{"id":115,"date":"2010-10-05T13:11:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T20:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2011-01-15T20:43:29","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T03:43:29","slug":"6-no-theres-no-news-from-the-babymaking-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Balancing anxieties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_3013.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-124 aligncenter\" title=\"baby feet, oct2010\" src=\"http:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_3013-990x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"312\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_3013-990x1024.jpg 990w, https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_3013-290x300.jpg 290w, https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_3013.jpg 1238w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 312px) 100vw, 312px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Talking with my husband&#8217;s 90 year-old grandmother in Spain the other day, I was asked, again, &#8220;\u00bfbueno, algunas noticias?&#8221; (&#8220;so, any news?&#8221;). She then began worrying at me, saying &#8220;and at your age you shouldn&#8217;t be wasting time&#8221;, and &#8220;you should look and see if somethings wrong, if one of you &#8220;no vale&#8221; (literally, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t work&#8221;). All I wanted to say was &#8220;mind your own business&#8221;, but at the same time, I want people to feel like they can ask how things are going, because it&#8217;s a big part of our life right now. This is a hard balance to strike, because I&#8217;m both wanting to share how it&#8217;s going, and not wanting other peoples&#8217; anxieties to make my own even more pronounced.<\/p>\n<p>Every other week or so my mom tells me about some naturopathic doctor she ran into at a farm market while selling her dolls, or an old midwife friend she saw who had some advice for getting pregnant. (The latest, told with a good laugh, was to eat <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">goat balls<\/span><em>. <\/em>Yes, goat balls. According to this 40-year veteran midwife, it works every time.). It makes me realize my mom is bringing me up a lot, and it also makes me think how when you know someone who&#8217;s trying to start a family, they&#8217;re the first people you think of every time you see something related to fertility.<\/p>\n<p>It kind of makes me wish we hadn&#8217;t said anything to anyone. But too late for that. On Halloween, grandma&#8217;s 91st birthday, it will be a year since we started, a year since we whispered in her ear on her 90th birthday that we were trying for that great-grandaughter she&#8217;d been asking us for. And in some ways that&#8217;s a long time, and I get anxious about it. And in other ways, given that this last year was very stressful and unsettled for us, it&#8217;s really not that long at all. So for now I&#8217;m trying to be relaxed about it, tell people how I&#8217;m doing when they ask, but avoid letting them get inside my head with their own worries.<\/p>\n<p>Not an easy balance to strike, but it feels good to try. And I&#8217;m glad to be talking about it with people&#8211;it seems somehow better to be open about it than secretive, the way people used to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talking with my husband&#8217;s 90 year-old grandmother in Spain the other day, I was asked, again, &#8220;\u00bfbueno, algunas noticias?&#8221; (&#8220;so, any news?&#8221;). She then began worrying at me, saying &#8220;and at your age you shouldn&#8217;t be wasting time&#8221;, and &#8220;you should look and see if somethings wrong, if one of you &#8220;no vale&#8221; (literally, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,43],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}