Thanks

My wife subscribes to a veritable crapload of magazines. I'm talking about all the "majors", like People, US Weekly, Town & Country, InStyle, Lucky, and Vogue, as well as some of the lesser know "minors", like Shop, Parent, Child, and some fucked up little mag called "Cookie". Oh, and then throw in about 2,000 catalogs that always seem to get thrown out before I can buy anything stupid. "Battery operated meat thermometer, anyone? How about a complete outdoor weather station?" Not surprisingly, the catalogs that I would never buy from seem to linger around the house forever. As I write this, my beer is using the July 2006 Country Curtains catalog as a coaster.

Anyway, I snuck home from work a little early today, and found myself lying on the couch with the Buggins who was wandering off into various rooms and bringing me back assorted treasures. Picture frames, a book about sailing, a random lego piece, and a wad of toilet paper she had kindly ripped off the role and took the time to dunk in the toilet before presenting to me. Needless to say, I react to each gift like it was the Hope Diamond.

I point all this out because one of the things Buggins brought to me was this magazine called "Cookie". I thought it was some crazy cooking magazine, but it turned out it was some kind of "family" magazine. So I flipped it open, and came across an article called Second Shot, which was all about Secondary Infertility. So I read it. Really, really interesting, and it validated alot of the feelings my wife and I have had about this process. There was alot of talk about how primary infertile people tend not to be able to feel any compassion for secondary infertiles, despite the fact that the feelings of loss and sadness are, psychologically, pretty much identicle in either situation. (Are you reading this, Maggie?) .

The article goes on to say that in some cases, there is one element of secondary infertility that is much worse than primary: this inability to find compassion. The inability to find anyone to validate the feelings of sadness, and loss. Most people think "Well, you've got one already...what are you complaining about?". That's right up there with "Just relax...it'll happen." It's dismissive. And it's infuriating.

The reason for my post, though, is to say that through blogging, and through this community, I don't feel any lack of compassion at all. In fact, I feel an abundance of it. You all have shared your experiences, and your wisdom, and your pain, and your joy, and it has helped us tremendously in finding our way through our own journey. M and I are very lucky to have this support and compassion from you. Honestly, just since we made contact with this little club, we have become much happier and much more understanding with eachother. That has had a profound impact on our lives.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.