1st Blogiversary / 100th post

Yeah, I may have tweaked my posting schedule a little bit when I realized I was close to having my 100th post fall on my one-year blog anniversary.  So sue me.  I like the symmetry of it.

When I started my blog, we were gearing up for IVF #2 after our first was cancelled due to poor response.  I was beginning to realize that we were probably going to be in this for the long haul, and that getting through it was going to take a lot more support than I'd anticipated.  My endless infertility-related Googling had already led me to a couple of blogs where I'd been lurking, and I started to think that maybe I should just drop the pretense and admit that, since I was apparently already a member of this crappy club anyway, I wanted to be friends with the cool kids.  To do that, I'd need a blog of my own.  So on a chilly Saturday morning I hunkered down with my laptop, found a pretty background, and wrote my first post.

I also think I had a bit of a ridiculous notion that if I started my own blog, I'd get pregnant.  After all, it certainly seemed to me like I came across an awful lot of older blogs that had gone defunct after the blogger had a baby.  Perhaps it worked a bit like reverse psychology?  Start a blog to connect with other infertiles, and that would be the exact time that my body would decide to cooperate by making a baby.  If only it worked that way.

And yet, as I was flipping through my blog reader the other day, I realized that fully 40% of the infertility blogs that I subscribe to are either now pregnant or parenting (yeah, I did math!).  It's something I hadn't thought about when I started making blog-friends and getting so invested in others' stories.  That eventually they would move on, and I might not.  Some days, when I read about yet another BFP, I feel like a kid who's been left behind in school, with all of my classmates graduating to bigger and better things while I sit here, doomed to repeat the year all over again.

Please don't get me wrong.  I'm definitely happy for those of you who have had your babies or are on your way to that, and I hope nothing but good things for your pregnancies.  But it's an odd irony of infertility blogging that you eventually end up reading/hearing/knowing more pregnant people than you ever would in real life!  And yes, it's different...except when it's not.  Some days I'm feeling good and it's easy for me to chime in and comment on a pregnancy-related post.  Then there's the others, when I'm feeling low or I'm reading a post that's asking for advice on diaper genies or cracked nipples, and I find that I just have nothing to say.  That's not my world.  My world is still follicles and stims, blastocysts and CD1s.  I know no one blames me when I don't have it in me to comment on pregnancy stuff...but I at least wanted you all to know that I wish I could.

When I look back at my first blog post, what I'm struck by the most is my first comment.  The lovely Tutti, who no longer blogs, wrote the following:

I am *so* glad you are here! We've all lurked. All wondered if we should join the club. All been afraid to make the plunge. I don't make promises often (like you said, no crystal ball) but I PROMISE you that you will never regret having this blog. The support and love you will receive and give is something that you cannot get anywhere else. Welcome m'dear.

How right she was.  Thank you all.