Cards That Help

If you're looking for some notecards to have stashed away for special occasions, I've got the ones you should buy. And not just because they've got great artwork, or because they're reasonably priced, but because they actually do some good - something you can't say about many purchases you're bound to make.

Erica over at Parenthood For Me was kind enough to send me free samples of their notecards, and I have to say, I'm totally thrilled to have these in my drawer ready to go. Admittedly, I was initially concerned about how and when I'd be able to use these cards, because I wasn't sure they wouldn't be too adoption or infertility oriented, but upon receiving them I realized that's not going to be a problem at all.

The cards I received included a variety of images - some family-oriented, some not - and all of the cards were blank inside, making them great multi-purpose cards. Essentially I can write whatever I want in them to make them "thinking of you", "thanks", or even special occasion cards.

And at $12.50 USD for 10 notecards, with the net proceeds going to support those starting families through adoption or medical intervention, they're a great way to start the new year off on the right foot with the right purchase. Two thumbs up.

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Bah humbug

I'm tired of Christmas.

Well, Christmas shopping, to be exact. Still loving the holiday music (Feliz Navidad, anyone?) and the anticipation I see in Tessa's and Reed's eyes (not to mention dangling Santa over their heads anytime they cross me).

But I'm sugarplum out of Christmas gift ideas.

Instead, I have three random points to make.

1. Chicklet and I want to HUGELY thank those of you who are clicking to Amazon through our store or through our links (like the book I'm reading, below). Whenever you do, and whatever you buy -- even if it's something we didn't mention -- puts a little into our kitties. Chicklet is saving for IVF#3 or adoption, and I am saving for braces for Tessa and Reed, as it's clear that we will be buying our own orthodontist sometime in the next few years.

Every little bit helps, and we are very, very grateful to you.

2. I want to share a book I'm reading, although I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea (especially at this time of year). I'm reading the Gospel of the Second Coming by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.

It's simultaneously irreverent of the literalist tradition and profoundly reverent of the mystery that is within each of us.

Being knocked down by infertility made me question everything I ever "knew" about god and god being all-powerful and all-knowing. After all, if god was good and just and powerful, how could *I* be denied a pregnancy when another woman left a newborn in a bathroom at Disney World?

I've found some marvelous answers on my journey to understanding religion vs spirituality and in reconciling the Jesus of my youth with a more expansive version. This latest book has a framework that makes sense to me. It addresses how misery and injustice can exist in the world. And it makes sense to me.

If you are open, if you seek spirit rather than religion, you might want to pick it up. For yourself.

My dad wants to read my copy. And he shall have it in his stocking.


Oh, and I forgot to mention that this book is laugh-out-loud funny. And a quick read.

3. We've got a two new experiments on our right sidebar. Many of you are already subscribed by RSS feed. But some of you would rather get word of our posts by email. Now there's a button with a little envelope on it for readers who would like to be notified by email when we have a new post up. If you're not already getting our feeds, try it out by email.

Secondly, we're trying out a tip jar, with the headline "Are you in my Top Spots?" If you would like to highlight your product, blog, service or message in this space, $5 (or more) will not only tip us for our efforts but also give you a bit of real estate on All Thumbs. Again, Chicklet's family-building efforts and my teeth-straightening intentions would be grateful. (Really, this is aimed more at potential advertisers than at our regular readers and friends.)

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Chicklet and I are taking a mini-break and will back after the New Year. (But I wouldn't put it past her to serve up a recommendation for champagne while on hiatus -- she's lushy like that). Enjoy the next few weeks and we'll be in your RSS feeder (or emailbox) soon.

Happy holidays from your thumby gals.

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Want easy access to products recommended by Lori and Chicklet? Help support us by visiting the All Thumbs Store, which has no added markup. Just easy shopping, good prices, Amazon security and thumbs up ratings.

The Infertility Assistant

As you may have previously read about here and/or here, you already know that I, chicklet, am an infertile myrtle. And that BEING an infertile myrtle, well, it makes me a good candidate to review infertility books - or at least *I* like to think so.

