It is almost Thanksgiving, the start of the Holiday Season!

I sat down today thinking I was going to write up a list of tips that helped me survive the holidays (or as one of my infertility friends says hell-a-days). But there are a number of those out there and to be totally honest I still dread this part of the year myself.  Thanksgiving in particular. I have a lot of sad and stressful anniversaries that are centered around Thanksgiving*. I feel very guilty for not liking Thanksgiving, I have so much to be thankful for including our rainbow baby!

So I have been trying unsuccessfully to disassociate all these memories with Thanksgiving and make new ones. I am starting to feel like this is not something that you can do on purpose, like if you know you are taking a placebo it won't really work.

Now I have decided to make some new traditions around this time of year. We are going to have family over before Thanksgiving dinner for a bonfire. And I have started making gifts for people, I am sewing and crocheting lots of things then putting them in my "Hogswatch" box and everyone can pick what they want. I am really enjoying seeing the box fill up with all the different colors and fabrics.

I would love to hear some of your traditions around this time of year.

*In 2012 my first Thanksgiving after being married my father had his first heart attack. He is alive and well now. But he was very ill for several months in and out of the hospital and he had a couple more smaller heart attacks in those months. The following year we had been TTC for a while with no luck and had started fertility treatments. I was actually on my first break from treatments and on Thanksgiving morning my hair started falling out I was standing next to the trashcan throwing away handfuls of my hair. I know now that it was because of the sudden drop in hormones after being on <a href="https://glowing.com/glow-fertility-program">fertility medications</a> and it did grow back. But it was very scary at the time and no one could give me any answers. I ended up losing a little over 1/3 of my hair. The next year Thanksgiving was my "would be due date" for a pregnancy that I had lost in April at 6 weeks and I was pregnant again, I was 6 weeks actually. Every little twinge I was sure was the start of another miscarriage. I did stay pregnant until the beginning of January with that one, but unfortunately had another miscarriage.

P.S. I will be writing some tips that help me cope with the Holidays soon, and hope they work for you.