Mood Mucus

From my perspective, the idea that trying to have a baby should be fun is ridiculous.  When you are two or three months into the process – sure - but after a year?  Fun sex feels like a lifetime ago.  Don’t get me wrong, I find my husband very sexy, but lately the fun aspect of sex has been eclipsed by fear, anxiety, and sadness.  After learning more about our diagnosis I’m starting to come to terms with the idea that for us conception will probably have nothing to do with sex.  Maybe once that sinks in we can have fun again.

A Bun in Every Oven

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like for the past several years the media has covered celebrity pregnancies with excruciating detail (Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Beyonce).  Why is that?  Is it supposed to humanize them?  Do we like seeing them doing something as ordinary as having a baby?  Something that feels as inaccessible to me as marrying a prince, getting my own reality show, or performing at Madison Square Garden. 

It could just be that I’m noticing it more now that we are trying to conceive - celebrities, friends, strangers on the street.  Psychologists call it “confirmation bias,” a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypothesizes.  In other words, I feel like the only woman in the world who can’t get pregnant, so my mind tries to confirm that belief with extreme awareness of the pregnancies round me. 

It's The Little Things

A gal can get pretty carried away with paving the way for pregnancy.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell fact from fiction.  I have essentially been operating like I could be pregnant at any moment.  If reality television is to be believed, it’s possible I might not even know I’m pregnant for months.  I want to be ready, but anything I do now is really just busy work.  So much if this is out of my control.  The control freak in me is freaking out.  I’ve been taking prenatal vitamins for a year.  I’ve banned fast food, processed foods, coffee, alcohol and toxic cleaning products.  Those things are all pretty common sense, but what about pesticides, parabens, and synthetic hormones?  That shit is in everything!

Not buying any processed foods means making most things from scratch.  Fortunately, I like to cook, but I hate washing dishes.  Last night I dropped a dish that shattered into (and I’m not exaggerating) a billion tiny shards.  Even after sweeping twice it was still like that scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis walks barefoot across a room full of broken glass (okay, now I’m exaggerating). 

Just Keep Swimming

It takes so long to get a diagnosis for infertility and some couples never even get one.  When you begin to feel like there’s something wrong it’s usually the woman who gets checked out first.  I went and got the ultrasound to look at my ovaries for cysts and a blood test to look for hormonal imbalances.  Both came back normal.  They told us to keep trying.  They love to tell you to relax and keep trying.  Yeah, that works out great if you actually get pregnant!  If not, it’s just months of regularly scheduled boning and tearing our hair out!  Then it occurred to us that my husband should get his sperm checked.

The results were not good (low count, low motility and low morphology), but at least now we had some answers.   After a feverish bit of googling we learned that supplements and medication can help, but they take an average of 74 days to kick in.  Now we get to sit around waiting for this stuff to work.  Ooh, goodie! 

Even if the supplements and medication work and hubby’s counts increase there is no guarantee that it will fertilize my egg or for that matter, even reach the egg.  I have not yet tested for blocked tubes.  That test (the hysterosalpingogram or HSG) is a nasty one, but it’s probably the next step.  Anything involving a catheter gives me the willies, but at this point I’m willing to suffer every sadistic torture they can dish out.  You want to put me on a crazy diet?  You want to give me medicine that makes me even sadder and incapable of rational though?  You want to put fire ants up my nose?   Whatever, dude.  Bring it on!

Kill Tighty Whitey

Its summer and that means someone has to drive the old Chevy Cavalier with the broken AC.  And that lucky someone is me.  Yay!  It’s actually my husband’s car, but since intense heat happens to be sperm kryptonite he gets to spend the summer in my nice comfy Corolla.  Perhaps it’s fair considering the other more unpleasant changes he’s had to make – trading his briefs for boxers, giving up soda and processed foods, etc.  He definitely wants this baby as much as I do.

I’ve spent a lot of time beating myself up because we don’t make a ton of money.  Then I remember that we are in a stable marriage of 7 years, in our thirties, employed, and have a (rented) roof over our heads.  That is more than a lot of kids have coming into the world.  I guess the difference is that many of those children are not planned.  It seems that if you are trying to have a baby you should be more financially comfortable.  But we are not getting any younger and I don’t have any get rich quick schemes up my sleeve.  The best we can do is gradually up the savings account and hopefully find a bigger place to live.  In short, we are going to do whatever it takes to make sure we can provide for this kid.  There's no going back.

Waiting to get pregnant is like being in limbo.  I find myself avoiding things that I want to get involved in because…what if I get pregnant?  Then when I get my period over and over I feel like I’m missing out on that stuff for no reason.  For example, I was thinking about taking courses to become a personal trainer, but obviously that would have to wait until after I had the baby. 

Honestly, I would love to be released from constantly thinking about it so it could just happen and we could be pleasantly surprised.  Like all those smug women who say:  “It happened when we stopped trying.”  But how does one “stop trying” exactly?  Last time I checked you have to have sex to get pregnant.