lessons learned...

Tonight, I put the kids to bed and felt ambitious enough (OK disgusted enough) to clean out the pantry. I was sorting through my piles of cookbooks and came across this.

I'm not sure how this book made it into our new home without me unpacking it, but I swear I haven't seen it for years. Holding this book I owned in a previous life brought back so many feelings, I just couldn't go to sleep without some catharsis.

I don't have anything against Fern Reiss. She is some kind of expert in nutrition and how it relates to fertility. But, years ago (when I cared about this kind of thing), it only took me three recipes and one chapter before I realized her book was exactly what I did NOT need to be reading.

When you are trying to get pregnant or trying to stay pregnant, it's so easy to fall into the trap of "I should have done this..." and "I shouldn't have done that"! It seems trite, but in the moment you actually think "I knew that bath was too hot", or "I forgot my prenatal vitamin that one night" or "I was too stressed out" or "I've been working too hard". And even more self destructive, "What life lesson have I not learned?" or "What spiritual gift have I not acquired?".

These topics are not covered in detail in "The Infertility Diet: Get Pregnant and Prevent Miscarriage". But the sheer volume of foods to eat and foods not to eat and in what quantities and which trimester would require years of indoctrination to remember and actually apply to real life. And learning the diet is just the tip of the guilt iceberg! Do I really want to worry about whether those gingersnaps I ate in my 4th week caused my pregnancy to fail, or that if only I would have sucked on more raw garlic and eaten more yams and almonds, I might have made it further along? Do I really want to bother to take 1 tsp of Robitussin three times a day on days 5-9 of my menstrual cycle to thin my cervical fluid? Do I actually want to turn off my night lights and alarm clocks (as one study has linked artificial night illumination to miscarriage)! Honestly? And do I really want to make my husband do the "Infertility Diet" with me? No I say! The poor husbands of hormonal, baby hungry, infertile, crying women have enough to deal with! I remember reading this marathon of instructions and wondering when Ashton Kutcher was going to jump through a door of my house, laughing and pointing cameras in my direction. I would, of course, upon seeing Ashton, spurt off a stream of vulgar obscenities, and eventually laugh and admit to the world how much smarter Ashton Kutcher is than the rest of us, for getting me to believe such nonsense was real. The Ashton reference might be an unnecessary sidebar on fertility, but seriously, this is what we are telling the women of the world who are dealing with this profoundly difficult personal tragedy! This is the best we can do!

Never mind, that I inject Heparin into my belly twice a day. Never mind that I am seeing one of the best Recurrent Miscarriage Specialists in the world. Never mind that I have a healthy weight, and eat right, and take care of myself. Never mind that I have a loving a supportive husband and family, and a Heavenly Father who loves me personally and is aware of my struggles. It must be that I had some Gouda cheese (which is forbidden), and ate too little alfalfa to have a baby!

The book argues that the empowerment offered by taking an active role in fertility challenges through nutrition might actually improve fertility. I would argue that, the small number of women whose fertility might benefit from drastic nutritional changes, is greatly outweighed by the near certainty of placing unwarranted culpability in the hands of women whose lives are on a path they did not expect, and who can do very little if anything, to change that path.

It's not that this subject is one that keeps me awake at night these days. I came to accept, a long time ago, that God had a different plan for my family and my life, than I realized. I would never change ANYTHING in my history, even with all it's gynecological garbage, because it led to the greatest blessings of my life. I am a mother of three, beautiful adopted children who were meant to be mine. I am beyond blessed.

It's just that, even though (thankfully) I am on the other side of that journey, I remember. I remember what it's like to feel that your dream will never be realized, and wishing there was something you could do, or say, or read, or try, or eat or think that would change things. And there usually ISN'T. The only thing you can control in your life is how you respond to the challenges, difficulties, surprises, blessings, heartaches, joys, people and circumstances that come your way. That is it! It's hard to be patient in the middle of a life consuming struggle, but what other choice do we have? It takes faith to admit that sometimes, although we are doing all we can, we still can't change our circumstances. Sometimes, we have to trust in God's plan for us and ride out the storm with as much grace as we can muster. I wish I could go back and tell my twenty-something year old self that! I could have saved myself from a lot of drama, and saved Dave from many gray hairs and sleepless nights.

Look at me, getting older and wiser too.