Getting Pregnant’s Evil Twist

We try our whole sexual life not to get pregnant and then when you want to you can’t. Well some of us can’t. Our best friends, sisters and relatives for some reason don’t have the same problem. But for those of us that share this experience it’s a challenge we didn’t expect.

How did this happen? We have been warned, scared to death, ran to the drug store hoping no one would see us buy a pregnancy test kit the day after we were late, faced the probability, analyzed the guy we were with, the time in our life and contemplated parenthood all in the 3 minutes the test took to say “no you are not pregnant.” This is all we were thinking, “Dogged a bullet. Must be more careful.” It has been drilled into us for years.

So what’s up with the cruel duality? Is it that you can’t have what you want when you want it or is there some cosmic force or puppeteer playing with us? Our next step is to blame ourselves. It must be me. I should have exercised more, I should have eaten better, I should haven’t experimented in college, I waited too long, I’m too old, I shouldn’t have… No, No it’s not you. It’s life. And life, our life, my life, your life, doesn’t always go as planned.

Thanks to the women who went before us and the pressure they applied to doctors, family and friends. A few people set out to help those of us who didn’t happen to get pregnant on their wedding night or the day they got engaged or five minutes after you and your husband or partner decided to have children. For the rest of us we got help. Help that didn’t exist before. Help for what other dear women were labeled…barren.

Thank you to the brave women who went before us. Thank you. And shame on the press that labeled your beautiful child a test tube baby. Shame on you; some of you have children or grandchildren that you labeled as such. They are a gift, no matter how we got there and maybe even if we didn’t. But they are not different, no less special and no less loved because their mom and dad had help. Help for the very thing that we first thought might happen if we sat on a public toilet seat or kissed a boy, to later worrying it had happened by accident almost every month of our life.