On the best-news-in-the-world front, friends of our friends—M and J—are finally becoming parents after five years of infertility. They received their referral this week and will travel soon to Ethiopia to bring home their boy-girl twins. I had chills run down my arms when my husband called to tell me the news. Their referral came with photographs of the twins. Since receiving their referral, they have set up the photographs on their table so they could eat dinner each night with the twins. Which I thought was a fantastic idea. Feel free to leave any well-wishes for them and I will send them along to read on the plane when they travel in a few weeks. I know it would mean a lot to them to hear from the stirrup queens and sperm palace jesters of the world and know others are cheering them along as they complete the last leg of a long journey towards parenthood. Literally bawling for them as I write this.

The Crème de la Crème list keeps growing and growing. I’m about to add my 71st entry today. And there are still so many great blogs out there. Peruse the list. If you see someone missing, send them a suggestion of a favourite post from 2006 and ask them to forward me the link (at thetowncriers@gmail.com). I don’t want to add anyone without their blessing, but I do want everyone to have a voice. With so many varied entries, it’s feeling a bit like a harmonized song—the sad and the funny; the confused and the confident; the start of the journey and the end of the line. Thank you for helping me compile this list.

And now…the blogs!

Kicking it off, we have infertility humour (is there really such a thing?) from Baby Quest. At the very least, it answers the decades-old question of why did the RE cross the road as well as how many stirrup queens it takes to screw in a lightbulb.

At the other end of the spectrum is an entry on Discovering Me titled “Anguish.” I think many times with pregnancy loss, we consider what the parents are missing. But MB watches her daughter, Gracie, observing a set of sisters and comments, “Mommy, I miss my sister.” MB writes: “It's one thing for me to be sad. For me to miss Audrey. But Gracie misses her too. She's only just now old enough to begin to understand what she's missing.” It was a very eye-opening and heartbreaking moment to read that thought.

Max’s Mommy has a post this week called Stark Raving Lunatic where she writes out the internal monologue that plays in her head as she leaves the RE’s office. And since it is similar in tone and sentiment to the internal monologue that plays in my head as I leave all doctor’s offices connected to infertility, I thought I’d point people towards it because I feel like it will strike a familiar chord with many of you in the Blogosphere.

The stork has landed at Manana Banana. 7th cycle was a charm and brought her to Adam Daniel. I’m just so happy for her and glad that she can move from being a “professional IVF patient” to a professional Mommy. Congratulations!