like Knocked Up, without the freaky plastic belly

What was up with that shoddy piece of prosthetic crap, anyway?  It might have helped if she put on some upper arm fat or grew some cankles, but that plastic stomach was awful.

But I digress.  Ahem.  I’m trying to get pregnant.  I think if I ever want to make friends in suburbia, I’ll need a rug rat.  Moms are more clique-ish than high school cheerleaders.  Plus, you know, there’s always the possibility that I might need a kidney one of these days.  So a kid might come in handy with all its juicy organ-goodness. 

But apparently, just because I want to be pregnant and I have a bunch of sex without any birth control and count the days of my “cycle” and keep track of everything coming in and going out of my va-jay-jay*–all of that does not change the fact that there is only a 20% chance any given month, given that the sperm meets the egg, which is a big given, that I will get pregnant.  It suddenly seems to me that people who get pregnant accidentally have some shit-poor luck.

The whole thing is a big ‘ole ball of stress waiting to crush me as I sit on the toilet peeing onto a stick and peering at it for 3 minutes while it changes colors.  And you know what the worst thing for fertility is, don’t you?  Yup.  STRESS.  So, months one and two, I was so stressed that I managed to screw up my whole cycle and not ovulate for an extra 5-15 days each month.  Which of course made me a little more stressed out than I was before.

Clearly my body and the insane mess of gray goop that controls it are in collusion, and they’re working against me.  I’ve chosen to do battle on a number of fronts–some with more verve than others–acupuncture and massage (I enthusiastically pay a fortune for an hour or two of unadulterated relaxation (sometimes with needles!) a week); exercise (if i could pay someone to do this for me, I would, but failing that, I do try); therapy (meh–I’m not sold on it.  My therapist has huge capped teeth that really are mesmerizing, though); and not drinking a half bottle of wine a night.  The last one is harder than it sounds.

 This month, ovulation came EARLY, so clearly the massage is working.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  We’ll see where we fall in those 20% odds in a few weeks.

 Anybody else out there have a hard time with this whole process?

*if you have not heard this term before, check out this article in the Times, which gives a thorough etymology: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/fashion/28vajayjay.html