Barren Bitches Book Tour #7: Happiness Sold Separately, by Lolly Winston (Group B)

#1. On pages 51-52, Elinor discusses her abortion experience. She says choices are a fairytale and that she had always been pro-choice but now realized she had no choice. Has your stance on abortion changed at all since you began suffering from infertility?

Since I learned the difference between pro-life and pro-choice, I have always supported a woman’s right to control her reproductive destiny. As we considered our options down the road – ART versus adoption – I tended to lean more toward the adoption route. While I thought my beliefs on abortion might change the further we walked down the adoption path, they never did.

I remain steadfast that no one has the right to tell anyone what they should so with their body. The way my logic sees it, you if allow one to meddle in a women’s right to end her pregnancy, then we also have to put up with meddling in all sorts of other reproductive capacities, from donor eggs, freezing, donor sperm, surrogates, etc. And that kind of meddling, in my opinion, will lead us back to the dark ages.

#4. One of the parts of the book that brought me to tears was when the oak tree that Elinor loves is chopped down. The tree had become a solid source of support for her, something that gave her comfort following the failure of fertility treatment and the separation with her husband, so its loss was devastating. Have you found something inanimate that has provided you with such support? What happened (or what would happen) when you lost that support?

I loved this question because I almost cried, too, when the Elinor’s oak tree is chopped down. We have a lovely old black walnut tree in the park right behind our house. It shades our house in the summer and has grown wide branches that obscure our backyard and porch from the park’s playground. (As you can imagine, I sometimes get sad looking at the playground).

When they were building the park, I used to have nightmares that I would come home from work and find the tree gone. I would not love my house so much if that tree were not there.

A few weeks ago, my husband trimmed back the tree’s lower branches in preparation for winter. We get big wind storms off the Pacific Ocean in the fall and the branches often break off, hitting our windows. This season, however, he trimmed them back so far that I can see the playground and the other houses across the park. Upon seeing this, I nearly went into a rage. He thought I was being a possessed bitch (and probably with good reason) but I felt so exposed with those branches gone. I still miss them and wish they would grow back quickly. I could not imagine how depressed I would be if the entire tree, like Elinor’s, was gone too.

Now that I have almost gotten over the branch-removal-episode, I must admit that it is fun to watch the squirrels jump from our fence to the now-higher branches. Quite the little athletes they are.

5. At the very close of the book, having discovered her balanced translocation, Elinor likens herself to a screwed up silverware drawer. "Yet there's solace in discovering something is tangibly wrong. A diagnosis rather than you're old" Have you ever felt like this? Do you have a diagnosis for your fertility problems? Was it a relief? If your problem is unidentified, or age is against you, do you wish that you did have a reason?

After my second miscarriage, I had the recurrent pregnancy loss panel done. Mercifully, my doctors generally begin testing after two miscarriages. I vividly remember the first day at the RE’s office. I felt a little giddy because I thought they would find something (a HA!), I would just take a magic pill and viola! baby. Turns out it never is that simple, is it? And even when you do have something tangibly diagnosed – as I know from reading these blogs – the path from diagnosis is often a tough road, too.

I was both relieved and pissed to find out that nothing was really wrong except for my age (I am in my late 30’s but my FSH was in the normal range) and that my progesterone was low. The well-your-age-is-a-factor was the toughest pill to swallow. I blamed myself for waiting. My husband for wanting to wait. And sat by dumbfounded as friend after friend – not to mention celebrities – in their late 30’s and beyond got pregnant with little problem.

I am newly pregnant again. And while I am on 600mg of prometrium a day, my progesterone has hovered around 26 for my entire pregnancy thus far. I can’t help but believe that my low progesterone levels (no matter what the differing studies say) may have complicated my earlier pregnancies when I wasn’t getting any progesterone support. If this one makes it, I will be so relieved. I will try not to be bitter about the other ones and be thankful for what I have, but I will always wonder…

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Like what you read here and are intrigued to see what other's thought about Happiness Sold Separately? Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/.

You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.