You’re in your bedroom one night and you are curious to see how you would look as a pregnant woman. Ok. You were not curious because you’ve done this before. You just want to torture yourself.

Your husband isn’t around and so you take an article of clothing, perhaps a sweater or a night shirt, and stuff it down your shirt creating a beautiful (fake) baby bump. You stare at yourself in the mirror, just enjoying your pretend pregnancy. You tenderly pat your belly and do the waddle that you have mastered in your private moments. You stare at your (fake) expanding belly for a little too long and when your husband arrives home, you remove the shirt immediately. He doesn’t need to know how weird you’ve gotten although he already knows this.

You would rarely admit this to anyone, but you have also stuffed some other items under your shirt when given the opportunity.

These fake baby bump items also include:

- watermelon and other pieces of fruit
- a balloon
- a pillow
- Mr. Potato Head
- your coat

Whether you have your period each month or not, haven’t you ever wanted to yell at it? Well, here is your chance!

An open letter to my period.

Dear Menstrual Cycle,

I avoid you like the plague each month but you continue to show up just to say hello. My body usually gives me every indication that you will not be arriving but there you are, just like an unwelcome relative. You arrive like you are going on an all-inclusive vacation: you stay for a week and then make me overeat with chocolate and cake. The only difference is that your all-inclusive vacation is going to cost far less than my fertility treatments.

Period, I don’t want to see you. I know that what you represent is a good thing: a healthy body that is getting ready for babies so why don’t you help me make those babies? It seems like you get worse each month as if to laugh at me. As months drag on, you seem to make me a little more crampy, a little more achy and much more moody. But I will give you some credit, besides the movie,The Notebook, you are the only one that can make me cry in a second. One minute, I am happy and full of hope and the next minute you have arrived, and I am upset and feeling sorry for myself. This all-inclusive vacation will be closed next month so go find somewhere else to go!

Sincerely,

Infertile “Hoping to be Fertile” Naomi

Now it’s your chance, what would your “Dear Period” letter say?

On this blog, we have had many discussions about our obsession with wiping ourselves after going to the toilet. During those 30 days in a month, we spend at least half of the time analyzing the toilet paper. Early on, we pray for a little red to show up that might signify implementation bleeding. Closer to our period, we pray that our underwear will stay nice and clean (how many pairs of panties have we thrown out already?). We are not even really sure what implementation bleeding looks like – is it light pink or brown? We have asked our friends if they had this bleeding and happy to hear that some had not. But most days, we wipe ourselves, then do the look and toilet paper examination.

Follow these simple rules and wiping will be a breeze!

Wipe clear: Have no fear
Wipe yellow: Relax fellow
Wipe pink: rejoice with your shrink
Wipe brown: Not going to frown
Wipe spotty: You’ll be one pregnant hottie
Wipe red: You’d rather be dead

It’s no secret. You will watch pretty much any movie that has to do with infertility. But when the movie, Baby Mama came out, you couldn’t wait to watch it. You would have watched it at the movie theater but you wanted to see it alone, just in case you needed to cry.

In Baby Mama, Tina Fey plays a single woman who waited a little too late in life to get pregnant and explores her fertility options. She decides to choose a young, crazy woman to carry her baby. First of all, Tina Fey plays a 37 year old woman. Is that really “too late in life” to have a baby? If so, we are all in trouble now and especially in trouble if we want a second or third baby! So did this movie actually make you cry? Really? I believe that Fey was actually pregnant during the movie – that’s irony for you.

During your next period, I suggest you rent any of the following movies about infertility, just to rub more salt in your wounds. Get yourself lots of chocolate and enjoy!

Your wedding vows were nice but if you could go back and do it all over again, this is what you should have said…

I (insert your name here) take you (Darling Husband) to be my lawfully wedded husband. I promise to love you and give you all the intercourse you desire (but only on days 10 through 20). I promise to spend the next 4 years trying to conceive our first child and changing from the lovely woman you see here today into a raging hormonal mess. I promise to cry each month when I get my period and take out all of my aggression and mood swings on you. I promise to further create a rocky marriage by forcing you to go to fertility clinics, take numerous sperm tests and turn our sex life into a scheduled appointment. I promise to interrupt your night out with the guys if I’m ovulating and then confide in my girlfriends and your mother about your low sperm count. I promise to throw out all your briefs and make you wear boxers all of the time. I will force you to stop going into hot tubs and make sure that you stay clear of a bicycle. I promise that my thin body will soon turn into whale-like shape due to fertility drugs and weight gain and my skin will break out like a teenager.

