Chapter Two

I had a good conversation tonight with a friend who I met online when we were both engaged and planning on weddings a month apart. When she went through her infertility journey, I still had no idea we would end up with so much in common, but it has been so good to have her around to talk to when I feel like I'm starting to bother people with "oh, that again."

Tonight's conversation started when I read Mel's IComLeavWe post. I've thought a lot about starting to get back into the world of IF after trying to be relatively scarce for a year, and the post added fuel to the fire. I don't have a lot of infertility bloggers on my reading list, and the ones that I do have have mostly become parents and slowed way down on their posting, so I am a little behind. But being a part of ICLW means I'd have to post more, which led to my chat with E.

What do people want to read when they search for infertility blogs? Do they only want the meaty bits? Do they only want to know how the retrieval went, or how much the last injection hurt? Or do they want to read all the pieces in between - after the initial grief and shock evens out into life; the way that someone fits such a world-changing situation into the rest of their world? I imagine that a post about what one had for breakfast that doesn't speak about how it ties into their fertility diet is not a bad thing.

The infertility blogs that I read, the ones where the bloggers are becoming parents, write about almost the same thing. "Do I delete my blog now that I am moving into a new stage of my life? Should I just rename it? What will happen to my readers?" I was comparing myself to them, but really, our journeys don't end with a failed cycle any more than they end with a baby. This blog is for me. So I can look back at what happened when I was in my early thirties and remember. So that I can type out my frustrations or my happinesses. And I suppose this blog is also for readers. So the people I know in real life can see how I'm doing. So that people who are going through the same things I went through last year or the same things I'm going through now can feel like they're not alone.

So here's the deal. I will try to make this more a part of my life again. I will join IComLeavWe. I will seek out new blogs to read and friends to connect with. I won't just write a post when I have news about an appointment or just when it has something to do with infertility. Just know that every step I take comes from that place, and the mere fact that it's my life means that it's a part of my infertility story. Chapter 2: My Life Between Treatments.