Happiness sold separately – Lolly Winston

QUESTIONS:
1. Elinor seemed to turn all of her books on the subject of infertility backwards on the bookshelves, where Roger found them while cleaning. Why do you think she did so? In what ways do you think people who are struggling with infertility help in keeping infertility such a “taboo” topic? Do you see infertility ever becoming a more accepted or understood topic?

My experience of infertility has been via recurrent loss. I think it is a taboo, though oddly, it becomes easier to talk about the more you lose. Or maybe it just becomes harder to cover it up, from work colleagues for instance.

As a woman with secondary infertility, other mothers would often ask if we’d have another. Randomly, I’d either reply “Maybe” or reveal we’d had several losses. The other women would sometimes reveal that they’d had losses too (though never seven!)

For some reason, I never told my younger siblings. Maybe as I have always been protective of them. Once pregnant via DE and about to tell my son, I had no choice but to tell all friends and family. So I shared the DEIVF info with my brother and sister, though not the miscarriages. My brother then revealed he is about to embark on IVF with his wife. That sort of proves you hear stories back once you share a bit about yourself. It sort of makes life less lonely.

2. The end of the book was left open to the reader. Do you think that Elinor and Ted stayed together, or that they really finally separate? Did she pursue adoption on her own, or did they do another round of IVF with PGD? Do you think she ended up happy, or did she continue to struggle?

I really want to hope that Elinor found peace somehow. I tend to think the author wasn’t hinting at the cliche happy ending “Just relax..” but that she was encouraging us to see Elinor embracing the other happinesses in her life and getting off the bandwagon. She can see all the potential paths.. adopting with Ted, adopting alone, divorce, dating, staying friends with Ted… there suddenly seem to be many options open to her. When we hear the diagnosis, we’re probably pushing further treatment on her.. “Try PGD!” but I have the feeling that Elinor has already reached her limit with fertility treatment and the book tries to look beyond.

3. On page 66, Elinor reveals that she was more disappointed about not being able to have Ted’s child versus not having a child at all. How did you react to this revelation? Can you understand her feelings and if so, how do they relate to your own?

This was a theme in a previous book club choice, the Time Traveler’s Wife and made me think a lot, then, about the issues for those of us conceiving with donor eggs or sperm. In that book (one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read) the protaganist has a husband who is always disappearing/time travelling and part of her desperation to have his child is about having a part of him that will always be there. There was an legal issue in the UK where a woman had to fight to be allowed to be impregnated with her dead husband’s sperm where clear permission hadn’t been given … so clearly for the bereaved, their partner’s child does represent a part of them. I look at my son and I don’t know that I feel deep down that he is genetically part of my partner, or of me. He is part of us by nurture, that’s for sure, sharing a few characteristics, good and bad. But by nature? I don’t know. I’ll tell you when the DE twins arrive. I don’t feel that there will be a lack. Does my partner grieve that those babies will not share my genetics? He hasn’t said. But of course, we do have one child together, so any grief would be different to those looking at finality, no genetic offspring.

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: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

~ by drownedgirl on October 28, 2007.