Finally, I promise to take you home tonight, on our wedding night, and try to conceive whether you are ready or not for a baby, and hopefully we will be pregnant 9 months from now.

You could have been a gymnast or at least a member of Cirque du Soleil. You really missed your calling.

Your doctor recommended putting a pillow under your behind and laying on your back for 30 minutes after baby-making sex. No urinating either ladies (a mistake you made several times, early on!) But I don’t recall your doctor ever informing you that you need to do a headstand or any other gymnastic pose. But you still continue to do them all.

You have tried:

• a full headstand.
• a partial headstand where you place your hands on your lower back and lift your legs straight above your head.
• lifting your pelvis.
• putting TWO or THREE pillows under your behind (the recommended one pillow is not working out for you).
• laying on the bedroom floor and placing your legs on the wall.
• any other yoga pose.

Your husband continues to be impressed during each of your Cirque du Soleil performances.
If you are interested in tickets, the next performance is days 10-20, every other day.

What other poses have YOU done?

It’s like you’re on The Amazing Race. You must get your husband’s sperm sample to the fertility clinic within 45 minutes.

GO!

You quickly review your options. The clinic is 20 minutes away, 30 in bad traffic. Will you make it if he does his business at home and you race the sample to the clinic? You might make it but just barely. You both decide that it is safer if he gives his sample in the car at the fertility clinic parking lot. Very romantic. But this will maximize time.

Time Remaining: 45 Minutes to get sperm to clinic!
You have driven like a mad woman and you are now sitting in the fertility clinic parking lot. Your husband is looking fearful beside you. “There is no time.” You shout to him and hand him the cup. “GO!” You throw a blanket over top of him and you let him get to work. You turn on the car and play some romantic music – like that will even help. Your husband finishes. You glance inside the cup. Looks plentiful. Good work husband! GO!

Time Remaining: 43 Minutes!
A knock on the car door scares the hell out of both of you. It is the parking lot security guard asking you to move your car. Yikes! You are parked in a handicap spot. As you have lost all of your dignity already, you grab your hubby’s sperm cup and stick it in your bra to keep that sperm warm. The security guard does not look impressed. Neither does your husband. GO!

Time Remaining: 30 Minutes!
Takes way too long to find a parking spot. But you are not panicking as you have half an hour left and you are right outside of the clinic. You’re wearing a short sleeve shirt and the sperm cup is sticking out from your chest. You quickly put the cup under your arm pit. GO!

Time Remaining: 25 Minutes!
Stupid elevator takes a long time. People are staring at you as they notice the cup under your arm pit. Your husband jokingly says aloud “Is that a cup under your arm pit or are you just happy to see me?” You glare at him. GO!

Time Remaining: 20 Minutes!
You arrive on the 10th floor and rush into the fertility clinic. There is a line-up at the front desk. You push ahead and other women holding sperm cups under their pits snarl at you. You don’t care. You thrust it into a nurse’s hand and tell her to keep it warm. She takes it from you and you give a sigh of relief. You start to leave and notice that the nurse has stopped to chat with someone. The cup is still in her hands, getting cooler by the minute. GO!

Time Remaining: 15 Minutes!
You practically fly into her and yell something about cooling sperm. She smiles politely as if she has heard this many times before. She reassures you and takes away the sperm. You have completed the race with 15 minutes to spare!

If you were on The Amazing Race, you and your husband would have been ‘the first to arrive’ and would have won the one million dollars! Instead of winning the money, you will be giving away money to that fertility clinic. One day, at your child’s wedding, you might even tell them the story of your adventures on The Amazing Race. I’m sure they would love to hear that story!

You know you’re obsessed with pregnancy when even morning sickness sounds good to you. But does it really? I bet any pregnant woman would tell you otherwise. Excessive vomiting, non-stop diarrhea, nausea, laying on the bathroom floor begging for saltine crackers – I can see why you would be envious. It sounds absolutely fantastic!

