You’re in your bedroom one night and you are curious to see how you would look as a pregnant woman. Ok. You were not curious because you’ve done this before. You just want to torture yourself.

Your husband isn’t around and so you take an article of clothing, perhaps a sweater or a night shirt, and stuff it down your shirt creating a beautiful (fake) baby bump. You stare at yourself in the mirror, just enjoying your pretend pregnancy. You tenderly pat your belly and do the waddle that you have mastered in your private moments. You stare at your (fake) expanding belly for a little too long and when your husband arrives home, you remove the shirt immediately. He doesn’t need to know how weird you’ve gotten although he already knows this.

You would rarely admit this to anyone, but you have also stuffed some other items under your shirt when given the opportunity.

These fake baby bump items also include:

- watermelon and other pieces of fruit
- a balloon
- a pillow
- Mr. Potato Head
- your coat

Whether you have your period each month or not, haven’t you ever wanted to yell at it? Well, here is your chance!

An open letter to my period.

Dear Menstrual Cycle,

I avoid you like the plague each month but you continue to show up just to say hello. My body usually gives me every indication that you will not be arriving but there you are, just like an unwelcome relative. You arrive like you are going on an all-inclusive vacation: you stay for a week and then make me overeat with chocolate and cake. The only difference is that your all-inclusive vacation is going to cost far less than my fertility treatments.

Period, I don’t want to see you. I know that what you represent is a good thing: a healthy body that is getting ready for babies so why don’t you help me make those babies? It seems like you get worse each month as if to laugh at me. As months drag on, you seem to make me a little more crampy, a little more achy and much more moody. But I will give you some credit, besides the movie,The Notebook, you are the only one that can make me cry in a second. One minute, I am happy and full of hope and the next minute you have arrived, and I am upset and feeling sorry for myself. This all-inclusive vacation will be closed next month so go find somewhere else to go!

Sincerely,

Infertile “Hoping to be Fertile” Naomi

Now it’s your chance, what would your “Dear Period” letter say?

On this blog, we have had many discussions about our obsession with wiping ourselves after going to the toilet. During those 30 days in a month, we spend at least half of the time analyzing the toilet paper. Early on, we pray for a little red to show up that might signify implementation bleeding. Closer to our period, we pray that our underwear will stay nice and clean (how many pairs of panties have we thrown out already?). We are not even really sure what implementation bleeding looks like – is it light pink or brown? We have asked our friends if they had this bleeding and happy to hear that some had not. But most days, we wipe ourselves, then do the look and toilet paper examination.

Follow these simple rules and wiping will be a breeze!

Wipe clear: Have no fear
Wipe yellow: Relax fellow
Wipe pink: rejoice with your shrink
Wipe brown: Not going to frown
Wipe spotty: You’ll be one pregnant hottie
Wipe red: You’d rather be dead

It’s no secret. You will watch pretty much any movie that has to do with infertility. But when the movie, Baby Mama came out, you couldn’t wait to watch it. You would have watched it at the movie theater but you wanted to see it alone, just in case you needed to cry.

In Baby Mama, Tina Fey plays a single woman who waited a little too late in life to get pregnant and explores her fertility options. She decides to choose a young, crazy woman to carry her baby. First of all, Tina Fey plays a 37 year old woman. Is that really “too late in life” to have a baby? If so, we are all in trouble now and especially in trouble if we want a second or third baby! So did this movie actually make you cry? Really? I believe that Fey was actually pregnant during the movie – that’s irony for you.

During your next period, I suggest you rent any of the following movies about infertility, just to rub more salt in your wounds. Get yourself lots of chocolate and enjoy!

Your wedding vows were nice but if you could go back and do it all over again, this is what you should have said…

I (insert your name here) take you (Darling Husband) to be my lawfully wedded husband. I promise to love you and give you all the intercourse you desire (but only on days 10 through 20). I promise to spend the next 4 years trying to conceive our first child and changing from the lovely woman you see here today into a raging hormonal mess. I promise to cry each month when I get my period and take out all of my aggression and mood swings on you. I promise to further create a rocky marriage by forcing you to go to fertility clinics, take numerous sperm tests and turn our sex life into a scheduled appointment. I promise to interrupt your night out with the guys if I’m ovulating and then confide in my girlfriends and your mother about your low sperm count. I promise to throw out all your briefs and make you wear boxers all of the time. I will force you to stop going into hot tubs and make sure that you stay clear of a bicycle. I promise that my thin body will soon turn into whale-like shape due to fertility drugs and weight gain and my skin will break out like a teenager.

Finally, I promise to take you home tonight, on our wedding night, and try to conceive whether you are ready or not for a baby, and hopefully we will be pregnant 9 months from now.