The Stirrup Queen's Holiday Survival Guide

Melissa Ford — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:37:05 -0600

We should talk about this now because the Christmas decorations were in CVS even before the Halloween candy went to half price and Thanksgiving menus were being sketched out this week while electoral votes were being counted. Welcome to the lead up to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years--or a little time period I like to call the Infertility Minefield Trifecta.

Three holidays in quick succession all focusing on family, babies, and time--the salt in the open wound of infertility, where we are desperately trying to get a respite from thinking about family building, babies, and the passing of time. It's not like you can ignore the holidays--not with the constant barrage of commercials featuring people in turkey costumes, houses draped in sparkle lights, and renditions of "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" coming over the loudspeaker (always sung by a choir of children so you get that extra knife in the heart while you try to navigate the clogged aisles at your local food store). Your options are either to hide out, alienate your friends and family, or fake it until you make it (or to legitimately have no problem with this time period in which you should probably click away from this survival guide).

I'm going to recommend going with the Fake It Until You Make It route and have compiled this handy guide of ideas to help you keep grinning and nodding while your Aunt Jane asks you once again when you're going to start having children:

Create your own incentives and treat getting through the holiday season as your job. Pay yourself in whatever will make you happy. For instance, after a trip to the local mall to have your picture taken with your niece and Santa, pay yourself with a manicure. Attending the holiday party from hell may win you an entire bar of chocolate. It's worth setting up small incentives and budgeting for your own happiness because it can be something to focus on during the task at hand.
You know the idea that you can take a large school and make it small but you can't go the other way around? Flip that concept when it comes to the holidays: take a small part of the holiday and make it big. Focus on something that you can do and make it your contribution to the holiday season. If you know celebrating Christmas will be too much, make sure you throw yourself wholeheartedly into helping prepare Thanksgiving (and then develop an unfortunate case of the stomach flu on December 24th). If you can organize the family gift but can't fathom how you'll do Christmas dinner, make sure you send out an email to your siblings early asking for photos of your nieces and nephews so you can design a great picture calendar for your parents. And then skip the ham.
Do all your shopping online instead of subjecting yourself to walking past the displays of toys and Christmas baby clothes at the store. Keep it simple this year--you have a lifetime to plot out the most fantastic gifts of all time. This may be the year that you need to buy a DVD or book for each person your list and be done.
Leave a note in your pocket: write a note to yourself, ask a friend to jot something down, trade letters with your partner, or simply leave a list of names (therapist, fellow bloggers, the friend you'll drink with the moment you get home) in your pocket to touch as a reminder that someone has your back when you begin to feel overwhelmed at the holiday table. I can't be with you at your Christmas dinner (the whole Jew and vegetarian thing aside, I just don't think your family is going to be cool if you drag along a random infertility blogger), but I can give you a note right now to keep in your pocket. Simply print this out and whenever you get overwhelmed, touch it and remember that there are people out there who get you. And change the line about mini hot dogs if you're a vegetarian:

Hey Sweetie:

I know it was really hard to come to this party/dinner/get together but now that you're here, you're even closer to it being over. Try to enjoy yourself, but if you can't, nip into the bathroom for a cry or bury yourself at the buffet table and do nothing but eat mini hot dogs for the rest of the night. There is no shame in enduring rather than enjoying and you need to do whatever you need to do to get through this without ruining any relationships. Make sure you take time for yourself today/tonight after you get home. I'm here on the other end of the computer if you need me.

Love,
Mel

Pick and Choose: there is no rule that says you must attend every event during the holiday season--even if you've gone to everything in the past. If it's going to cause more grief than its worth, just attend the event. But if you can get your partner to "surprise" you with a holiday trip, all the better.

Just to let you know that you're not alone, other bloggers have lamented the holiday season now and in the past:

The Baby Chase decided to skip Christmas this year. She wrote: "We told J’s mom about our decision to bail on Christmas, and she was astonishingly cool about it...She’s obviously disappointed, and was relieved by our repeated assurances that this was not going to be a regular thing, but that we just needed to break this negative cycle."

Just Crazy Enough to Try wrote the best Christmas letter of all time last year.

Barren Babe wrote about dreading the holidays last year: "I am really not looking forward visiting. Especially the in-laws, my mother-in-law (MIL) specifically. She knows our struggles with infertility, and yet it's like she has selective amnesia."

What tricks do you have up your sleeve to get you through the holiday season?

Melissa is the author of the infertility and pregnancy loss blog, Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters. She keeps a categorized blogroll of more than 1500 infertility blogs and writes the daily Lost and Found and Connections Abound, a news source for the infertility blogosphere. Her infertility book, Navigating the Land of If, is forthcoming from Seal Press in Spring 2009. She is also an editor at Bridges, the awareness consortium, and the keeper of the IComLeavWe list (International Comment Leaving Week) which is currently open for the month of November. Join along--don't you love comments?

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The Stirrup Queen's Holiday Survival Guide