To any woman trying to conceive, the mere thought of any pregnancy symptoms makes us happy, even morning sickness. When you feel nauseated, you get excited thinking you might be pregnant. You throw up from last nights Chinese food, you happily rush to take your basal temperature. You couldn’t be more overjoyed! Yes. We live in a delusional world and I’m sure that when morning sickness actually occurs, you will not feel as overjoyed. You once got ill after eating your lunch which was completely unlike you. You rarely barf. You were convinced that you were pregnant but it also could have been from the undercooked meat. When your period arrived the next day, you convinced yourself that you miscarried.

So ask yourself, would you really give anything to have morning sickness right now? I bet when you get the flu or food poisoning, no one is envious of you! You would really do anything to be a mother and if you are envious of the dreaded morning sickness, you absolutely deserve to be a mama right now.

Remember when girls night out use to be going out for drinks with your best girlfriends and chatting about boyfriends or how it sucks to be single?

Your new Saturday nights now include going to book club and listening while your friends chat about their new babies. You love your friends babies, you really do but sometimes when you are sitting with a bunch of new moms, you have to fake a smile. You often find yourself in the midst of ‘moms night out’ and end up spending most of the evening talking to the only single girl who is probably feeling even worse than you. You will go home and cry to your husband, she goes home, puts on a Rod Stewart album and drinks an entire bottle of wine herself thinking that she will die alone. New moms have a way of chatting endlessly about their babies bowel movements, the latest spit up and the new cute thing that their precious little one did that day. New moms seem to forget that non-moms can’t really relate yet. We try, but we are so engrossed in our own infertility issues that talking about baby Mandy’s poopie diaper isn’t a high priority for us.

Depending on the time of the month, you should really consider if you even want to spend a whole night out with those baby mamas. If you are still in that “I could be pregnant” phase, than go out and enjoy! You might be a mama soon too! But if you just got your period that day, seeing a bunch of new moms and their babies might make you spend the entire evening crying in their bathroom. You decide. Listen, you don’t mean to act like this. You definitely don’t want to feel like this especially because you are truly happy for your friends, but it’s okay that you do. So the next time, you go out for ‘moms night out,’ prepare yourself ahead of time – drink before hand and wear a baggy shirt to make you feel pregnant. It’s a little sick but it’s still okay!

Awww the wonderful world of adult acne due to fertility drugs.

Isn’t it bad enough that you are childless in your twenties or thirties but why oh why do you have to have acne now? Isn’t it embarrassing enough that you spend most of your free time at the fertility clinic but now you have to walk around with a face filled with zits that would scare even a teenager. Sadly, the side effects of a lot of fertility drugs include weight gain (SUPER!) and acne (EVEN BETTER!). You had lunch with a friend last week and you noticed that she kept staring at that large zit planted on your cheek. You ignored her stares and tried to cover up the other zits that were also lingering on your chest. It’s one thing to have adult acne on your face but why do we have to get it on our chest, arms and on our bottoms as well?

When a teenager with braces and head gear starts to laugh and point at you, I will give you permission to cry this time but just a bit.

Everyone has been telling you to “just relax and it will happen.” Oh sure. We really believe that. How could you possibly relax? You’re not getting any younger here and your eggs are aging a little more every day. You have avoided that much needed vacation due to fertility appointments and cycle monitoring for months but now it’s time to try that vacation baby-making sex you’ve heard so much about. Your friends have told you endless stories about how they knew someone who had been trying for years and got pregnant after a trip to Mexico. Your friend’s cousin’s sister’s friend had vacation sex and came home pregnant with twins! Maybe that will happen to you?! You leave for your vacation feeling relaxed and somewhat confident you will come home pregnant. You and your husband have a great trip with lots and lots of baby-making sex, several times a day. All fertility rules are thrown out the window – you can have sex multiple times a day on vacation and your husbands sperm count will still remain plentiful! No sex every other day for you this month!

So when Aunt Flow arrives that following month, you are a little surprised. You start to think of excuses why you didn’t get knocked up. It must have been that two hour time change that made a difference to your internal clock or perhaps your body didn’t adjust well to all that new food. That’s what it was, for sure. Well, at least you had a great trip and spent money on something other than fertility treatments.

