I got my period yesterday. Nothing special there, nothing remarkable, per se... except that it means, to me, that I'm a failure. As a woman, a married woman with doctor-certified healthy eggs and a good job and a strong marriage, who wants to have a child... I have once again failed at the process. It's nature's very own rejection letter. It's "Don't call us, we'll call you". It's "We'll keep your resume on file, best of luck in your future endeavors.
And it's becoming quite tiresome.
Trying to conceive a child starts out as an exciting, downright giddy, miraculous process, where you can elbow your friends knowingly and say "Hey, the practice is half the fun!". You can joke with your husband about the 'drudgery' of trying to conceive, while putting on slinky lingerie and lighting white candles to make your life feel like a porno movie.
But then months pass. And you keep fooling yourself. You think your breasts are getting bigger and maybe a bit tender (like the experts say they should), but they aren't. You think you're nauseated... but you're not. You think you're going to miss your period and get that blessed BIG FAT POSITIVE, that second blue line on the home pregnancy test. You convince yourself you're pregnant. But you aren't. In the Embryo Creation Cult, we call this BOB... Baby On the Brain. You tell yourself that it's alright. You cry for a few days and then jump back on the horse, so to speak... assuring yourself that "when it happens... it happens."
And then the family starts to talk. "Weren't you trying to get pregnant a few months back?" "What's WRONG WITH YOU that you can't get pregnant?" "Do you make sure to do it doggy style/in the morning/with no lube/late at night/after sacrificing a weasel to Og?" And you have no answer except... I failed. It's not working. Something IS wrong with me. Women in Detroit can have three children, kill two of them and be pregnant with a fourth and I can't even do it once.
And then you start taking temperatures. You make charts, you eat things like yam root and saffron and green tea and spinach, and still the baby doesn't come.
So, co-workers, family members, friends, noders, lovers... pay it no mind when I snap at you angrily this week. I urge you to just brush it off and know that next week, when I'm ovulating, my good spirits will have returned. But right now, in 'the cult', we call this AF, Aunt Flo, Cycle Day Three, a thumbs down stage in a roller coaster race which seems to have an ever changing finish line.