastic pants are still mainstream, the majority of new generation cloth diapers seem to come in a style called "pocket diapers" which includes a waterproof pant with a pocket that you stuff a cloth "insert" into.  I HATE pocket diapers!  The fact that you must insert the cloth pad into them makes you have to wash the entire freaking thing every time you use it.  What I absolutely LOVE are the less common types that allow you to simply lay the cloth insert into the pant so that when you change the diaper, often (unless it is a really big mess) the only things you have to change is the cloth insert, and then you can reuse the pant again--and often several more times--before having to wash it.  So far, the only cloth diapers I've found in this design are gDiapers, Grovia, and BumGenius Flip diapers (not to be confused with just regular BumGenius diapers--they are pocket style) because you can fit any style of cloth insert, even regular Gerber cloth folds, into the simple covers, and of course reuse the covers multiple times before having to wash.  My favorite kind close by velcro, not snaps, making it a much quicker operation for me, and a more custom fit for baby!  Over the course of my daughter's diapering, we used all of the above mentioned diapers, including a sampling of a few pocket diapers and even old fashioned cloth folds.  The ones I came to like best were gDiapers (they come in multiple sizes, so they were great fits on our tiny baby, and I loved that you could use biodegradable inserts or cloth inserts depending on your needs), and then Grovia (one size diapers that you can adjust into different fits by the use of snaps up the front of the diaper cover.  We ended up using these as she grew because of the fact that they were one size, and we wouldn't have to trade in our old diapers to buy all new ones like you do with gDiapers when your baby grows. The cloth inserts for Grovia are well padded, come curved to fit baby better, and you don't have to fold them.  Plus, they feature snaps on the bottom of the inserts to keep them in the velcro or snap cover--whichever you prefer).

Poo-Poo:

Okay, I figured this part needed a title just to warn you that I'm getting detailed here.  Baby poo is quite the focus in new parenting.  There's no way around it.  Whether you decide to use cloth, disposable or nothing at all, you are going to deal with poo! 

This wasn't one of the pictures we shared after birth!

Discovering the poo on Mommy

Poo comes in all different types, and even changes at different times in your baby's development.  A newborn makes sticky black poo, known as meconium, which they're born with in their digestive tracks.  The moment my daughter was born, she made a poopie on my chest as soon as they placed her in my arms, so I got an immediate introduction to the world of baby poo!  After the meconium is emptied out, breastfed babies will poo yellow runny poo that's kind of seedy looking, and really has no offensive odor.  Though I hear it varies with babies, almost every diaper change in the first 6 months was a poopie diaper!  It was for this reason we went with the diaper choices we did.  Disposables made those early months poopies run up her back and make us have to change her clothes every time.  gDiapers had a pouch that made poopies almost impossible to run up the back, so that was why we preferred them.  However, they did end up getting the inner plasticy pouch messy, so that would have to be changed, and often so did the diaper cover, but at least we weren't changing her clothes along with it!

What we discovered later on was that once she started on solid foods, her poo changed almost immediately!  It was more formed and became more of the stereotypical poo-poo most people think about when they think about poo.  It's a lot more smelly, and depending on what they ate, it changes colors, textures and smells.  I'm sure you get it.  My husband was very disappointed about this change, and longed for the exclusive "breast milk poo" back. So, once that happened, we introduced a new step to cloth diapering: Diaper Liners.  These are wonderful inventions to the land of cloth diapering because they take the biggest gross factor out of changing a poopie diaper.  They are basically thin sheets, similar to a dryer sheet, that you lay over the cloth insert in the diaper that catches the solid poo so that all you have to do is toss/flush the sheet and wash the liner as you normally would! Another great perk is that they are extremely cheap and biodegradable!

