You Mean, That Works?

Things sure can change in a year. One year ago this month, I started charting my basal body temperature, checking my cervical fluid, and using OPKs. I was stunned at what I didn't know about my own body. I'd never really been sure when, or if, I was ovulating. Nor had I ever paid much attention to the various substances that might issue forth from, ahem, down there. I just popped my birth control pill each day -- for fifteen long years -- and remained happily oblivious. What reproductive system?

So the first months of charting felt like a kind of entertaining parlor game, complete with colorful gizmos (my pink BBT thermometer, my white and blue OPK sticks) and miscellaneous knowledge ("traveling might produce delayed ovulation", "the last half of the cycle is called the luteal phase"). You know, like Trivial Pursuit, but with more bodily fluids ("aaah, so that's what egg white cervical fluid looks like"). The real key to winning the game, though, was well-timed sex. And so the carefully planned bedroom dates began. We'd try to have sex three, four, five times before and during ovulation, and lord, did that get old after a while. I mean, I like a good lay as much as the next girl, but scheduled sex is just not that hot.

After a while, I started wondering if all my pieces were in place. Why, for example, was I spotting so many days before my period each month? The search for information on the internet led me to ... the message boards. I read them obsessively, eventually began to post my own messages, and got hip to all those cloying acronyms. (My husband, bless his soul, played along rather than laughing me out of the bedroom, when I suggested we BD. Don't worry, I don't say that anymore. I'd like to forget that part of my TTC past, thank you very much.)

So you see, in those days, trying to have a baby was still all about the SEX. But now, many months later, I find it incredible that women actually get pregnant from having sex. It is so inconceivable that we would conceive a baby just by getting it on, that I can't believe this method works for other people. If I manage to get pregnant in the near future, it will be due to the gentle fondling of a sanitized catheter, not my husband's good lovin'. This crazy idea that babies come from sex is a MYTH foisted on naive, unsuspecting women. Sigh. I miss being one of those women.

Comments

[dish]

This crazy idea that babies come from sex is a MYTH foisted on naive, unsuspecting women.

AMEN, sister!