I remember sitting through conversations where my married-and-trying friends would talk about ovulation strips and best methods to conceive a girl or a boy and the best position to conceive, etc. and thinking to myself that this was all TMI (especially when I was having dinner with both the husband and wife and could not help but have visual flashes of their descriptions - not something I enjoyed while eating dinner, or ever). I'm pretty sure at the time I thought I'd never become one of those people. Instead, these days I find myself trying to remember snippets of what they said, wishing I had listened more carefully.
Yup, El Hombre and I are now open to having a bebe. We're not exactly trying (as in, not counting days or body temperature), but we aren't preventing, and we'll see how it goes.
Until the last month or so, I actually had NO idea how a baby is made. The last time I got a tutorial on making babies was in sex ed in 10th grade, and I don't think they taught us (or I didn't pay attention) about the whole pregnancy cycle. Here's the honest truth: for the last 20 or so years of my life, I really thought that this is how pregnancy works: you have sex, a sperm penetrates an egg, and BAM you're pregnant. I mean, that's totally how it happened in "Look Who's Talking" which started with a very graphic clip of the millions of sperm swimming to the egg, one sperm making it in, then baby starting to form.
So...I was honestly and truly surprised that it's not that simple. There's only a 24-36 period during which your egg can actually be fertilized. Sperm and egg have to have an encounter during that period, which means that the sperm has to already be inside your body before, or get inside your body very very soon after, the egg is released. Millions of sperm will die before they ever reach the egg because of the acidic environment in a woman's body. If one fighter sperm actually manages to penetrate the egg, the fertilized egg still has the task of traveling through the fallopian tube to the uterus and then penetrating the uterus lining, known as implantation. Only then are you actually pregnant. And even then, it's still too early to test for pregnancy via pee sticks because your body is probably not producing enough of the hormone that the pee stick is testing for. So by the time you can actually test for pregnancy, you're what a doctor would consider almost 4 weeks into pregnancy.
Also, I never actually knew when ovulation occurred. For some reason, I always thought it was right before your period started. Basically, I knew nothing.
Reading up on all this stuff made me realize that pregnancy is a freaking miracle! How do people EVER get pregnant? Each and every living, breathing human being is a miracle of life. Which also makes me think: how is it even possible that there are all these pregnant unwed teenagers and stuff? It's SO difficult to actually get pregnant, so how is it that these people are able to achieve it accidentally? Crazy.
One of the ironies of life is that most women spend like 15+ years (assuming they start becoming sexually active between 16-20) trying to avoid pregnancy at all costs, then a frantic 2-3 years doing everything possible to get pregnant. I think had I paid better attention in sex ed and known how miraculous and difficult pregnancy is in the first place, I probably would not have spent so much time on the pill.
Yup, El Hombre and I are now open to having a bebe. We're not exactly trying (as in, not counting days or body temperature), but we aren't preventing, and we'll see how it goes.
Until the last month or so, I actually had NO idea how a baby is made. The last time I got a tutorial on making babies was in sex ed in 10th grade, and I don't think they taught us (or I didn't pay attention) about the whole pregnancy cycle. Here's the honest truth: for the last 20 or so years of my life, I really thought that this is how pregnancy works: you have sex, a sperm penetrates an egg, and BAM you're pregnant. I mean, that's totally how it happened in "Look Who's Talking" which started with a very graphic clip of the millions of sperm swimming to the egg, one sperm making it in, then baby starting to form.
So...I was honestly and truly surprised that it's not that simple. There's only a 24-36 period during which your egg can actually be fertilized. Sperm and egg have to have an encounter during that period, which means that the sperm has to already be inside your body before, or get inside your body very very soon after, the egg is released. Millions of sperm will die before they ever reach the egg because of the acidic environment in a woman's body. If one fighter sperm actually manages to penetrate the egg, the fertilized egg still has the task of traveling through the fallopian tube to the uterus and then penetrating the uterus lining, known as implantation. Only then are you actually pregnant. And even then, it's still too early to test for pregnancy via pee sticks because your body is probably not producing enough of the hormone that the pee stick is testing for. So by the time you can actually test for pregnancy, you're what a doctor would consider almost 4 weeks into pregnancy.
Also, I never actually knew when ovulation occurred. For some reason, I always thought it was right before your period started. Basically, I knew nothing.
Reading up on all this stuff made me realize that pregnancy is a freaking miracle! How do people EVER get pregnant? Each and every living, breathing human being is a miracle of life. Which also makes me think: how is it even possible that there are all these pregnant unwed teenagers and stuff? It's SO difficult to actually get pregnant, so how is it that these people are able to achieve it accidentally? Crazy.
One of the ironies of life is that most women spend like 15+ years (assuming they start becoming sexually active between 16-20) trying to avoid pregnancy at all costs, then a frantic 2-3 years doing everything possible to get pregnant. I think had I paid better attention in sex ed and known how miraculous and difficult pregnancy is in the first place, I probably would not have spent so much time on the pill.
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