Where all the bologna about fertility stops.

[showmyads] When someone raises the topic of fertility, my reflex is to either figuratively or literally cup my hands over my ears and say in an obnoxious sing-songy way, "LALA LALALA CANNOT HEAR YOU, HAVE NO INTEREST, LALALALA CHECK PLEASE." Because talking turkey about fertility, with anyone, at any time, generally falls into two buckets.

The first is the Hyper-Vigilant Bucket. Fertility talk in this bucket is usually about timing and regulating and monitoring and waking up to check temperatures and peeing on PH sticks and charting and doing all manner of things that make me nervous. I'm nervous talking about this vigilance about fertility because it seems competitive. Like a biology lab report on which one is trying to get an A. Yet, I understand that many, many men and women are forced to become hyper-vigilant about fertility because leaving it to chance has not netted the desired results. I get this and I am sensitive to it. But I wonder if all of our resources, online and otherwise, have not created a more vigilant than necessary monitoring of fertility and ovulation and ultimately serves to make us more nervous than we ought to be. By nature I am not a list maker, an organizer, someone who knows where to find a ruler, someone who refers to charts or maintains them unless forced to do so. Hyper-vigilant Fertility talk gives me agita because it is anathema to the way I choose to do things.

The second is the Hocus Pocus Bucket. Fertility talk in this bucket is based on nonsense. Old wives tales. Research conducted before electricity, before birth control pills. Fertility talk herein is treated as something that one can control by avoiding certain maladies, like sitting on a cold bench or floor, or eating too much cheese.

*** The day I turned 26, I cried the entire day. There were brief interludes where I stopped crying. I spent the day in fetal position convinced that I was going to have a very difficult road to getting pregnant.

The pathetic truth about my 26th birthday is that I had not even tried to get pregnant. I was just convinced, based on my health history, and based on the ninnies at church who looked askance at me, married for a whole year and not yet pregnant, that I was going to be an epic fertility fail.

Six months later I was pregnant. I do not wax boastfully about my fertility or good fortune. If anything, I grieve continuously with those whose fertility journeys have been challenged or anguished by very real struggles. I know the private pain they carry is often too heavy to bear, to face the cruelty of another day. Conception and pregnancy have not been complicated ordeals for me, except in my own head. I was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be cursed. Based on what the Fertility Buckets had poured into me.

***

I have grappled with the nuances of Fertility Talk on my own until I read this article in this month's Atlantic Monthly. Absolutely everyone who is poised to have a baby or have a conversation about having a baby should read this article. The author goes to the raw source of data that has informed much of our fertility knowledge in the industrialized world. The data will astound you. After discussing the article with a friend who is in in her early thirties, she said, she felt so relieved and so much more peaceful about the future. And oddly, so did I. Even though my fertility journey feels over. At least for now. I felt more peaceful because of the truth of the article and because of the lack of competition it fostered. Fertility is not a sport or a magic trick. It is a blessing from which many more blessings may flow, and possibly for many more years than was once thought.

If you read the article, what did you think?

The way we were

Before we owned real estate with plummeting valuesBefore we slept an average of five fitful hours/night Before we ever knew the meaning of the words IRS Audit Before we ate cold snacks for 75% of our meals Before we considered a "date night" a free lunch at the school cafeteria with only one of our children pilfering food off our trays Before we worked multiple jobs Before we moved across states Before grocery shopping on a Saturday night was the weekend m.o. Before sleeping in past 8 a.m. was pure decadence Before "vacations" entailed spending a week at our parents' houses Before we bandied about names like Ferber and Princess Presto and Chuck the Truck Before we really knew what it was to be stretched to the ends of our resources and sanity, meaning before we really knew what it was to pray and to love...

...this is what we looked like:

For realios.

And to think.

The goodtimes hadn't even begun.

Choice Move

"So, how's packing coming along?" Other variations of this questions include, "Are you all packed yet?" and, my favorite, "Did you already pack the weapons of mass destruction?" Actually, no one has asked me that final question, but my answer would of course be, Dude, those get packed LAST along with the toothbrushes and beef jerkey. I think it is fair to say that no one really cares how packing is coming along and if you are all packed yet. Just like no one really cares if your six month-old is eating solids yet. But what else is there to ask? What other riveting things does a six month-old do? There are no other conversation starters about a wee baby that do not end with a simple yes or a no. Has he found his toes? Yes. Does she enjoy her tubbies? No. See? At least the question about solids invites a whole produce aisle of possibilities. Excitement!

But I will answer the forced question of how packing is coming along. I would say that we are about 40% packed. We don't have a lot. I've been organizing and purging for months. It's just carving out the time when two rhesus monkeys aren't commandeering me as a jungle gym. Packing entails permanent marker and there is nothing rhesus monkeys like more than for giving themselves temp tattoos with blue Sharpies. And after tending to primates all day, who has energy to pack? I ask you.

Mostly how I've been spending my time is the same way I always spend my time: not cleaning my home, frantically cleaning my home because someone is coming, building couch forts for rhesus monkeys, reading Fancy Nancy books, cooking vegetarian, sucking air at Baby Boot Camp, and trying not to get caught naked post-shower by the sneaky contractor who comes like the wind (who has been working on the ceiling of our basement). Ahhh!

Anyway, we're doing okay. Packing-wise and emotional-wise, we're pretty all right. I think this move would be a whole lot worse This move would totally be craptrocious if it was under duress and if it wasn't our choice. Moves are so much nicer when you've got time to pack and think and say proper good-byes and go to J.P. Licks every day just so you have the sense memory of Coffee Oreo locked and loaded.

I realize in this respect that I've been profoundly lucky, ya know? I've chosen all the moves I've made in life.

Here's my resume:

1. 1980 - Mother's womb --> Outside World: I totally chose when to evacuate. It was getting crowded up in there. 2. 1986 - House in Cleveland suburb -->Bigger House in Other Cleveland Suburb: There was a basement the size of a McDonald's and that was putting the groovy in my smoothie. 3. 1998 - House of Girlhood --> Spacious Dorm with Malibu Barbie Roommate: I didn't get to choose the roommate but we got along famously, and I did choose the wellness floor because SURELY EVERYONE would abide by the substance-free rules ALL YEAR and we would just eat carrot sticks and do yoga in the study lounge for periodic study breaks. 4. 1999 --> Best RA Room Ever: Got my first choice on the best floor with the bestest RD. That was one of the best choices I ever made.

5. Fall 2000 --> 2nd Best RA Room Ever: The room smelled like cabbage all the time but the floor and my co-RA were amazing. As was my RD. 5. Spring 2000 --> Swish Apartment in DC: Happiest semester in all of college as an intern. 6. 2001 --> Palacial RD Suite: I could do, like, eleven cartwheels in a row in that room and not hit a wall. Plus! My own bathroom 7. 2002 --> Lovely apartment with wainscotting and Anglophile roommates.

8. 2005 --> Lovenest with Newly Minted Hub

9. 2007 --> Our first home where we owned the walls

10. 2011 - Woah.  Tennesizzle will be my tenth living space.

What about you? What's your living space resume like?