It really would be easier if they came from a stork.

I got my period yesterday. I attribute my being upset to my want-it-now generation. The generation of text-messaging and the “Buy it Now” button on Amazon. Matt and I have been trying for six months. Six months is not very long, and terrifically short for a 27-year-old, but realizing you once again got your period, in your work bathroom, after no less than half a dozen friends or colleagues mentioned they got pregnant “without really trying”, is still a lonely experience.

And it’s not for a lack of trying. On our second month I bought a fancy ovulation machine and pee on sticks half the month. (It goes without saying how very sexy that is.) My GI said I sure do like to drain the romance out of the situation, and I had to smile sheepishly. I have gone back to the gym, and although I’m stronger, I’ve combating any weight loss progress with double helpings of curry when I return home. You know I’m getting serious when I put the serving spoon down. (Well, that part hasn’t happened yet, but I swear, on all that is holy and my reproductive system, I will stop eating leftover brownies for breakfast and eschew white rice, I swear it!) On a related note, why, oh why, must fertility be tied to weight?

People always say it happens when you’re not stressed, se la vie, go on a vacation and wham bam, it will happen! I know they mean the best, and I’m sure there is some science to it, but I notice it’s always people with kids who say that. Regardless, we went to update our passports three weeks ago. I’m thinking a cheap all-inclusive in the Caribbean, although Matt is stuck on Machu Picchu. I told him that altitude is not conducive to romance, but mainly I just want to get out of having to walk the arduous Incan Trail.

Even with my obsessive, worry-wart personality, there’s levity in the situation. First of all, it’s been six stinkin’ months! I mean, really, Kathryn, calm the hell down. Secondly, it has created a lot of off-color bedroom talk between Matt and I. Jokingly I’ll say it’s Matt’s fault, he must be sterile, and he’ll laugh and shoot back I’m barren. Or I’ll say his sperm are lazy and probably taking a smoke break, and he’ll say something about it being an epic journey for them and they’re heading for almost certain death, so I should be nice. Okay: maybe you have to be there.

I told my GI that my surgeon said I have knots of scar tissue flanking and circling my fallopian tubes, and you know what her response was? “I wouldn’t worry about that so much; I would be more concerned about that raging infection you had in your body.” Matt and I like to joke about that too. We know having, or not having, a biological child isn’t the end-all, be-all. We know we’d wouldn’t do rounds of in vitro if we do indeed have any issues: it is what it is. We’ve always talked about adoption (being a fertile Myrtle or not), but have brought it up even more so now. But I can’t deny it wouldn’t be, at least at first, disappointing to not see what our biological child would look like, or how he or she would behave, because obviously they would have a lot of panache, be blazingly witty, and be tall and oh-so-elegant.

Or, heck, maybe they would just be really hairy, like Matt. It’s on those days I hope for a boy.