Maybe if I write about it, it will be like purging a demon, because getting knocked up is all I think about these days and I am sick of it.
I never thought I would be this woman.
I probably had dolls as a kid, but I don�t have a memory of them. I had a Winnie the Pooh stuffed bear who I totally thought was alive and I screamed in terror when my brother punched him repeatedly in the face. I am not sure if it is because I am the youngest child or if it is just how I was born, but I have never been one to yearn to have a child. In fact, when I was 10 years old, I said to my sister who I caught gazing longingly at a baby in a stroller, that if I ever got pregnant, I would give the kid to her.
I lived my life never really planning in a way that would include having children. I spent very little time thinking about it. Most of my friends lived the same way, so it was never really an issue.
It was not until I lost my own mother that I knew.
At 32 years old, I finally just knew.
It might seem like the wrong reason, that I now see the extraordinary significance of the relationship between mother and child and long to have that returned, but it feels right to me. Plus, I think that I will be good at it.
So, almost 4 1/2 years ago, at a party in honor of my mother who died the month before, I sat at a table surrounded by her sisters, her mother, her girlfriends, her niece and her oldest daughter and laid out my 5 year plan, the first broad plan I had ever made. I told them that within 5 years I would get a better job (check), marry Sasha (check), buy a house (check) and would have the first of 2 or 3 children. I would have needed to be pregnant by last month in order to make that goal. It did not happen.
I have been humping my brains out to no avail. I have been taking my temperature daily at the ass crack of dawn, I have been getting blood tests, I have been peeing on sticks that could predict ovulation, I have been reading the entire internet, using specialty products, ovulation calendars and testing the tilt of my cervix against the slope of the midnight moon.
And then for 2 weeks of every month I wonder if I succeeded and often I convince myself that I have and then every month I am told no.
I feel crazy enough dealing with regular PMS, throw in the constant wondering of �am I or aren�t I� into the mix and I feel just this side of psychotic. It takes up all of my free thought like a bumble bee got trapped in my scull.
The worst part is how it defines the sex. The spontaneous frivolity is gone when you literally have to mark on the calendar the scheduled days to do it.
I never knew it would be this hard. I thought you just had unprotected sex at the right time and BAM! It turns outs that even if you do everything exactly right, you still only have about a 20% chance of success. Now that I am in that �over 35� category, it gets even more difficult.
The tests I have taken so far have been normal. Now it is Sasha�s turn to get his swimmers looked at under a microscope; a rather embarrassing and emasculating day at the doctors for him.
We will continue on and screw like bunnies until we get it right, but there are days when I just want to give up and get a dog instead.