Day Three: Druids DTD

So there are all of these pregnancy blogs,where you can write-in your questions and then other women respond. Based on my own research, doctor visits, and just plain common sense, it appears that the majority of the women answering the questions have acquired their information from the following four sources:

1. Fairy tales
2. Ancient Druid folklore
3. The Christian Coalition
4. USmagazine.com

Just kidding about the last one. That's just where I read about all of the Hollywood Stars who give birth to beautiful, blonde-flecked twin babies at age 45. This, has naturally led me to assume that when I have twin babies, I'll skip out of the hospital with a baby-filled basket on each arm, wearing size 27 skinny jeans (which is a bit redundant; all jeans sized 27 are skinny jeans).

There's this one blog I came across where the women post their picture, their screen name, and then, along the bottom of thier posting, in italicized letters, their due dates, like, "ScreenKitty is due on September 10!" Or, if they haven't managed to get pregnant yet: "Boodles has been TTC for two-and-a-half years." By the way, it may just be a coincidence, but a great many pregnancy blog contributers have feline-sounding screen names.

Which leads me to the acronym thing. Who knew? Did you know? I had no idea. These blogs and listserves and Web sites are filled to the brim with these acronyms. Nowhere is there a key which explains their elusive meanings.

But I have to say that satisfaction I have derived from decifering these little Rosetta Stones is exquisite. Here are the few I managed to disentangle:

TTC= Trying To Conceive
DTD= Did The Deed

OK. So I only figured out two. But I am planning to devote a large portion of the remainder of the evening to Googling more acronyms in the hopes that I'll garner knowledge of this underground society's mysterious language.

Back to the blog and the crazies. One poor woman, MrsPeepers22, started things off asking if it was OK to drink alcohol and take Clomid. Then the deluge began.

SnookyPants102: Well, I wouldn't take a single drink, Clomid or no Clomid, if I was TTC! (Her profile features the italicized "Due in 10 weeks-- it's a girl!")

Then, another woman got into the mix:

PurryFurry1: I agree with SnookyPants102. Why take that risk? I sure didn't take a single sip while I was TTC

Poor MrsPeepers22. Now she's branded as a selfish drunk.

MrsPeepers22: I only asked if it was safe to combine Clomid and alcohol, since I'll be going to my best friend's wedding. I didn't ask for your opinion!

SnookyPants102: Then why did you even ask? (Incidentally, there is a direct correlation between the amount of pontificating and the number of weeks pregnant of said respondents)

Then, it escalates. I can practically hear MrsPeepers22 shrieking when she tries to salvage her reputation:

MrsPeepers22: I didn't ask for your opinion! I just wanted to know if I could combine the Clomid with an alcoholic beverage with no adverse side effects! And, incidentally, I won't be ovulating during this time, so I think it's ok! Furthermoe, I've been TTC for two years now, and if I didn't take a drink in that entire time while ovulating and I'm still not pregnant, why put my life on hold if it may not even happen?

Yeah! MrsPeepers22 kicked Snookypants102 and PurryFurry1 to the curb!

I read on for a bit more -- someone may have implied that MrsPeepers22 should pray more since SHE had been blessed (I HATE that phrase) with a bouncing baby girl after trying for many years, blah blah blah.

I closed the page. But I'll probably go back sometime, just to see if MrsPeepers22 ever changes her italicized status to "Due in...!"

I hope she drank at that wedding and DTD and got pregnant that very weekend. That'll show PurryFurry and SnookyPants.

Day Two: Smoke, Mirrors, and Retractions

I went to yoga today and, during a transition from cow-faced pose to downward-facing cobra, the left-hand side of my uterus pinged me. Must get back to her soon, she seems pissed.

Ouch, though. Of course, I'm figuring that it can't possibly be due to the fact that I twisted the wrong direction during the Warrior pose, it's got to be Clomid making me achy. O. informed me that I will surely feel the ovulation this month, since I told her I never ever feel a damned thing.

