My first post!

     Getting pregnant looks so easy, television, movies, the teenager down the street. The girl looks a man, and WHAM! they are sending out baby shower invites and walking around with the big old pregger belly. You hear stories "oh, we weren't really trying, but we weren't trying not to" or "whoops, we weren't super careful with birth control". This gives you a false sense of security, when you are ready for a baby, you just don't use birth control, and baby follows shortly. But what happens when it doesn't? My blog is an insider's view of the dreaded word: INFERTILE. In the US, a couple is infertile when one year of unprotected sex does not result in pregnancy, unless the female partner is 35 or older, then it is 6 months of trying.
    
     No problem right? you just take a little visit to your doc, they fix it, and you're picking nursery furniture. Except that isn't how it works either. First you go in, and they have a little talk with you about being patient, and giving a prescription for a drug called Clomid. It is supposed to ensure that you have ovulation each month. The downside of course is the side effects, because they mimic early pregnancy symptoms, nausea, hot flashes, sore boobs. So you get all the discomfort, but then you also get the torture of your visit from "Aunt Flo" cramps, bloating, all the fun. Just to make the whole thing even MORE fun, your pregnant friends on facebook, at work, and everywhere else will constantly complain of how horrid it is to be pregnant. You want to scream at them how they should appreciate it, reveal in it, delight in it, but under no circumstances take it for granted, this wonderful gift that they have. So you take the drugs, you track your cycles like an obsessive loon with ovulation predictor kits where you pee on sticks throughout the month, you count down till you get to pee on more sticks, just to get a big ole, soul crushing negative. You need someone to talk to you, but infertility is still a taboo subject. Maybe because it is linked to sex, and sex is taboo. Maybe because they don't have a ribbon campaign, walk, run, bike ride, or other publicity stunt like more "acceptable" illnesses. Maybe it is because the women who suffer through it are ashamed, they cannot do what a woman is supposed to do, make a baby, and don't want to admit that failure. Well, I will not stand in the shadows any longer. I am infertile, it sucks, and I won't keep quiet anymore.