The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is one of the holiest spaces in the city. The site is where the Temple once stood before it was destroyed. The largest accessible portion of the retaining wall that enclosed the Temple Mount is the Western Wall. That's probably the space that immediately jumped to mind when I mentioned Jerusalem--that large stone wall where people go to pray. On the southern portion of the Temple Mount, you can see the Hulda Gates.

Infertility blogs are a hot topic du jour with articles popping up everywhere from the New York Times to the technology journal, The New Atlantis. Though it begs the question: are infertility blogs a growing force or are we so well-organized that it's easy for an outsider to chart our community growth and outreach?

Prior to having her gallbladder out during pregnancy, Allison's daily readership was about 35 people per day. During bedrest, it shot up to between 110-150 hits per day and remained that way through the birth of the twins and her son's neonatal death. The day before her daughter, Zoë died, she had 176 hits. The day her daughter died, she had 253 hits. And the day after her daughter died, once news got around the Internet, she hit 2349 unique visitors.

Several press releases later and the world is no closer to learning the truth behind Aliza Shvarts's senior project but frankly, it only holds my interest by this point as a jumping board to discussing terminology. Regardless of what she intended to do, she never had a miscarriage.

The excellent Suzanne Reisman kicked off the Letter to My Body project and now I get to carry the torch forward and invite you to write a letter to your body while reflecting backwards on the letters that have already been written.

Some people enjoy keeping book reading a solitary activity, but I've always been more of the book club sort. I don't like reading in a vacuum. I want to hear what everyone else thought and how they processed the same words.

Unfortunately, my bright orange and happy icon deeply clashes with what I need to write. On the day that Heath Ledger died, I had been spending the afternoon reading through the stillbirth and neonatal death blogs on my sidebar. Not, perhaps, how some people choose to spend their afternoon, but they are important stories to read. Not just to understand what another person is going through, but because the burden of being the sole keeper of someone's existence is a terrible weight and reading the story helps another person know that they're not alone in remembering their child.

If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck then the saying goes that it's probably a duck. But what do you do when trusted infertility organizations are duped by a wolf in a duck costume? Or a duck-wolf hybrid? Or...since this analogy is falling apart since there is nothing duck-like about sensationalism, what do you do when producers from the Tyra Banks Show deceive major infertility organizations and potential interviewees alike in an effort to elicit tears and boost ratings in our schadenfreude-like culture?

It seems a tad strange to begin a new column in medias res as if I've been blogging on BlogHer for years and this post is just like every other post. Sort of like walking into a stranger's house and taking a place at the table and digging into the mashed potatoes without so much as a door knock. So before I start eating your dinner, let me introduce myself as Melissa, the author of Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters, and the new contributing editor for infertility and pregnancy loss. And now we can jump right into the salad course.

You don't understand, so let me explain. We thought we'd be able to have children and then we couldn't. It wasn't a choice to enter into treatments/adoption/donor gametes; it wasn't an option. Having a child may feel like a choice to you, but it isn't to us. You and I will need to disagree on that, because you'll never change our feelings about having a family be a need over a want. When we're cycling--whether we're trying naturally, doing minimally invasive treatments, or doing invasive procedures--I am riding on a roller coaster of emotions. I am angry. I cry a lot. I am frustrated. I am told one thing and another happens. No one can give me straight answers. No one can make real promises. We pay A LOT of money for the chance to have a child. This money does not guarantee that we will have a child at the end of the day. Read More...