By the way, I recommend that you never, ever, read about Clomid online. There are a bunch of stories about Clomid and health insurance. I don't even know if they're real. I clicked on a flashing red box marked "WARNING READ THIS IF YOU PLAN TO TAKE CLOMID!!" while I was reading some how-to-get-pregnant blog, and it was yet another blog, laden with testimonials about not being able to be insured for five years after taking Clomid unless you have your tubes tied.

The whole thing sounds so nuts and crazy and urban-legend like that I stopped reading it and went to my default Web site, People.com. There, I could read about Brittany Spears wearing a see-through top or Tiger Woods spotted at sex rehab or look at Jennifer Aniston's gorgeous, toned, and tanned legs in a dress that cost more than my entire college education.

Sometimes, I look at those celebrities, the women of child-bearing age especially, and imagine how many of them have been through something like what I am going through, or what I'm feeling about getting pregnant or having miscarriages or trying to get pregnant, and their smiles make me sadder still because they can't walk out the door and buy digital ovulation predictor kits without the entire tabloid nation knowing about it. That's really too bad for them. But then they do have those dresses.

Seriously, though, losing a pregnancy or not being able to get pregnant is something so many women share as an experience, even if we don't share it out loud, across the board. Being famous and rich doesn't help the pain. Wait, it does. Never mind. No, but really, truly, this is a situation that is frustrating and sad and sometimes even embarrassing.

And we know, it's the secret no one talks about, we wait until it's safe to tell others, the required three months or even longer, to make sure the tests and the heartbeat and the levels of whatever are just so, before putting our toe in the water to reveal, "I'm pregnant! It's true! It wasn't a stomach bug! I didn't have a stomach cyst the size of a cantaloupe! I didn't not drink because I was detoxing! It was all a ruse!"

Which of course brings us to the fact that all of this smoke and mirrors has to occur in the first place. Telling others that you're pregnant is just making you too vulnerable, too prone to pity. At least that's what it is with me. I'm truly horrified at the thought of people sitting around, tsking, and saying, "Poor poor thing. She lost it, you know. Nine weeks." Or, "Poor, poor thing. And she even started to gain the baby weight. That's got to be tough." Which is why you pretend to detox instead of drinking or, as my husband and I did once, pretend that you are drinking, but have the other person drink the drink for you. All of these smoke and mirrors to avoid the dreaded explanation of what happened. Which, in most cases, is totally and completely unknown.

The first time I got pregnant, I told my dad, but asked him to keep the whole thing under wraps. "Just wait until I hear a heartbeat, for godssakes, dad," I pleaded. And he was like, "Oh, what's going to happen! Everything will be fine!" and then he proceeded to email every last one of his friends. I felt sorry for him on the day that I had to tell him I miscarried. I felt bad about all of the email retractions he would have to write.

Funny, how after that miscarriage, I had more men than women walk up to me and tell me how sorry they were. It's not that the women were any less sorry for me, but the men seemed much more outwardly touched by the news and compelled to express their sympathy. The women in my life were interested in the details of the procedures and the pain (not much) or the tests. We women live the physicality of pregnancy and birth and even rearing children so much more than men do, and my friends' intuitive leanings toward the less emotional and more pragmatic ended up making sense. But I liked how their reactions surprised me about men, and that was a nice thing.

It's almost 7. Only a couple more hours before my next hit. Maybe tonight will be the night that I start with the sweating. Oh, I almost forgot: I also get to lok forward to being more emotional, acting more "female" as my Dr. put it. Really, I thought. What the heck does that mean. I suppose it means that as a "female" I'll go around baring teeth or falling into weeping fits. I've reminded P. that this emotional collapse is impending. He has brushed it off for now, but I'm worried. I wonder if I won't have my head about me. I picture it like when people turn into werewolves of Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde, and I have no control over my actions, I'll upturn tables, eat the heads off of chickens, kill prostitutes in Victorian England, and then wake up with a raging headache, without the slightest idea of the havoc I wreaked.

I think I'll make dinner before I take the pill, just to be on the safe side of possibly poisoning my poor husband.