Give Up on Fertility, and Get Pregnant?

I was five days late.  When I mentioned it to my husband, he responded casually “Hmmm, how interesting…” It was Friday night and we had some friends coming over with wine, so I said with a twinge of embarrassment “I think I’ll get a pregnancy test just to rule it out”.  Just another pregnancy test out of hundreds I had taken over the last 4 years in hopes of confirming one of many psychosomatic pregnancies.  I watched as the pink color splashed its way across the window of the test, waiting for the faint line indicating I was pregnant to wash away as it always did.  But, this time it didn’t.  It was faint, but it was there.  I had finally figured out what it takes to get pregnant: categorically giving up all hope of being pregnant.

When my daughter was 18 months we began “trying” for a second.  Six months later I was still menstruating, and the panic set-in.  I was 36, had I waited too long?  I imagined a lock down on the doors of my ovaries, rapidly deteriorating eggs trapped helplessly inside.  I began to chart my temperature and study my cycle with scrutiny.  My Doctor offered no explanation or advice other than a prescription of Chlomid, which comes with a 10% chance of multiples.  My husband was petrified.  I bought an ovulation monitor instead.  I peed on sticks and demanded three sessions during my “height” of ovulation.  I went to see an acupuncturist who prescribed Chinese herbs, which tasted of ash mixed with lemon and caused me to bloat.  My husband, whose stamina in our “pre-trying” phase hovered around reasonably good, suddenly achieved record staying power, nearly unable to ejaculate, such was the pressure I had generated.

Two years passed and it seemed everyone around me was getting pregnant.  My older sister was pregnant with her third, and a good friend who had started trying with me for her first, now lapped me with her second.  Her pregnancy wasn’t as hard to swallow as the trepidation that resounded in her voice when she delivered the happy news.  The fact that my infertility compromised what should have been a celebration struck me hard.  It wasn’t exactly as if people pitied me, but that the quest of fecundity had grown more cumbersome the longer we “tried”.  It spilled over to our family and friends.  It was too much.  We put the condoms back on.