February 2007: When I Was Still Smug

So it probably makes sense to explain how I got here. In November 2006, DH and I decided we’d take a fabulous 3 ½ week vacation, traipsing through Southeast Asia with backpacks like we were 10 years younger than the reality (me – 31, DH – 37) and come back and make babies just like everyone else we knew was doing.

I tried not to be smug, because someone very close to me had been struggling with infertility, and so I did not want to take my own babymaking capabilities for granted. But I also had the influence of friends, a la the “smug marrieds” in Bridget Jones’ Diary, who I’ll call the CFs – “the careless fertiles.” They talked about pregnancy like it happened almost reluctantly, like their bodies were just made to make babies and they couldn't stop nature if they tried. And yeah, they seemed proud of it, like it was due to some inherent superiority, not the luck of the draw.

Here’s the problem—I wanted to show these people that you could conceive right away without being so self-satisfied about it. I wanted to wear the badge of fabulous fertility with humility, to prove you could be such a better person while still getting pregnant just by bumping into your husband.

That was probably my first mistake, and the reason I was obsessed. I used an ovulation predictor kit from month 1, made my husband have sex (I’m sorry, but I can’t use the fertility board lingo for that word, because “baby dance” makes me think of Teletubbies and a Maypole, and that’s just creepy) every day for a week. Not that he complained.