June 2007: I Begin to Pee on Many a Stick

June brought me early-pregnancy-tests.com. If you are one of those people who likes to pee on sticks, this site is for you. It made financially feasible my obsession with seven pregnancy tests each cycle, because you can buy these little strip tests, instead of the plastic monsters you get for $12 each at the grocery store. They’re really cheap, but they’re even cheaper if you buy them in bulk, so I got like 50. (Which are all gone now.) The one inconvenient thing is that unlike the plastic monsters, which you can just hold under your stream as you pee, with these you actually have to pee in a cup and then stick the strip in the cup. I didn’t have sterile containers, like you're supposed to use, so I settled for Dixie cups. I can't tell you whether this is an acceptable substitute, because I've never had a positive result. Damn those Dixie cups. It's all their fault.

The other thing I found on early-pregnancy-tests.com is Pre-seed, which I’d heard of from my ventures into fertility forums. Pre-seed is a “sperm-friendly lubricant,” which is a fancy way of saying a tube of goo you have to open and insert, right before intercourse, to give the sperm a good place to swim. The female body produces cervical mucus when you’re fertile, so your body does this naturally—usually. But sometimes this goes awry. I’d never had a cervical mucus problem, as far as I could tell, but it felt like extra insurance, even if it made me feel like I was having sex in a puddle.

June also brought me Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition, a very informative book that can turn Type As likes me into quinoa-eating freaks. The basic principle is that many fertility problems are directly related to diet. I’m already a pretty healthy eater, but I decided to clean up my act. I signed up for a local CSA, cut back on meat and dairy consumption, and even used a handy checklist from the book (I actually photocopied it!) to make sure I got adequate daily servings of all foods fertile.

Oh, and I started taking Vitamin B6, which is supposed to help you stop spotting. But I didn’t take enough to make my legs numb, which happens if you OD on it. Because that s*%t can fuck you up.