The Projected Progenitor

Epic IUI Fail.

2011-02-14T16:40:00.004-05:00

Six years ago today, the Projected Pops asked me out on a date. Or did I ask him? I don't know. I do know it involved late night bar food and cider beer and a single red rose. Probably, he wore his then-uniform love-bead necklace and I sported pigtails and we both got carded for being plenty old enough to drink but not yet wearing our ages in those little wrinkles around our eyes, the lines in

Insemination Day.

2011-02-05T08:11:00.005-05:00

At 10:42am this past Wednesday, amidst the ferocious ice storm we braved for just this occasion, the first of two vials of Projected Pops was introduced into the likes of my anteverted uterus via a procedure known as intrauterine insemination (IUI) or, if you prefer the antiquated and un-PC term heralded by people who like to point out/disparage the obvious, artificial insemination. Whatever.

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42...

2011-01-13T17:08:00.013-05:00

On the heels of The Worst Year Ever, I played the lottery. And won. Not the alluded-to “Mega Millions,” mind you. A hundred and fifty bucks. The same as 19,000 other Lost fans who put their money on Hurley’s unlucky digits and reaped a modest reward. I couldn’t have been more pleased. 2011, I decided instantly, was going to be different. Better. A vast improvement over the previous 12 months, for

Resolving to see it through.

2011-01-05T16:49:00.003-05:00

It’s been a while. I guess this venue is not really my best source of stress relief. It was great for me when I was still excited about this whole baby-making process. When things get bad I tend to just shut down. Don’t get me wrong, I am still excited about making a baby especially with my wife who I think is the bee’s knees. This just isn’t what I had envisioned as the

Auld Lang Syne. Please and thank you.

2010-12-26T09:08:00.001-05:00

The waiting room at Lexington's Reproductive Science Center is ornamented with the glossy pages of magazines, professionally-framed and showcasing the latest good our doc has done by countless other Aspiring Progenitors. There is a full-scale coffee bar off to one side, ergonomically-pleasing computer work stations for patient use to the other... current editions of periodicals spanning a myriad

Our house is a very, very, very fine house.

2010-12-18T08:31:00.010-05:00

This lapse in communication brought to you by our latest several hundred thousand dollar purchase!Conveniently situated a mere six miles outside Boston and 10 minutes from a major fertility clinic, this two-bed, one bath town home features gleaming hardwood floors throughout, deeded parking and easy access to the Minuteman Trail! Seriously. Last month, we moved into our "starter" home. I love

Status update: Infertile!

2010-10-20T20:02:00.017-04:00

In a former life (or, say, this one last year) I might have questioned whether it was a slow day for news. As it was, the story held my interest like so many bombs in Baghdad or a car crash involving my next door neighbor. "Infertile on facebook," ran the headline. It appeared in The Washington Post. The story followed one gal - who could have been any Infertile Myrtle with a presence on the

Dad's Dish: C'mon!

2010-10-15T18:11:00.009-04:00

Kid,Well, today I got word from Mom that we will soon be starting a process that will inform us (we hope) just why you aren't in our lives yet. We've been trying really hard to make it happen, you know? We found out just last week that 11 tries to make you exist didn't cut it. We will need to take some extra measures to get to hang out with you. That is fine with me. I would do just about

Why it's ok to be number two. Or 10. Whatever.

2010-10-04T20:20:00.010-04:00

Dear Kid, Once upon a time, Dad and I took our first vacation since our honeymoon two years earlier. It was nothing especially elaborate, a weekend-long getaway to Kennebunk. We stayed in this inn along the beach, ate too much and drank nothing in the hopes there'd be you. We bought a painting in an antique shop on Ocean Avenue: a tribute to Modigliani in the long, lean, colorful face of a lady

I'm not on no yellow brick road.

2010-09-02T12:51:00.004-04:00

By and large, we're keeping our little journey under wraps. We've decided that what for all the anxiety it's bound to produce in our every female family member, friend, acquaintance, and almost-stranger - and what for how we expect they're likely to remind us all about it just when we'd like to forget - we're not going to tip them off about our fertility woes until much later. Later. As in after

Add eggwhite (cervical fluid, that is), then blend.