However, being an infertile myrtle does NOT mean I have a good memory. And as such, The Infertility Assistant has been sitting on my table for a month... with me THINKING I already reviewed it, and only realizing the JUST other day, that uh... I had NOT reviewed it. So with many apologies to the kind authors who sent it out to me, here's the lowdown.

Truth is, it's a pretty good book - even for a three year veteran like myself. While the content is definitely geared to an American audience (with regards to insurance, for example), and there's some overarching generalizations I'd disagree with ("After your medical evaluation, your doctor should have enough information to tell you why you haven't been getting pregnant"), I'd still consider buying this book. Not necessarily based on the content, because as I hinted above, some of it may not apply to ALL situations (ie. mine), but based on the LAYOUT. Cuz with THIS book, the strength is definitely in the layout.

Again, like the other infertility books I've reviewed here, the book is too big for MY particular purse, but it's smaller and lighter than the other two, so for that, The Infertility Assistant wins points. It also wins points for being spiral-bound, and having a TABBED breakdown, including tabs for Doctors, Tests, Treatment, Self-Care, IUI, IVF, and even Finances.

And WITHIN those tabs, for once, there's ACTUALLY enough space to record what's really going on. For example, in the Doctors tab, there's three columns to compare info between three different doctors, all side-by-side. Within the IUI tab, there's space available for 3 IUI's but also EIGHT weeks worth of info PER IUI. And within the all-important IVF tab, there's day-by-day space for 3 full IVF cycles, again up to 8 weeks per cycle. Just for the ability to record information in a SINGLE spot, this book wins hands down. While there's a lot of infertility books out there, many of them assume us infertiles will get LUCKY in a cycle or two, or they FORGET that this can be an 8-week long endurance race filled with overwhelming information that has no dumping ground.

So all in all, two thumbs up for The Infertility Assistant. Simple, easy-to-use, and ACTUALLY enough space to record all the COPIOUS amounts of data one gets during infertility treatments.

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Want to win The Infertility Assistant? Leave a comment telling Lori and me why this book would work for YOU, and it might be ALL YOURS. All comments entered by October 17th will be put into a hat. The husband (mr chicklet) will be blind-folded, spun around 10x, shoved back and forth, and then spun around 10 more times the OTHER way, before being asked to pull a winner. The winner will be announced Monday October 20th 2008. Good luck!

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Want easy access to products recommended by Lori and Chicklet? Help support us by visiting the All Thumbs Store, which has no added markup. Just easy shopping, good prices, Amazon security and thumbs up ratings.

Fully Fertile (not me, the book)

I, chicklet, am an infertile myrtle, which means that I, chicklet, am a tough sell when it comes to fertility books. However, BEING an infertile myrtle also makes me a good CANDIDATE for fertility books, so when the kind folks at KT / PR & Literary Services approached me to review Fully Fertile, I jumped at the chance - and then I proceeded to IGNORE them for a month while I wandered through Asia.

Returning from my trip though, I was excited to see THIS in my mailbox. Partly cuz the skeptic in me was curious to see what the authors had to say about all the ways I probably had to RELAX to have a baby, partly cuz yoga's something I've honestly been debating for awhile (although, NOT for fertility), and partly because... well... at this point in my infertility, all fertility books are at least worth a quick perusal with a glass of wine.

Going through the book though, I'm honestly impressed. And not because they paid me to say that - they didn't, this is a freebie review - but because the book was personal, and there was a lot of attention to detail in this book I didn't expect. Yea, there's the usual song and dance about RELAXING and reducing stress, but I get that I'm 3 years into this infertility crap so ANY mention of RELAXING gets in my craw.

Moving away from my CRAW though, and BACK to Fully Fertile, the book includes everything from the author's personal stories about THEIR infertility journeys, to step by step instructions on how to do some of the yoga poses. And to go ALONG with the step by step instructions, they also have PICTURES for every one of those steps - which for a gimp like me, is essential in standing even a CHANCE at pulling this shit off in the comfort of my own home.

