Life on the Bathroom Floor---Part One of the Empty Nest

I remember, many years ago discovering a book by Geneen Roth with a great title---"When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair." Well, that is sort of what I am doing. As I lie on the bathroom floor, I brought my laptop computer with me, I read your lovely emails that made me cry---in a very good way. Your lovely outpouring made me stop saying silly things like "I hate everybody and everything." You will be happy to know that you all are named out loud in the category of the few good things in my life that do not suck. In a crisis, and most definitely while on fertility drugs, I am prone to cognitive distortions such as globalizing, generalising and awfulising. Your kind emails made me abandon those cognitive distortions---at least temporarily.

Once my beloved He-weasel saw I was nesting. (Oh---must edit--most definitely not nesting. I hate nests. I hate birds. I hate frickin eggs and even frickin chickens. Screw you, down jacket, down pillows and down blanket---all of you so smugly nesty and maternal). When he saw that I seemed unable to get up off the tile floor---my man weasel brought me my pink Korean Velux blanket, a large bottle of water, and cups of tea that I frequently failed to drink. He kept me in fresh boxes of Kleenex and frequently offered hugs that when I had the emotional energy to accept---induced even greater and louder sobs. My capacity for language reduced to the Five "W's" of journalism, with "why?" being the favorite word of the day.

He even tried to tempt me by offering to make me a Tarte au Tartin from scratch. This is a man who cannot usually make canned soup. When he realised he didn't have all the ingredients to make me a french apple cake--nor the requisite ice cream to go with it--he headed off to the market and stocked up on all the foods that might resuscitate my life urge and allow me to eat again. He got me the trinity of temptations,Duncan Heinz brownie mix,( which I can smell baking now), Odwalla carrot juice and Brie cheese. All of these gestures were an attempt to get me out of the bathroom and into the living room. There is no doubt that my weasel man loves me.

As I lay on the floor, I knew I didn't have it in me to write anything for today.So, I looked for some poetry by Rimbaud, to serve a poetic pitch hitter. He is French and certainly knew a good bit about grief. I felt he could more elegantly articulate my grief as mine has taken on the temporary tone of a temper-tantruming toddler. Oh, no! I brought up children again. Good thing my laptop is waterproof.

After perusing some of his poems---I thought the tone of them was a little too dark. I just didn't want to put you through it. He does, however, adequately represent the feelings that come when one is leveled to the bathroom floor in many of his poems in "Une Saison en Enfer."

So, I started to search for a picture of a sad Parisian to post in lieu of writing. I didn't find much---just some sad looking clowns. I then started to look for "French+baby." I am not sure what the motivation for that masochism was---but I can tell you the results, "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-wah-wah-wah-sob-sob-sniff-sniff!"

I found the picture of the French baby, pictured above, and the article it illustrated, about the French baby boom, entitled, "And, many more to come"by Marie Hawksby on The Paris Times.com. Let me share a little of the article with you, and I quote:

....France is now probably (all figures are not available yet) the most fertile nation in Europe, where the average stands at just 1.5 children per female. Even though the country’s birth rate fells short of the “ideal” 2.1 children per woman (the rate which assures that the number of births equals the number of deaths in a country), France’s reproducing capacities are the envy of other nations. Only Ireland, Norway and Sweden come close. On the other hand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Eastern European countries fall well short of the European average, reporting “baby blues” instead. " The article goes on to ask, "So why is the bump the latest fashion accessory for French women?" .....

Do you hear something? Yes, you did. That sound you heard was me pounding my skull against the bathroom wall. I, a devoted Francophile, am not only deprived of the joys of motherhood---but, now I am missing out on the latest French fashion accessory to boot.

But wait, it gets worse when the article attempts to explain the new mode of the maternal.

"With women juggling careers and motherhood, the boom has been generated by the over 30’s who are responsible for 52.8 percent of recorded births. France’s mature mothers are starting a family after completing lengthy studies and launching their careers. Not just content with one baby, they will go on to have 2 or 3 after a delayed start."

That is my demographic. Those are my people. I am the mature mother---or I would have been. C'est moi. I am that over 30 woman who completed lengthy studies and launched a career only to find my way into the reproductive endocrinologists office after the at home methods were proving powerless. And, I just wanted one. And, the French women are having two to three!!!! Today, I am not loving the French women. Today my sympathies lie with the ladies in the baby blue belt. Today I am feeling more like a Eastern European than a Francophile.

I yelled to my Man-weasel, who was in the kitchen peeling apples, about the French baby boom and he loudly wondered, three rooms away, if maybe the unpasteurised cheese had anything to do with it. I thought it probably had more to do with the stress free infertility treatment---i.e. French socialised medicine covers infertility treatment. While we had to pay for almost all of our treatment out of pocket. Drugs alone for one round was on average $5000-7000. That stress has to have an impact on success. All this reading was making me feel more stressed and ooh-la-lousy!

I ate the warm and delicious brownie and wondered if, maybe, I was just in the wrong country. Maybe, if I had been in France---maybe, I would have gotten pregnant. I think I have just reached a new level of cognitive distortion. If I only could believe, I tell you with no exaggeration, I would be on the next plane to Paris. Sadly, my belief is all gone.

Hmm, wondering now if Rimbaud might have been more uplifting. Here's what Rimbaud might have said instead:

"O God-- the clock of life stopped but a moment ago. I am no longer within the world. --Theology is accurate; hell is certainly down below-- and heaven is up on high. Ecstasy, nightmare, sleep, in a nest of flames." Oh, no---not the frickin nest again! I hate frickin nests.