2010-08-26T17:08:00.011-04:00

The year was 1984. The toddler version of me had, if not just discovered my parts, just discovered that every time I made to check 'em out my mom got mad. Nay, pissed. "Good girls don't touch that!" By "good," of course, the grown-up version of me deduced she really just meant sheepish, body-backwards, under-informed. And by "that" she meant, well...my vagina. So it was that I'd spend practically

Or ever.

2010-08-11T13:51:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, my 'rents staged a visit: mostly lovely excepting the part where my mom went home and facebooked a picture she took of the cat. She captioned it, "My grandchild...for now." And this one half a self-respecting very-probably infertile couple thought to herself those two words that would make any over-eager would-be grandma cringe, incredulous: Or ever. See, this aspiring grandmother

Spawnless Sleuths and Sexcapades.

2010-07-28T08:30:00.011-04:00

The wedding was lovely, and what for all the romance in the air we made to get knocked up right there in this little inn in the Pocono Mountains a stone's throw from where my sister, all her friends, our family (and not least of which my parents) were shacking up for the night. Or maybe, for a change, we just felt like having sex. Relish the moment.As anyone who makes to get knocked up (and

All dressed up.

2010-07-09T12:47:00.010-04:00

It's been nearly eight months since that January night when we first decided to give baby-making a go, seven months since we started this blog in the hopes of surprising our family and friends with our pregnancy story, seven months since we first started charting my cycles and timing our "baby dance," seven months since I checked out every pregnancy-related piece of literature at our local free

An Ode to Ex-Boyfriends - and Trysts in the Park.

2010-06-09T09:43:00.016-04:00

The following post first appeared on this Would-Be Ma/Pa's wedding website approximately two years ago. It is reproduced here with our permission. * * * My hubby tolerates my additions to the Netflix queue: foreign titles, documentaries about the plight of kids at evangelical church camp, indie dramedies awarded top prize for leaving audiences scratching their heads about whether what they just

The Wizard of Odds.

2010-05-17T07:41:00.011-04:00

I was never any good at mathematics; the fact that I've become the next best thing to a statistician specializing in the odds of knocked-uppedness surprises me, too. And while I always adored the sciences, I had no formal training to prepare me for these forays into reproductive medicine. Don't believe me, I'm not a doctor - though I sometimes play one on the Internet. It goes like this. We've

The Temp, J.D.

2010-04-23T18:01:00.011-04:00

Till now, my heightened state of excitement - nay, bliss - around Project Maybe Baby kept me from focusing too intensely on the metaphorical gray cloud looming overhead: the cloud that, when it burst, as many a gray cloud is apt to do, rained heavy with upset. (Think: Still awaiting bar exam results and losing confidence by the second that I could ever be among the slightly better than unpitiful

Flushing hope, period.

2010-04-06T13:16:00.021-04:00

It all started when I was newly nine. My mother handed me a maxi pad, all pretty in pink plastic wrap, informed me I was officially a "woman," and said that this was that thing she'd talked to me about. The bloodied Barbie underpants? The crampy tummy? It was my period. It had happened to me like it would happen to each of my girlfriends eventually and it'd keep on happening until it didn't

On failures to launch, ungreasy wheels and other sexchanical malfunctions.

2010-03-24T13:52:00.013-04:00

The stars say I'm a Virgo, but my interest in sweet lovin' rivals the most true-to-form Scorpios of which my spouse is markedly atypical. I've got myself a surprisingly voracious appetite for...you know and he, well. Eh. Truth be told, where my main squeeze set to worrying that Sex for a Purpose would get old fast (and he appears to have been right), I was just thrilled for an excuse to knock

Oy vey, bubala: The Passover Pre-You.

2010-03-21T10:59:00.016-04:00

Dear Not-Yet Spawn:Back in the spring of 2010, your Dad and I decided to host a seder for the faraway fam you call Bube and Zeidy and Nan and Pops. It would be the first time we played holiday host to all four of the Prospective Grandfolk since that time, back in 2007, when the 'folk got introduced at Thanksgivings after which we got engaged, then married, then worked on you. And oy vey, bubala!

Morphology.

2010-03-17T08:56:00.013-04:00

Cyber space is a wealth of fun little apps for people awaiting bar exam results who, say, also aspire to get knocked up. Take, for example, Morph Thing, a site which allows a Projected Progenitor to upload a couple of pictures of herself and her partner - or just one, after which she'd select her Baby Daddy/Mama from a gallery of celebs - to morph into something like what her kid might in fact (

Dad's Dish: Avoiding the cup.

