I'm Pregnant.

I'm not pregnant.

So, I go to the gyno.

As we all (all of us, even this guy, so I assume we ALL) know, this is not the best day, but fine, I’m due, whatever.  Here’s the thing, I haven’t been in a couple of years and I really should, because of all the normal reasons but also because I had LEEP procedure like a decade ago cuz some bad business was taking up shop in my hoo-ha and it’s important to keep checking to make sure they got it all out (they did, but you’re supposed to keep checking).  

And I have been Johnny-on-the-spot with going to get my annual pap every year to make sure we’re all good downstairs but like…just not last year.  I got busy, I hate making appointments, whatever.  I took a year off. 

An IUD prevents pregnancy (and lessens periods)
for 5-10 years (depending on the type) and is a
solid contraceptive option for many women.

Anyway, point is I for sure had to go this year on time because my IUD was set to expire ril soon, which I assume happens in some sort of catastrophic way so I needed to go get that handled before the clock ticked down to zero and, I don’t know, it exploded.  Went sour like milk.  Became sentient.  Whatever, def go see the doctor before that.

So I go in and I’m like, “a couple of things, lady-doctor friend:  My IUD is set to blow, I need my pap, and I just got engaged.”

“Oh!” She says.  “Congratulations!”

Thanks, says I.

“Are you thinking of having kids?”

Yes, says I.

Then she does not say—she did not say these words, Reader, nor were they implied in her manner or tone.  She does _not_ say, “Well, your body is a desolate wasteland, similar in life-sustaining properties to the surface of Mars, as infertile as the dead sea, as barren as the salt flats.”

That is not what she said, Reader.

But it is what I heard.

 She did say something like, well it might not happen at your age, but let’s just pop this IUD out and you go live your life and maybe make a baby!

She pointed to a chart on the wall describing women’s fertility by age.  Then, she did not say, “you’ll notice here you are already stumbling off the cliffs of insanity, there is no hope for you because your eggs are as old, tired, and spent as your bitter, poison heart.”  She did not say that. 

She did point out the steep decline in fertility that happens, on average, at my age right now.

My eggs, marching towards their inevitable destiny.

Then I put my feet in the stirrups, she went on downstairs as I sat wrapped in a paper towel with arm holes, and she removed the IUD.  While she was down there she did the pap and poked around, and 

Who killed the world?  I did.

did not say, “Oh, I see the movie Fury Road was filmed inside of your uterus, perhaps you can use the residuals from that to pay for the fertility treatment you will definitely need, if that is even an option for you any more, you decrepit hag.”  She just yanked the IUD strings—shlooop!—and was like, great, have a good day.

I said, so what do I do for birth control between now and trying to get pregnant?

And she did not laugh out loud at how quaint it is that I, dried husk of a woman that I am, could even think to worry about such a thing.  

She did suggest condoms, the least reliable of contraceptives, or “just pull and pray.”  And that was really the crystallizing moment.  When my gyno suggested the withdrawal method of birth control, that is when I knew it for sure: we are not in Kansas anymore. 

So I leave the gyno—she has given me a pamphlet, and told me to maybe start taking prenatal vitamins—and drive myself home, roiling with feelings. 

You see, I am currently on no birth control.  Just, none.  The house is unlocked.  I have been hyperconscious of keeping the house locked since I was like…born.  And now we’re just…free-wheeling it.  Au naturelle.  I have not been au naturelle since ever, and part of me is 100 percent, to-my-bones sure that I am pregnant already.  Let me be clear-- I was sure I was pregnant as I left her office.  The wind blew, I was pollinated like a flower, there’s somebody in my house.  It must be true, because the house is unlocked and that is what happens when you leave the house unlocked. 

At the same time, I am equally sure that I will never be pregnant, pregnancy is a dream of an earlier era, a time before my fields were salted, crusted, and cursed.  Bathed in the napalm of time.  I am but a memory of a woman, no thing can live inside of me. 

At the same same time, I am suddenly very aware of how weird pregnancy even is.  There is just a thing alive but inside you but of you but not of you, and then at some point it has to come out, and by all accounts that ish sucks. 

So I took a deep breath and very calmly and with complete rationality explained to “Andy” when I got home that I was both barren and pregnant, both at once, for sure immediately right now, both.  Then I proceeded to drink all of the beers because Schrodinger’s Baby needed a nice buzz to deal with it’s weird non-existence existence.

Here are a couple of things that I know: I know that I will be 39 by the time I get married.  I know that any pregnancy after 35 is already considered high risk.  I know that fertility in lady people slants off with time….although, I also know that that data comes from a study on 300 French milkmaids in the 1700s.  Don’t take my word for it, read it yourself.   It is still the study referenced today.

The estimated figure is that miscarriage happens in around
1 in 4 recognized pregnancies,
with 85% of those happening in the first trimester.

