On Baby Making for Real

I talk a big game, but not talking about baby-making is a New Year resolution that I never planned to keep. In fact, in full disclosure, I didn’t even say what I wrote in that post. Those were David’s words/hopes for us this year.

I’m super interested in baby-making with David. I’ve learned a few things over the past year that I shall impart to you:

1. When we originally decided it was time to create progeny, I went to see a lady doctor for a check-up and some advice. “Have intercourse every other day, between periods,” was her advice. That was her advice. FOR REAL. “You don’t need to have it every day. That’s too much,” she explained.
   “Whew, yeah, because every day would be really difficult,” I said, as though every other day was really easy for us, a married couple in their 30s.
2. I started tracking our love-making and keeping notes. I made charts. My charts demonstrated that tracking love-making has an inverse relationship with David’s interest in love-making. See below.
3. Some motivation approaches are no good. Desperately crying, “Put a baby in me, David!” made him erect precisely 0% percent of the time.
4. I went to a different lady doctor, because lady doctor number 1 went to volunteer in Africa. This is the second time I’ve had a healthcare provider selfishly abandon me for this reason. Anyway, lady doctor number 2 told me about ovulation strips. These are strips you pee on, and when you are ovulating, they show a little line, and that’s prime time to make love.
   “You mean, we don’t have to have intercourse every other day?” I asked.
   She looked at me like I was crazy. I thought, “This is the lady doctor for me.”
5. I bought the cheapest ovulation strips I could find. For some reason, the strips I originally bought showed that I was ovulating for six days straight! David was disappointed when he learned that the strips were defective. He wasn’t disappointed that we hadn’t made a baby, to be clear. He was disappointed that I bought cheap strips, which is fair.

The following month, we were ready to go with new strips, but then the election happened, and up is down and the world is a chaotic void that we feel guilty bringing a baby into.