For today’s Challenge writing, I decide to post a piece I wrote in August 2007. And never shared or tried to publish. Sharing my work, my thoughts is an important part of my personal challenge, so I may occasionally include something I wrote long ago. I’m excited!

This one is about trying to get pregnant for the first time in 2002. After a miscarriage, we were successful in 2003 and gave birth to our first son, Ben in February of 2004. But, in the process of trying to conceive, this happened…

We’re Fertile, I swear! 

After all those years of daily pink pill intake and defying the 3% risk of condoms, I wondered: Would the machinery actually work? I finally met the man of my dreams, we took a year to enjoy the impact of marriage (four and a half years of dating), and decided it was time to start popping out babies. By this time, I was 38 years old; he was 40. 

Now that we were ready, I was anxious to get started, anxious for success. Unlike my meandering self at 28, at 38, I appreciated efficiency, quick and dedicated execution of plans. But, of course, getting pregnant naturally doesn’t exactly work like that. Especially when you are into those late thirties and forties. How I began to lament and grieve all those years of recreational procreation wasted.

Like women at any age, I heard the inevitable advice and wives tales: Missionary for a boy, reverse that for a girl, headstands after sex to help the swimmers; get him to start wearing boxers, Robitussin before sex, measure your mucous ( I didn’t know!), just do it every other day. Tums and past-date prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet were tossed in a drawer to make room for ovulation kits and Walgreen’s home pregnancy tests. A basal temperature chart and thermometer and a stack of books sat on my bedside table. Among them the bible of pregnancy, What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

But we’re old, biologically-speaking. So after only a few months of trying, I convinced the nurse practitioner to sign us up early for the Infertility Clinic. Could the name be any worse? For months, I refused to use it. And it was worse once we arrived at the mandatory Infertility Class that would allow us to access the drugs, tests and reproduction specialists we sought. For women my age, this right is yours after six months of trying, after a year for women under 35. That’s what it says in the hospital’s Infertility Handbook under the title, “When Should I Worry?” Great.

My husband was already seated in a rigid plastic chair when I sprinted into the basement meeting room at Kaiser and took another torture chair beside him. He returned my nervous grin with one of his own. Around us were other stiff or squirming couples and single women in the hodge-podge rows of leftover chairs. 

“Welcome to Infertility Class,” smiled Nurse Donna. The overhead screen questioned in three-foot black letters, “What Is Infertility?” 

“Yes, this evening, we’ll talk about infertility.” Infertility. INFERTILITY.

“It really hasn’t even been six months,” I wanted to announce. “We may be as fertile as can be!” It was the first time I felt a sort of animal pride in the ability to reproduce. It took me by surprise. The pressure to be fertile was immense. We would be failures if we were unable to procreate, a shame to our ancestors. We’d be banned forever genetically from our species. 

Evelyn started covering the Art of Conception, and I was stunned by how little I really knew about my body. Labeled pictures of female and male anatomy that I remember vaguely embarrassing from high school biology flashed on the screen. I felt like I had never really seen them before. Unlike in high school, I stared with rapt attention. 

The most fascinating and important information was about the hormones involved in childbirth, giving me new respect for those hormones that I so often complained about and blamed for my poor behavior. 

There’s progesterone and good old estrogen. They are responsible for maintaining the lining of the uterus and are thus involved in menstruation. Prolactin is a hormone made in the pituitary gland in the brain that stimulates milk production. Too much prolactin can cause you to have irregular periods and sometimes trouble ovulating. I thought I might have that. When we attended the class, I was on day 73 since my last period, not uncommon for me. Even in high school. But unnerving, given the task at hand.

FSH and LH are important ones. FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) stimulates the growth of the egg within the ovary while LH (luteinizing hormone) stimulates ovulation or the release of the egg. That one, LH, became my particular favorite, though I know I shouldn’t choose. They all work in tandem.

We left the class ready for conceptual battle, armed with prescriptions and lab requests. I had several directives: a pregnancy blood test, Rubella and HIV blood tests, progesterone to stimulate menstruation, a new basal chart day 1 of my cycle, test for FSH day 2, and test for progesterone day 21. 

Doug only had one test. But it was THE test for men: the sperm sample.

That had been a highlight of the class. Nurse Donna’s favorite stories were sperm stories. She told about the good Catholic, who waited until everyone else had left after the Infertility Class to approach her with his problem. It was against his religion to masturbate. He was a good Catholic. What could he do? Nurse Donna patiently explained that he could ask his partner for some help in the matter. 

Men have a choice where they produce the semen. They can occupy one of the specimen rooms in the basement lab to fill their cups or do it elsewhere and bring it in within one hour, keeping the sample warm in transit.

The good Catholic dashed in with his sample from home, head down, face hidden in the collar of a raincoat, and in his complete embarrassment, thrust his cup quickly on the counter and rushed out. With the lid lose, it fell over, spilled and he had to do it all over again.

My favorite story was of the man who, taking very seriously the idea of keeping his sample warm, presented his cup to the lab receptionist perched on a pillow, with a scarf carefully wrapped around it, his sacred offering.

My husband was a good sport and decided to just visit a specimen room on his way to work one morning. The lab doesn’t accept samples on weekends. I was a bit concerned, wondering how he would manage in the sterile atmosphere. 

He called me that afternoon with his report. “Not my most stellar performance,” he declared, “but the sample is in.”

I started right away on the progesterone I picked up from the pharmacy that evening. Ten days of it and I should start menstruating. Day one, I felt a mild, pleasant euphoria. Day two, I was crawling out of my skin. My whole body tickled and itched from the inside as I squirmed in front of my computer at work. I finally just had to go home. But it worked, which was reassuring. Then I started the daily chore of taking my temperature as soon as I woke up. 

The tests came out mostly positive. My progesterone level was low, possibly indicating, among other things, that I might not be ovulating regularly. But that made sense to me with my irregularity. Doug’s swimmers were active and not two-headed or mutated. The volume and count were just below normal. He blamed it on the three-hour delay in testing we saw on the lab results and vowed to retest. But the doctor assured us it was fine. It’s hard not to take that kind of thing personally.

I tried to relax that month. I figured you have to be relaxed to get pregnant. I became very stressed out about relaxing. Then I realized that mothers of seven in the past frequently had an eighth. And they certainly couldn’t have been relaxed! 

Were we fertile? We would see. But we were in the clinic, which meant that we’d get some of the best care you can get in an HMO. And we could call and ask the Infertility Nurses any questions we had. Like about the Robitussin. It’s true, as it turns out, thins the mucous, which is thicker when a woman ovulates, and lets the sperm through. Who knew?

And desensitized to the name, I can finally say it  . . . infer . . infertil . . . well, it depends on the context.