Later on, we learned that the further weaned she became from the breast (the least breast milk she consumed), the firmer the poopies became.  This for us, occurred during the toddler months.  This is the time diapers start getting the "loaded" look to them, drooping down and making it appear as though your baby's legs just got a little shorter as they're toddling around in a disposable diaper (not so much in a sturdy cloth diaper, instead, their bum looks a bit bigger).  In addition to large poopies at this stage, changing diapers became a HUGE chore.  She fought it with everything she had, kicking and screaming until finally we were through.  It was during this time, after all that diaper nonsense, when she was about 17 months, that I started researching early potty training, and discovered something referred to as "EC" or "Elimination Communication" in which parents toilet train their babies from birth, therefore eliminating or at least limiting the need for diapers at all!  I wished we had done that, because then our troubles would most likely be over by now, but we can't undo the past.  All we can do is move forward with this knowledge that it can be done.  So, we decided to make a very big decision: to say bye-bye diapers!  Hello potty!!!

Looking Back

These days, it's hard to concentrate on writing a blog (or anything, really) with an infant in the background needing my utmost attention just when I think I have a moment to my thoughts.  WAAAAA!!!! 

I haven't forgotten my childless days of the past.  After all, I had quite a number of them!  I've recently been quite thoughtful of my past and have come to the conclusion that it was a great advantage to my life.  Seriously, I can hardly concentrate on this with my daughter whining and fussing in her crib because she doesn't want to take a nap!  If I hadn't had such an experience as 9 years of infertility, I might not have the patience I have today with my little girl.  So, it is with great wisdom and understanding that I consider my heart-wrenching years of childlessness an advantage in my life now.

The lesson I've learned is invaluable.  Only after my grief has ended have I gained the whole of this lesson.  I used to be so certain that people were only saying such positive things about their hard experiences because they had finally succeeded and didn't remember their grief.  I don't believe that anymore.  My eyes have been opened.  I finally understand.  Suddenly, as the fog fades, I can see everything I blindly waded through behind me.  I understand both sides of the story, mine as well as those around me.  It's sad to think of myself without my daughter Sabina, back when I was crushed, bitter and angry at the whole world, including those I loved.  Describing my feelings was, and still is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do, but at least I myself can understand them much better now.  

The worst part of being struck by infertility grief is having to deal with the public.  And it wasn't really general public that got to me the worst, it was friends and family.  Seeing them all so happy at the announcement of a new pregnancy or birth was soooooooooooooo SOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard to deal with!!!  I wanted to run away and hide.  I didn't want anything to do with them.  I knew that at one point in my previous life I would have been blindly happy for them just as everyone else was, but I couldn't now.  On my bad days (and there were many) I felt compelled to go as far as to lash out at them if they tried to gain my happiness for them.  I mean, I couldn't even be happy for myself, how on earth was I supposed to be happy for them?!

My mom once told me I should be happy for people who get pregnant and have babies because they are proud, and one day I'd be the pregnant one and want other people to be proud of me.  I didn't see that as any good reason to give them the pleasure of ripping my heart out.  I wasn't proud of them, and why should I go through the pain of faking it for their sakes?  I mean, what did they do?  Wash their underwear together to get pregnant?  

How flipping miraculous.  

There's a REAL difference from:

1. having sex and getting pregnant. VS.
2. discovering after a year of having unprotected sex and not getting pregnant that something is wrong with one or both of you, so...
• you see a doctor
• the doctor puts you on medication
• you chart temperatures religiously every morning
• take ovulation tests daily
• get blood draws several times a month to check hormone levels to the point that your veins in your elbows hurt
• have your husband collect semen at home
• then rush immediately to the lab to have it washed
• sit in the gynecologist's waiting room with cup of semen in your hands while you await the next inter-uterine insemination that fails
• so you go home and cry in the bathroom 2 weeks later when your pregnancy test is negative
• then don't know what to do because you don't have anymore money
• so you just go back to trying without medical help, which of course does nothing
• so you see another ob/gyn
• and then a fertility specialist
• you undergo an internal ultrasound where you learn you have polycystic ovarian syndrome
• but your ob/gyn suspects more so you undergo laproscopic surgery and are told you have endometriosis as well, which is why you can't get pregnant, and are told your only hope is IVF, the most expensive fertility treatment there is.
• so finally years later you convince your in-laws to take out a $10K loan so you and your husband can do a single cycle of IVF
• you go through a whole month on an incredibly insane regimen of drugs, injections and hormones that turn your belly purple and sore from bruising
• undergo a painful surgical egg retrieval in which they pull over 20 eggs from your swollen over stimulated follicles.
• undergo an embryo transfer 5 days later where they congratulate you and tell you to think that you're pregnant
• 10 days after that you get a call from the fertility clinic telling you they're sorry but you're not pregnant!!!!!!!  
• cry for an entire day straight
• seriously consider grief counseling to deal with the blow
• consult with fertility doctor about doing a 2nd IVF cycle
• go to urgent care clinic when you think you're having a bad reaction to the medication post IVF and wonder what else can possibly go wrong for you
• begrudgingly take a pregnancy test at the urgent care because the doctor insists
• the nurse informs you that you're pregnant.
• The nurse gives you another pregnancy test for you to do yourself so you can physically see the two lines form before your own eyes.
• Yes, you really are pregnant!