2010-03-11T09:42:00.011-05:00

Wow, so all that "bonin'" and no luck! It makes sense, however, cause all the experts in all the literature out there scream that the stars have to be perfectly in line for even the healthiest of would-be parents to conceive. "They" say that my wife and I (and only if we're said healthiest folks) have a maximum 25 percent chance of getting pregnant in any given month. "They" say not to worry,

What Not to Say (Ever): The Pre-Pregnancy Edition!

2010-03-08T14:22:00.018-05:00

Sex Capades notwithstanding, we're not pregnant. Enter: Monthly period and menstrual cramps from hell compounded by the realization that this business of getting knocked up is, in the best of circumstances, going to take a hot second. And, oh yeah, there's this.It appears as if everyone I encounter these days is pregnant or just had a baby or wants to talk about babies and how it is that, because

Genetics and a grown-up mutant ninja mama!

2010-03-04T15:17:00.011-05:00

It's like this: They had the best intentions, see, but my own mom and dad spawned something of a genetic mutant in yours truly. A rad, ninja mutant, but still. On the one hand, there's Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (otherwise known as MODY). It walks/talks/acts just like Type II diabetes except without the classic risk factors of age and weight and, sometimes, sans the complications of

And speaking of friends...

2010-02-28T07:44:00.005-05:00

Not to be outdone, of course, are the best friends we've already got who, even if they're not trying to get knocked up - even if they're trying not to, in fact - are the four people we've trusted enough to tell the whole truth about our prospective parenthood.Our bffs are the family we chose for ourselves. Second only to one another, these four very probably know the grown-up versions of my hubby

Friends in fertility: Message board mamas not always good company.

2010-02-27T08:55:00.010-05:00

Apropos of nothing, my most highly fertile days this month coincided with the dates of the bar exam so that, inbetween taking a last-minute peek at flash cards and outlines, the hubby and I embarked on a marathon "bonin' spree." We rallied. It was practically heroic.* But was it effective? Eight to 12 days will tell. Of course I know, because Google tells me, that women experience early pregnancy

Dad's Dish: Go time!

2010-02-22T14:11:00.020-05:00

It's go time! This morning one purple stripe matched another purple stripe, there was a dip in basal body temperature, and, now, "egg white" quality cervical fluid. As my wife so romantically puts it, "It's time for some bonin'." The doctor told us we've got nothing to worry about: to have some fun and report back in a few months if our "fun" is unsuccessful. But we don't like to listen. We're

The Allegory of the Bar Exam.

2010-02-15T15:44:00.011-05:00

In one week's time, I'll have my very first go at the bar exam: the formidable test that ultimately determines whether I get to call myself an attorney or whether I'll remain, for now, The Projected Progenitor, J.D. For the past several months, I've committed myself to pouring over thickish outlines, flipping through flash cards, tuning in to lectures in conjunction with a very expensive

Dad's Dish: Now and then.

2010-02-13T16:53:00.010-05:00

Valentine’s Day, as corny as it sounds, was a great opportunity for us to get over our individual shyness and “make eyes” at one another. Now, here we are, four years and 364 days later, blogging about our attempts to expand the family. Pretty cool how things work out. One day you’re worried about when Phish is coming to town, whether you’ll be able to score a ticket to the

The right time for a Fertile Frugalista?

2010-02-11T16:04:00.018-05:00

I'm a classic left brain, a methodical thinker. Well-reasoned. Prepared. (I was a Girl Scout, for Christ's sake!) No surprise, then, even getting knocked up is part of the master plan. Sure, we're pulling enough to cover baby basics, but trust me, it hasn't somehow escaped me that our would-be kiddo stands to make his or her appearance in the midst of a recession. So is this really the right time

Macrutiae!

2010-02-11T09:38:00.011-05:00

Once upon a time, I was the keeper of a diary. There could be no mistaking it: fastened on one side with a tiny lock and key that - let's face it - did precious little to secure its contents. This is to say nothing for the gender-traditional pink cover or the words "dear diary" sprawled across the middle in sparkly silver chintz. This is my grown-up "dear diary." My hubby and I have decided to