Barren Bitches Book Brigade - Tour 3 (The Time Traveler's Wife)

So I recently pointed you guys to Mel's Blog, and I'll be doing so again now. The Third Tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade is coming to a close. This tour's book is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I had read this book prior to the announcement of Tour number 3, and gladly pulled it out for a second read to participate in this tour, because it is an excellent book. It is, at its essence, a love story, and a beautiful one at that. If you haven't read the book, I'm afraid that this post MIGHT give some spoilers (though I haven't constructed my answers yet, so maybe I'm wrong), but you should still read the book. It's an excellent book with beautiful themes.

Its relevence to the world of infertile myrtles is that the main characters of the book struggle with their own unique form of infertility. Henry, who suffers from a genetic disorder called "chrono-impairment", seems to pass this disorder on to his future children. Unfortunately, this means a problem with his wife, Clare, carrying the children to term, because at some point, the fetuses tend to time travel out of the womb, leading to miscarriage. Clare suffers several such miscarriages, but never wants to stop trying to find an answer to their infertility. Her determination is one which non-infertiles might call desperation, but which we infertiles fully relate to.

Mel, as always, did a superb job organizing the book tour, and has collected a broad range of questions from each of the participants. So if you are interested in reading other people's responses, you'll find that everyone probably answered different questions than I did, so you'll get a broad range of perspectives. Visit Mel's blog at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com for a full list of tour participants so that you can enjoy everyone's take on this fantastic book. And so, without further ado, here are my responses to the questions I've chosen to answer:

If you were able to communicate with a past or future version of yourself, how much would you tell them? How much would you want to know? Discuss how well you think Clare and Henry struck this balance, giving examples of points and ways in which they conveyed or withheld information.

Henry often frustrated Clare by his unwillingness to divulge too much about their future selves, but he did so in her own best interests. Henry gave Clare clues into her future by telling a very young Clare that in their future they are married, and also by dictating to her a list of dates in which he will visit her childhood self, but the details of their future relationship are held back. Henry prefers that Clare get to experience their relationship "untainted", refusing to tell her of the specific circumstances in which they meet in "real time" so that she can experience it without preconceptions. He withholds details of their future, both good and bad, preferring to allow her some sense of control over their future.

There are other times, however, when Henry can't help but allow his knowledge of the future to affect his perceptions of "real time". For example, when looking for a house together, he dismisses houses out of hand that have the wrong view from the back window, which in some ways denied Clare the true experience of house-hunting. (And he even admits that he could be wrong, since he didn't know if the future house he'd seen was their first house together or a subsequent house). Henry also uses his time traveling ability to fund their "rock n' roll lifestyle" by investing in stock he knows will do well and by purchasing a winning lottery ticket.

As for my own personal feelings on the matter, I believe that knowing too much about our futures could be detrimental and I'd like to think that I would have the same self-restraint that Henry had. (Though seriously, I doubt I'd have that much self restraint) If I could go back 5 years and talk to myself about the struggle of infertility, I don't think I would give myself any specifics. But what I would tell myself is that I can endure far more than I believed then. I would tell myself that even when I think I can't, I'll find the strength to move forward. And I'd tell myself I really don't have it as bad as many other strong women. But I wouldn't tell myself I'd end up with 6 IUIs, a miscarriage, and a triplet pregnancy. I wouldn't tell myself how that triplet pregnancy would turn out (though oh heavens, I sure would like to know that now, so I could stop struggling with what to do about this!). I wouldn't tell myself how many injections I'd given myself (hundreds), or how many transvaginal ultrasounds I've had (close to 100, I figured out the other day... I'm not kidding!), or any of those details. I wouldn't tell myself how long it will last, how many struggles I have to go through, only that I will make it through in the end. I think knowing ahead of time would have made it that much harder. I knew before I was married that I would have problems conceiving, because I knew I wasn't ovulating. I knew that fertility would be a struggle, but had I known the details, I think I would have sunk to the depths of despair. I didn't realize until after my miscarriage that I really can endure. That I really can make it through. And that I really will do anything I can to achieve my dream. I don't think it would have done any good to tell my past self that I would struggle in that way for that length of time before coming to those specific realizations.