And that's just a summery! So, please try not to compare your 'we got pregnant overnight' story with mine, because we have nothing in common!--except for the fact that I did in fact get pregnant overnight, only it took about 8 years longer than you to achieve.  Honestly though, of course I was proud of my pregnancy and the birth of my daughter, and of course I wanted people to be happy for me, too.  But I still stand behind my pre-pregnancy mentality that you could never have convinced me of being happy for someone else while I was under that deep cloud of depression.  Just try that kind of tactic with anyone experiencing depression and I'm sure you'll be met with severe resistance.  It doesn't matter if it's true.  When you're depressed that much, misery loves company and other people's happiness hurts like a punch in the gut!

My sister in law once told us, when she was just starting trying to have a baby, that she was going to have to undergo some kind of injection therapy for a blood disorder or something and stated that she guessed she was "in the same boat" as us now.  ?!!!??!  As you might imagine, I did not take that well.  I was actually furious that she could even suggest such a notion!  She had no blooming idea what it was like in our boat!!  In what way did a few injections compare to the years of termoial we had gone through?! It literally infuriated me when like a second later she announced her pregnancy!  Of course, is all I could think.  It kind of surprised me that I had secretly hoped she would have fertility troubles just so I could have someone in the family who understood me.  But I had to grieve that loss as well when her injections turned out to be a mere hicup in her quick jaunt to pregnancy.  It had already been a hard long road for us, and we still had 6 more years to go at that point before we'd reach the end.  I don't know what I would've done had I known that then how long it would be.  What I realize now is that my sister in law honestly didn't know just how bad it was--nobody did, and they almost all told me after I had my baby just how hard it was on them to know how much we wanted to have a family and how they didn't know what to say to us.  She was just trying to say something that would help us feel better, I know, and she didn't know it was the wrong thing to say, or that pretty much anything you could say to us at the time would be the wrong thing to say!

I am actually having a tough time realizing that I'm not considered "infertile" anymore.  I know I'm a mom, and have definitely made that transision in my mind (rather abruptly, I might add) but I carry the weight of infertility like a proud battle scar.  It's a part of who I am now, and I am trying to adjust to that fact.  I still to this day get flair-ups of my infertility whenever I see pregnant women or women with babies or loads of children.  It's just automatic to assume she probably didn't think twice about conceiving those kids, and it irritates me.  I'm definitely getting better about it, but it's still there.  What I've found is that I can now finally appreciate the love that a parent has for their child.  Like how precious they really are, how sweet and adorable the things they do and say can be to a parent.  I totally love babies!  They are so stinking cute, and so completely and miraculously amazing--every single one (okay, almost).  I was just unable to see them before because of how much pain they brought me just to look at them.  It's the parents where I find I still have trouble with accepting without any underlying resentment.   

So, I still have some work to do before I'm completely "healed" of my pain, but quite honestly, I'm rather surprised at how quickly I've recovered to the extent that I have already.  It's amazing what a little bundle of joy can do to one's psyche.  I've discovered that the very label "bundle of joy" has a deeper meaning than it used to.  Finally, I'm becoming more normal. But my battle scars?  My infertility wounds are my life lessons, and I know I'll never let them go.  It took me a while to realize this, that they won't be forgotten, just the way I think of them changes.