The week before your expected period is your week of baby hope. Although we have convinced ourselves that we are not pregnant, we secretly think that we are and will not give up until the last second. We have all those fake early pregnancy symptoms and since we haven’t gotten AF just yet, we still have that glimmer of hope.

And then we see a glimpse of her pink self in our underwear.

We had completed a full toilet paper analysis and were content with the negative results. THEN, we decide to do one more innocent wipe and notice a slight trace of our period. Before complete and utter disappointment sinks in, we still have a glimmer of hope that this could be implantation bleeding. We wipe again and examine more closely. It is very light and when we wipe again, she has disappeared. We let out a sigh and our husband asks if you got your period. You say yes but secretly, you still have a tiny bit of hope that you are not sharing with your husband. Wouldn’t it wonderful if you could surprise your husband later and tell him it wasn’t your period after all? You imagine that little fantasy in your head. You want to do the wipe-and-inspect again but you will wait a few more minutes or a whole hour, if you’re patient. Good news! It’s still so light. It’s barely even arrived! You might head off to bed, feeling a little disappointment but not the full fledge, crying on the floor, hysteria that will come later.

You wake up in the middle of the night with cramps and underwear that needs to be thrown out. Full hysteria will start in the morning.

ODE TO INFERTILITY

‘Twas the night before your period and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring, not even your spouse.
The tampons were waiting in the bathroom with care,
in hopes that Aunt Flow would soon NOT be there.
Your future children were nestled, like dreams in your head,
while visions of cramps start to come before bed.
You’re sure you are pregnant, your breasts are so ripe,
you examine that toilet paper each time you wipe.
But you just might be pregnant, you have all the signs,
so why does this test never show those two lines?
And you cry on the floor until you are ill,
tomorrow you’ll refuse your prenatal pill.
“Come nausea, sore breasts, and frequent urination!”
“On weight gain, fatigue and then to lactation!”
We are getting impatient, our clocks start to tick,
but each month all we do is pee on that stick.
We know more about ovulation than our family doc,
so please fill our womb before our friends newborns can talk!
We thank all of our relatives for those sympathy hugs,
but we’ve spent our whole salary on fertility drugs.
Our spouse has more sex than his full teenage years,
but this time he’s not bragging to all of his peers.
So before our next cycle, lead us the fertile way,
Happy baby-making to all and keep periods at bay!

You have imagined what your life would be like if you had no children. To go through the rest of your life without ever pregnant, ever being a mother, living alone with only your husband. You love your husband very much but if it was only going to be the two of you for the next 40 years, you might just cry right now. Maybe you can’t even bring yourself to even imagine a life without children, so let me take this opportunity to do it for you.

YOUR LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN
Starring You and Her Husband

It is a Saturday morning, you and your 40 year old husband are sleeping late because you went to an all night club and you are both very hungover. All your other friends left the bar by 10pm to get home for the babysitter but not the two of you! You ordered more tequila shots and partied with some guy named ‘Big Billie’ until the wee hours of the morning. But it’s Saturday morning and you have nothing to do all day. You might not even take a shower all weekend! Without the cost of children, you and your husband have purchased a mansion, equipped with a maid and a Swedish pool boy named Sven. Your husband has purchased his dream convertible and you quit your job with your extra wealth. During the weekdays, you both eat potato chips and cupcakes for dinner and drink 5-10 cups of coffee a day. Tuesday evenings are a big night for you both, starting with your 7pm knitting club, followed by a TV marathon of ‘Deal or No Deal.’ Your friends might invite you over for dinner and they brag about their children’s new jobs or weddings. You and your husband smile politely and dream about your upcoming vacation to Paris. You are known in your circle of friends as the couple who decided never to have children. You never correct people or tell them the truth. You just eat extra dessert because, out of all your friends, you still look amazing in a bikini and have zero stretch marks. As you age, you enjoy your remaining years in a luxury retirement village off the coast of Mexico while your other friends live in their grown children’s basements. You leave everything in your Will to your local library. The library dedicates the infertility book section in your names. And that is your legacy.

See. Being childless doesn’t sound so bad…. Right?