The other thing they do well is they cover not only the yoga poses and pictures, but they cover accupuncture, diet, exercise, attitude, sex, sleep, and more. While some of the areas are quite short and obviously not the FOCUS of the book, other areas like DIET, they provide some pretty good depth on, even going as far as a few tips for NOT cooking all the nutrients out of your food, ensuring the "health" food you're eating REMAINS health food by the time you're done with the pots and pans.

So all in all, I'd definitely recommend this book. However, I'd do so with a bit of a caveat. For a NEWBIE infertile, this book would be fabulous - it'd give you a good balance of all the things you might want to try, and pull in some new and interesting ways to exercise WHILE you try. For the veteran infertile like me however, the book is more useful for the details and pictures on YOGA than on the actual FERTILITY tips and tricks. It's not to say the book might not have HELPED me optimize my fertility, or might not even help me optimize my fertility NOW, it's just to say that I, this far into this misadventure, know that I'm no longer in a place where I want to optimize my fertility. I just wanna do yoga!

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Want to win Fully Fertile? Click on any of the links provided in this post, find out the names of all THREE authors, and come back to All Thumbs to comment in your answer. All comments entered by August 29th with correct answers, will be put into a hat. The husband (mr chicklet) will be blind-folded, spun around 10x, shoved back and forth, and then spun around 10 more times the OTHER way, before being asked to pull a winner. The winner will be announced Monday September 1st 2008. Good luck!

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Want easy access to products recommended by Lori and Chicklet? Help support us by visiting the All Thumbs Store, which has no added markup. Just easy shopping, good prices, Amazon security and thumbs up ratings.

The Fertility Journal

As someone almost three years into the trenches that is infertility, reviewing The Fertility Journal for MotherTalk was a bit tough. Not tough like I didn't appreciate certain aspects of the book, but tough like I'm pretty far beyond some of this stuff and it's hard not to look at it with a cynical eye.

Taking that cynical eye out of the picture SOMEWHAT though, one of my favorite things about this book is that it's spiral-bound. While that may seem silly to a lot of people, if I'm going to WRITE in a book, I NEED it to be spiral-bound, cuz those bendy hard-bound regular-type books, well writing in them just doesn't work.

The problem with THIS book however, is it's far too big for my purse and way too blatantly PERSONAL for me to carry around. While I'm getting braver and braver about who I share my infertility stories with, I personally would not carry around a book with the word FERTILITY on the cover - not to work, not to a restaurant, not to the movies. And really, THOSE are the places infertiles get calls about things going on with their body, THOSE are the places where random fertility/infertility thoughts pop into our heads, THOSE are the places where it'd be super handy to carry around a notepad or journal that I could just whip out, write stuff in, and put away with nobody around me none the wiser what I was really writing about.

Overall, the book is set up really well. It's clean and white, it has lots of little BUBBLES full of fun FACTS and TIPS, and has a TON of space to write stuff down. However, I don't know if I'm blind or was just not looking in the right places, but I found it ODD that none of the little FACTS and TIPS referenced where they came from? Like on page 146, where it says 85% is the number of patients who can be treated successfully by an RE - really? Cuz those are NOT the numbers I've seen in my research.

And while the content on eating healthier, changing life habits, and ALLLLLL those other lovely things it is they recommend, IS in fact, very helpful to a TTC newbie, for me, even as a newbie, it wouldn't have been enough. Cuz for me, by the time I was ready to buy a book, I was 6 months in, and at 6 months in, I would've PLOWED through this content at lightning speed, and STILL been left hungry for more info.

Don't get me wrong, this book's a great start, but I think it would've suited some of my friends better, in that they were interested in tracking this "process" of TTC from day 1, so the pace of this book would've really worked for them. I on the other hand was in extremely strong DENIAL for the first 6 months that I'd EVER need help, and then when I managed to pull my head out of my ass and realize sometimes life ain't so simple, I was in what I'd liken to a feeding frenzy for info, and this book wouldn't have quelled my hunger.

So my thumbs are: One up, one down.

The Fertility Journal was created by Kim Hahn, the founder of Conceive Magazine, and Geoffrey Sher, the Executive Medical Director and co-founder of SIRM™.

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