I also know that plenty of women lose pregnancies—those numbers are much higher than we recognize, socially.  It is a crushing, devastating reality of life and women don’t talk about it.  Miscarriages are common, and borne silently, often shamefully, alone.

So even if I get knocked up, I know I might not carry to term, and then would have to try again with the echoes of my biological clock crashing through my psyche while my heart mourned a tiny life I never got to know.  




I know we're getting ahead of ourselves here…but let’s not go into this with eyes shut.  Lady-doctor is right, I might not have a baby.

I know enough about how my body works that I am already familiar with all the info in the delightful packet I was given at the gyno’s office:  You can only get pregnant around when you ovulate.  That's actually a pretty small window in your monthly cycle.  You can get a sense of when you ovulate based on things like when your periods are, the quantity and 

Cervical mucus is the most reliable
indicator of your fertility window!
It is made of the same stuff
as man-jam, but minus the sperm.
It gives the sperm something to eat
to keep them alive until your egg drops.

Science!
Biology!
Baby making!

quality of your vagina-snot, and what your cervix feels like. Also your Base Body Temperature but that is less reliable and a pain to track.  

You want there to be sperm around when you’re ovulating, assuming pollen and carnal thoughts have not impregnated you already, so then you get to do fun things like check your mucus and schedule sexy times, obviously making them all the more sexy. 

The pamphlet I got from the doctor’s office pointed out that the ideal baby-making tadpole-load takes 36-48 hours to build up, so don’t bang it out nonstop in your baby-making window because, and I quote, he needs time to ‘reload’.  This is not my favorite tone to find in a medical pamphlet.  To be clear, I am a woman who prefers cold, awkward doctors who are too smart to socialize normally **far more** than folksy, warm, charming doctors who I immediately distrust because they were building their CHA score when they should have been leveling up in INT.  But thank you, helpful pamphlet, for giving me a reason to throw you away.

The point is, I should start tracking my cycle, and luckily there’s an app for that.

Live footage of my uterus right now.

And let’s talk about these helpful fertility apps.  Look, I am a lady person, and I want to make a baby (in the desolate hellscape that is my ancient womb) in the near future (before I hurl myself off the cliffs of fecundity into the cold abyss of sterility) so it is helpful to track the things that indicate when the (negligent, shrinking, rusted over) windows of opportunity groan open.  I get it.  And I can make up charts and spreadsheets and stuff, but the internet has already done that and I can download it onto my phone from helpful companies that presumably want everyone to make all the babies all the time but more likely want to sell all the baby stuff all the time.  But fine.  Sure.  Helpful tool, I get it.

But the apps are like….frustratingly, terribly awful.  Not on the face of what they do, I’m comfortable dealing with my va-goo.  It is not what they do that is the problem, it is the way they do it.  Everything all pink, all the time.  Curly girly fonts and butterflies.  Mermaids and glitter and idk what else, I couldn’t handle it, I uninstalled. 

I am a woman I do not need you to teach me how to be a little girl.

I have never in my life paid for an app, never not once, because there is always a free option I can deal with or I can go without.  An example: I used to do crosswords every night to turn my brain off, but switched phones and the free crossword apps for my new one were garbage.  So now I don’t do crosswords.  I don't have iTunes, because free Pandora is fine.  I have never played candy crush (no, really I haven't, I don't even know if it's a pay app or what.)

I don’t pay for apps.

But now I have a free trial for a fertility app that, when the 30 free days end, I will pay for, because it doesn’t make me feel like I’m in some surreal nightmare celebration of the girliest parts of prescribed girlieness every time I click on it.  I mean—I know I am a female person, otherwise what exactly would I be tracking here, can we please all just get on with it.  Just give me competent, usable tools please, I do not need fireworks in pink (or purple, for my edgy ladies!) to go off every time I check my cervix.  It’s just a cervix.  Like half of everyone has one.  Everyone just calm down. 

I’m not trying to ruin your day if that doesn’t work for you.  I know I’m the strange one.  I once went to a gyno that had plush comfy pink robes instead of paper towels and orchids everywhere and I hated every minute of it.  That’s just me, different things work for different people.  

I also once went to a gyno who was
uncomfortable with me having an std!

But, just some casual info for the Base Body Temperature takers out there, you can buy a digital thermometer for fourteen bucks OR you can buy the same digital thermometer but this one is called a fertility thermometer and it is PINK (also available in purple for my edgy ladies!) for a 

mere thirty dollars.  For a HUNDRED DOLLARS it automatically updates via Bluetooth to your phone, which you are def holding in your hand already while you’re taking your temp because NO ONE DOES THIS just alone, in nature, for fun, and I am sure that service is worth the additional $85.  Did I mention it was pink?!? 

So yeah.  The house is unlocked, but also condemned, and also I want to just burn it down.  I have very rational feelings about the whole situation, obviously.  Schrodinger’s Baby wants another drink.

But I’m probably pregnant tho.