Bookstores and IF Books

Howdy everyone!

I'm a big reader and my DH and I are obsessed with bookstores.  When we were in Boulder last week, we went to an AWESOME one -- the very cleverly named "Boulder Book Store."  It's in a really cool, old building in Boulder.  All sorts of hallways and hidden rooms and floors. One section of it is an old ballroom.  I wish we'd had more time to wander around.  It was great.  I think I'd live there if I could.

Anyway, I don't know about you, but whenever I'm in a bookstore I always head to their "fertility/infertility" section and check out their collection.  Sometimes I roll my eyes at "How to get pregnant" or "Eating for Fertility" or "Maximize your fertility in five easy steps!"  (Or, the most obnoxious "How to choose your baby's gender!")  After two years of this I've bought/skimmed enough of those and get really bored and sometimes angry with it all.  And, after a year of being "officially" infertile, I've pretty much abandoned reading the "how medical intervention can help" books, too.  I mean, between my doctors and Dr. Google and all of you guys, I feel like I could write them. (I do enjoy going to a used bookstore and finding a book from the 70s or 80s about infertility, though.  Makes me feel so much better to know how much more hope we have now.)

It was interesting when this change happened -- when I first started buying books I always thought "oh, I shouldn't waste my money on this 'how to get pregnant' book.  I'm sure I'll be pregnant this month and it will be a waste."  Now I just assume I won't.  My tiny town doesn't have a bookstore with a good selection (and besides, I know everyone there). So, I've bought most of my TTC/IF books at a bookstore near my DH's hometown that we visit every few months.  I realized the other day that the same lady has waited on me for every purchase.  I wonder if she's noticed my progression from pre-TTC optimistic "pregnancy for dummies" to month three hopeful "taking charge of your fertility" to month twelve desperate "why haven't I gotten pregnant, yet?" to month twenty cautiously ecstatic "what to expect when you're expecting" to month twenty-two depressing "how to deal with a miscarriage" over the past two years?

Anyway, I've given up on the "how to have a kid" books and am more interested in the "how to deal with how much this sucks" books.  A lot of stores don't seem to carry many of this variety.  Usually the ones that do are the stores that have also realized that it would be best not to put the IF section right next to the "woohoo you're pregnant, doesn't pregnancy bite ass?" section.  I imagine that these may be the ones that have someone in purchasing who is one of us. 

The Boulder Book Store?  One of those awesome stores.  A large selection of books.  One of which I'd never seen before:  Good Eggs:  A Memoir by Phoebe Potts.  (Not to be confused with A Few Good Eggs which was OK but spent the entire book telling me not to blame myself for my infertility and then went on and on about how it was my fault for waiting so long to have kids.  I finished it more depressed than I started.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, Good Eggs.  I opened it up, expecting to see page after page of the standard "here are the IF treatments I went through," "here is what you can expect," etc.  Instead, I saw pictures!  It is a wonderfully drawn graphic memoir (think graphic novel).  I sat down and started reading and realized that I had to have this book.  (I'm generally pretty cheap when it comes to book-buying -- very rarely do I buy a hardback book (or much of anything for that matter) that isn't in the clearance aisle.)


I loved this book.  I made myself stop reading it occasionally so I could savor it.  I pored over the images.  It isn't just about her infertility journey -- it is about her journey through depression, becoming an adult, working with underprivileged kids, finding her Jewish identity, finding her husband, dealing with her family.  I'm reading it again, now, because it went too quickly and I want to find any detail I missed.

I highly recommend this book!! It's funny, it's poignant, it's sad, it's happy.  I laughed, I cried.  (It was better than Cats, I'd see it again and again?)  I nodded along.  I identified with so much of it.

(Does it help that her drawings of herself look exactly like me?  Yeah, it does.)

Have any of you read this?  It just came out a month ago.  Do you have any other "man, IF sucks, but here's how I survived and why I'm a better person now" books that you've enjoyed?  I found one at a used book store a few months ago that I liked:  Crossing the Moon by Paulette Bates Alden.  Another story that combines her infertility journey with her personal journey to becoming who she is.

It helps me so much to read about women who have come out on the other side (with or without a baby) better for having been through the hell that is IF.