A Medal in My Bra

Each month I run a local peer support group for RESOLVE.    Someone recently asked me why I continue to run the group, almost 3 years later.  What do I get from it?  Call it a personal form of therapy, call it what keeps me humble and able to appreciate all the good that has come into my life.  Call it a mission – I love to put people in touch with others – to help create life bonding moments.

Each month, for better for for worse,  I am given the opportunity to remember the many, many, moments that loosely define my personal struggle to build a family.

Some are good memories, like the monthly breakfasts with my good friend, as we bitched and whined our way though eggs and bacon.  I get to fondly remember my husband proclaming himself the ‘Ass-Master,’ a nickname in honor of his ability to deliver my intermuscular progeterone in oil shots without a bruise to my backside.  I remeber the thrill (odd word choice, but others who have been there will understand) of our first transfer and carefully trying not to pee out the embryo.  I smile, almost secretly, at the hope that I felt walking out of a meeting with our adoption agency director.  Frustrating moments abound.  It seems like only yesterday I was waiting for a nurse to call with my HSG levels.  And  don’t even get me started on listening to the co-worker inform the office she is pregant – again – and this time they didn’t even plan it.  And can anyone please tell me why the clinic never seems to have my file on hand when I show up for an appointment!

Some memories I have all but pushed out of my head because they take up to much energy to revisit them:  a hard night spent crying so that the blood vessels burst under my eyes, hours curled up under a blanket, wishing for more than the miserable existance of living in this infertility fog, walking around the track thinking up baby names and wishing for a miracle as life passed me by, losing our baby to a miscarriage early in the pregnancy.  That one still brings tears to my eyes. To be sure, my husband, a handful of close friends, tons of peaut M&Ms, and the occassional glass of wine got me through some of the worst times in my life.  In my efforts to become pregnant, I  have tried most of the traditonal and downright bizzare methods known.  Anyone else would have done the same.  I recently came across a journal entry from that time and thought it would be appropriate to share.

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How did I go from being a fun-loving, relatively intelligent Jewish woman to wearing a St. Gerard medal in my bra?  St. Gerard, in the Catholic religion, is the patron saint of expectant mothers.  This fact comforted me as I slipped the blessed medal underneath my shirt.  Immediately, little nagging voices started to fill my mind.  “Maybe you should put the medal on a chain and wear it around your neck instead?”  I pondered this as I walked over to the refrigerator to grab a handful of M&Ms, my favorite staple these days.  The medal fell out of my bra and I bent to quickly retrieve it from my dog’s waiting jaws.  I shoved it back inside, this time in the space right between my breasts.  The dog went back to sniffing the floor.  “You are crazy, this won’t work.”  I sat down at the kitchen table and reviewed the card, a lovely sentiment from my friend that had arrived in today’s mail.  My friend Ellen is a religious person.  I had recently shared with her the devastating news of my miscarriage this past winter.  She indicated in her card that some years ago, she had given a St. Gerard medal to a former co-worker who had suffered several miscarriages.  The woman wore the medal in her bra, to keep it close to her heart.  After one year, she conceived a healthy boy.  “We aren’t Catholic,” my voices insisted.  I adjusted the medal with the full knowledge that I had done many strange things during the past 2 ½ years in my struggle with infertility.  As I saw it, wearing the medal in my bra met the basic criteria of where I was at in my journey, mentally and physically:  it didn’t cost any money, cause me any bodily harm, and didn’t require getting up at the crack of dawn.  “Harmless,” I thought, as I shoved more M & Ms into my mouth.  “Besides.” the voices continued, “this may just be the thing that works.”