There were several ways in which Clare and Henry's experience of infertility (and pregnancy after infertility) rang true - in their individual reactions, in their joint reaction as a couple, and in their interactions with the outside world. Choose one or two specific examples and relate them to your personal experience.

There is a passage in which Henry thinks to himself, Seeing Clare with a baby in her arms, the reality of our miscarriages grabs me and for a moment I feel nauseous... The feeling retreats and I am left with the actuality of what we've been doing: we have been losing children. Where are they, these lost children, wandering, hovering around confused? I originally read this passage long before I'd ever dreamt I would experience the pain of a miscarriage, but the passage still rang true for me. It captured the essence of the pain that I had experienced with each failed cycle. The pain that I felt every time I saw my husband holding a friend's newborn cooing at the baby. The pain that I felt every time I wondered if I would ever have that. I had never lost a child in the sense of miscarriage at that point, but I felt, the moment I read that passage, that it was exactly what I'd been experiencing for years: the pain of losing children that had never had the opportunity to exist. The passage obviously holds deeper meaning for me now that I've experienced a miscarriage, but it's still this sense of "yes! That's exactly it! That's exactly how I feel sometimes!" that I felt before I'd ever so much as gotten pregnant.

In another passage, Clare and Henry go for an ultrasound when Clare is 18 weeks pregnant with their future daughter. Niffeneger does a fabulous job of building up the tension that Henry is experiencing sitting in the waiting room with all the other expectant couples, and then they are called back to an examining room:
Clare and I hold hands. We watch the monitor, too. Slowly the image builds itself, bit by bit.
On the screen is a weather map of the world. Or a galaxy, a swirl of stars. Or a baby.
"Bien joue, une fille," Dr. Montague says. "She is sucking her thumb. She is very pretty and very big."
Clare and I exhale. On the screen a pretty galaxy is sucking her thumb. As we watch she takes her hand away from her mouth. Dr. Montague says, "She smiles." And so do we.

This is not yet a passage that rings true for me. I haven't found the moment when I can exhale. But I do hope that at some point, I find myself exhaling with relief, with a feeling that things will turn out okay, with a sense of calm, a sense of comfort. I yearn for the day I can exhale and believe that I've reached a point where I can stop worrying. I imagine that point is different for everyone. I suspect for me, it will be long after I'm holding my baby in my arms. And that's okay. So long as I do, someday, get to exhale.

What do you think Clare meant by saying that adopting would be "just pretending?" Do you think she is justified in her view, even though she continues to try and conceive knowing that the babies time travel out of the womb and die?

Clare elaborates later in the passage on what she meant, by saying that she and Henry pretend all the time to be "normal people". Pretending that it's perfectly okay that Henry disappears all the time, that Henry almost gets killed, pretending she doesn't care "when our babies die". Clare sobs and pushes Henry away, not able to accept his comfort. I think Clare thinks that adopting would be pretending that she doesn't feel the pain of infertility. I think in some ways it would only accentuate to her the myriad of ways in which she and Henry just aren't like normal people. I am all for adopting, but I certainly understand Clare's feelings. People who say, "why don't you just adopt" don't get it. Of course I would love a baby no matter who gave birth to it, but is it so much to ask that I get to experience the miracle of pregnancy like "normal" women? Is it fair to only say, "why don't you just adopt?" to infertile women? Why don't we say that to fertile women, too? We don't say it to fertile women because fertile women don't "need" to adopt to be "normal", but somehow we infertiles do. No, I don't think it's pretending. I have a beautiful foster son who I could not love a single bit more if I'd given birth to him, but it doesn't change that I want to experience pregnancy first-hand. So yes, I believe Clare is "justified" in her thinking, no matter what the outcome. Everyone is "justified" to their emotional responses. Clare desperately wants a baby, she desperately wants her own baby, and how many of us can say we've never felt that way? Unlike Clare, I don't care about the specific genetic link to a child, but I DO care about experiencing pregnancy... all of it, not just the first 12 weeks ... it's something that I really regret not having experienced sooner and I do truly hope I get to experience it in the future. I think it would be terrible to judge someone negatively for their desire to have a child of their "own" versus adopting. Adoption is the perfect option for many people, but it isn't the perfect option for everyone.

Don't forget to hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/ . You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein.