About Me

It has recently come to my attention that some things about this site are a little confusing.  Here's an attempt to remedy that, with answers to the most frequent "wha-ha-ha?"s I get from people who stumble across this little blog.  Most of those people are probably not still around, but for those of you who are, here you go.

1. In your archives, what's the deal with your husband having two different names?  He used to be called Michael but now you refer to him as Bryan all the time.

When I started blogging, I wasn't sure I wanted to use my first name, so I called myself by my middle name, which is Elizabeth, and pretended that Arwen was just a favored online pseudonym.  Pretty soon I realized that I was perfectly comfortable with using my real first name, as evidenced by the fact that I shared it with pretty much every person who emailed me.   So when I'd been blogging for a year I used the occasion to reveal my first name and start using it online.  I'd been using my husband's middle name for symmetry when I was calling myself Elizabeth, but when I switched to calling myself Arwen I also started using his first name, which is Bryan.

2. Were you an infertility blogger?  I don't see anything about cycles or anything on here.  What's your story?

My husband and I got married in the summer of 2002, and in the summer of 2003 we started trying to conceive a child.  By the summer of 2004 we'd had no results, and I was starting to get nervous.  I went searching on the Internet for support, found that there were a lot of infertility blogs out there, and decided to start one of my own.  Started writing in October of 2004, and been doing it ever since, although the frequency of posts has decreased drastically.

Bryan and I talked a lot about doing fertility testing and treatment and a lot about adopting.  We also did a lot of praying and discerning, and ultimately decided that we couldn't move forward with either of those things at that time, that we needed to just wait.  (Type-A that I am, I was sure happy about that, let me tell you.)

In February of 2006, after about 30 cycles of trying to conceive, I discovered - on Valentine's Day, no less! - that I was pregnant.  It was quite a shock, but an extremely happy one, of course.  Eight months to the day later, Camilla Claire was born.  You can read her birth story beginning here.  Needless to say, we are totally in love with her.

3. You seem awfully young to have already dealt with infertility.  How old are you?

I was born August 23, 1982, and got married to Bryan (who was my high school sweetheart) on August 17, 2002, six days shy of my 20th birthday.  I was almost 21 when we started trying to get pregnant, and 24 when Camilla was born.  So yeah, I guess that is a little young.  Getting married at age 19 (Bryan was 21) isn't for everyone, but it has worked out very well for us.  I do think that being as young as we were did make infertility less stressful, because we knew that if we did decide to pursue treatment or adoption, we had plenty of time.

4. If your name is Arwen, why do your siblings have such normal names?

They don't.  My siblings have names that are just as unusual as mine is, except for my 18-year-old brother.  (I won't write his name here, but it was #17 on the SSA list for the year he was born, 1988.)  My parents didn't know the name was so popular; they just thought it sounded good with the middle name they'd picked, which is Ransom, after the hero of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.  Incidentally, all of us kids have at least one name, first or middle, from a book by Lewis or Tolkien.  My parents are big Inkling junkies.

The reason I don't use my siblings' real first names here is that they are unbelievably Googleable, especially in combination with one another, and especially my youngest sister's.  Her name is the feminine version of a character from the Narnia Chronicles, and as far as we know she's the only English speaker in the world with it.  Which means that if I used it, all her friends would be able to find my blog by Googling her, and that would not be cool.  So instead, for my siblings, I use permutations of their middle names or confirmation names to refer to them.

5. Exactly how many siblings do you have anyway?

Five, all younger than I am.  In age order:

Rosie (her confirmation patroness is Rose of Lima) is eighteen months younger than I am.  She and her husband, Anthony (his middle name), live a few miles away with their son Daniel (his real name), who is four months older than Camilla.  Rosie and I have been very close our whole lives, and I love having her and her family nearby.

Maggie (from her middle name, Margaret) is four-and-a-half years younger than I am.  She goes to college at a small Catholic school in Florida, where she majors in politics.  She's high-energy, very verbal (one could almost say insanely verbal) and the only college student I know to whom it necessary to say, "Don't study too hard."  She and I are very alike in looks and personality.

George (the aforementioned brother with the middle name of Ransom; George is his confirmation name), six years younger than I am, is a 2006 high school graduate who joined the US Coast Guard last fall.  He is the family go-to guy on all things electronic and is an electronic technician in the Guard.  I will probably always think of him as a goofy little guy, but it's been several years since he, now 6'2", was smaller than I am.  We miss him a lot.

Katie (Catherine of Siena is her patroness) is eight years younger than I, and will graduate from high school in 2008.  She's probably the sole right-brained member of our family, which might be tough on her, but we love her to bits.  She's creative and unique and dramatic and a joy all around.

Tommy (a nickname of his third name) is ten-and-a-half years younger than I, and the baby of the family.  Loves to play games on his computer and listen to loud rock music and be smart (which he is - he skipped sixth grade).  We all doted on him when he was a chubby-cheeked toddler and now he dotes on his niece and nephew, so the circle of life moves on.

It should also be noted that the six of us have really great parents, who did an awesome job raising us (can't you tell?).  They are the kind of parents who give lots of love and encouragement, come and lug dozens of boxes when we move to a new house, but would never try to tell us how to raise our children.  A pretty good deal, I think.

6. Do you have the best husband in the world?

Why, yes, I do.  How prescient of you to notice.  He is kind and smart and funny and loves me a lot, not to mention understanding me better than anyone.  He is also a great dad, and I would not want to do this whole parenting gig without him, that's for sure.  You can read the story of how we met and got married here.