Let me start by saying, I LOVED THIS BOOK! Life from Scratch by Melissa Ford is everything I hoped it would be and more. Reading it felt like hanging out with old friends in the coziest café. I love that Rachel’s BFF is a single mom by choice. And that she didn’t get there easily. “After 2 miscarriages, three fresh IVF transfers, four frozen IVF transfers, several months of daily Lovenox injections, a premature delivery, and a NICU stay, Arianna had Beckett” For me, it was five cancelled IVF cycles, one fresh IVF transfer, two donor frozen embryo transfers, six weeks of Lovenox injections, eight weeks of progesterone in oil injections, and a c-section, that I have my Sunshine. I felt a kinship with Arianna. It’s hard enough to decide to become a parent on your own, having trouble conceiving compounds that.
I loved hearing Melissa’s voice in novel form. Loved the little New York details, like when Rachel and Arianna decide not to stop for bagels at H&H when on the way to Zabars. You have to really know New York city to know that H&H has the BEST bagels, and that they're across the street from Zabars.
I hope I can do the book justice with this post. I’m really feeling the sleep deprivation these days. My very active, teething, not great at sleeping 15 month old, our two cats, and I have just moved into a new apartment. The process has been long, stressful, and isn’t quite over. (Lots of odds and ends to still bring over, and still have to figure out where everything should go.) So this post may not be all I’d like it to be.
Now on to the questions.
If you had a year to do what you wanted, what would you do? Would you learn to cook or something different?
Ooooooh! Whatever I want?!?!?! I would travel! I love to travel, and really hope my daughter will love it, too. Ideally, I would have someone to deal with the luggage while I focus on wrangling Sunshine, and also to help with childcare so I could do things that you can’t do with a toddler in tow. I would love to take the opportunity to learn new things in different places. For instance, I know of a villa in Tuscany that offers workshops in Tuscan cooking. Maybe a glass blowing class in Venice. Show my daughter the world. See the world through her eyes. Watch her get covered in powdered sugar eating beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans. Make sure she knows to “Mind the Gap” on the London Underground. Etc.
Rachel's blog Life from Scratch is itself a character in the story. Do you think non-bloggers will understand the details of blogging (blog awards, stats and stat counters, other true life blogs mentioned) and how does writing her blog tie into her story making it appeal to the mainstream?
I’m not really sure. I hope so. I am a mother, my daughter is here in the world, because of my blog. The generous woman who donated embryos to me found my blog through a mention on LFCA. A site maintained by Melissa Ford! It helps when people understand the blogging world when I tell our story. Although, I think even if non-bloggers understand the details of blogging, it’s really hard for outsiders to understand the kinship in the ALI community. We are there for each other through struggles, losses, and successes. It’s hard for outsiders to understand when I tell them I’ve received baby gifts from people I’ve never met face to face. That I sent a baby gift halfway around the world to a blogger I’ve never met in person. That a community is working together on a project for a blogger who’s suffered an unthinkable loss. That we send each other socks. Yes, socks. Because we know it makes it a tiny bit easier to put our feet in those damn stirrups when we see a pair of colorful socks that someone chose for us.
How would you react if your blog hit the big time -- if you had hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers hanging on your every word, if you won awards, if mainstream media wanted to interview and feature you? Are there aspects of blogging fame that you'd refuse? How would the content of your blog change?
Hmmmmm. Well, I just don’t think I’m that good a writer. I like being semi-anonymous with my blog. I use a pseudonym on here, but I’ve never hesitated to tell my fellow bloggers my real name via email. For a long time I didn’t post any identifiable photos. Since my daughter was born I’ve posted plenty of her, and a few of me. If my blog went viral, I might consider removing the photos and not posting any new ones of us. And regardless of my blog’s popularity, I’m sure I'll think harder about what I post about Sunshine as she gets older. I sure wouldn’t mind Heather Armstrong’s money, though. (And I'd be happy to review the iPad here if Apple wants to send me one! Hello, Apple Marketing Dept!) Fame is such an odd thing. I had a surreal moment at a friend’s baby shower/meet the baby party to celebrate the adoption of her son, when a woman came up to me and said, “I know you from your blog!” Wild! Turns out she’s another SMC blogger. We had no idea we had this mutual friend.
I love to hear that our story has inspired others. I had a long phone conversation with a blogger about our open embryo donation process. Since our conversation, she and her husband have donated their embryos. I received an email last year from a woman who said she passed my URL on to a friend who was single and struggling with the idea of winding up childless. I also recently found out that after meeting me and Sunshine at an SMC event last Summer and hearing our story, a woman donated several embryos to another woman she met at the same event. So, famous or not, we never really know when we tell our story, whose life we may change.
So, if you haven’t read it yet, hop over to Amazon.
To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at Write Mind Open Heart.
