We realize that not everyone decides to be a parent and gets pregnant and gives birth, quickly and in just that order. We are particularly partial to the experience of struggle on the road to parenthood, as we are no stranger to strife and loss around the TucsonMama homestead. We hope to provide discussion of and support for all aspects of parenting, including its pursuit. We will be including essays on infertility and adoption, and invite you to comment. Tell us what you’d like to learn more about, what topics you think need more public discussion.

On a first-person-singular note: Remember in “Raising Arizona” when Hi describes Edwina’s insides as “a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase”? That’s me. It’s particularly strange and surprisingly difficult to lauch a site called “TucsonMama”, given my history of infertility and recurrent miscarriage. It seems fraudulent sometimes, or mean-spirited. What about all the woman who want to be called “mama” but aren’t there yet? It feels peculiar having a web site that in some ways excludes a population that I still feel a part of. I don’t know what the answer is. I guess what I want to say is that for me, being a mama isn’t something I take for granted. Here is something I wrote a year and a half ago, when I was finally having a healthy pregnancy, one that resulted in the birth of our son.

It feels so strange, yet exactly as wonderful as I imagined, to walk around looking pregnant. I’m not being beamed at, from what I can tell, but that may be because I don’t make eye contact with people. I don’t look at the ground, more like straight ahead.

I feel so, so, so lucky to be the pregnant person that I’d envied for so long. To be getting so close to having this real actual baby.

And I feel so sad and scared for the “me”s walking around, the me of last summer, who’d cross the street to avoid a belly. So I don’t look in anyone’s eyes, because I don’t want to force anyone to look at me. I know that I’m projecting, that 99% of people walking around really don’t even care or possibly notice that I’m pregnant. But for the 1%, the infertile or miscarrying “me” walking around, I want to hide myself.

I at least want a t-shirt stretched over my pregnant belly that says “I’m Infertile”, or “Ask Me About My Blighted Ovum!!”, or “Hab-Abs Unite”, something that tells people that this wasn’t an easily achieved state, that I don’t take it for granted, and that I’m not a smug fertile.

I had only a couple of friends who’d had miscarriages, so even though I know that it’s statistically not uncommon, I felt like something was very wrong. The secrecy around pregnancy loss makes it that much more painful when it happens to you. So I make a point of being very open about my struggles to get and stay pregnant.

How about you? Anyone else had a hard time of it? How much information about your difficulties do you share?