"Finally!!"

I just got an email on my soccer group. I should have known it wasn't going to be good when it started with "News" and one of those stupid fucking emoticons that I think are ridiculous and should be permanently banned.

So the e-mail continued:

I wanted to let you all know I am finally pregnant! I am almost 10 weeks along and the doctor says everything looks great. We saw the heartbeat and he/she looks healthy! So it looks like I won't be back in action for quite a while!!!!

Besides the emoticon, the excessive use of exclamation points, I am pissed off at this woman's use of the word finally.

Finally, she's pregnant. Well, great, but you know what, fuck you. You are *finally* pregnant with number three.

That's right; this is her third pregnancy, the second since I've been trying to have one and yet she has the nerve to say finally as if she had been through a lot to get pregnant with number three. She's already got two children.

And maybe she did, but you know what, still fuck you. You play on a team of women over 30; if you have problems getting pregnant with number fucking three, maybe you should consider your audience. I know for a fact that I'm not the only woman on that team still trying for number one.

I had several responses ready to go to her e-mail: Finally, what the fuck do you mean finally? Yours is the fifth pregnancy announced on this team since I've been trying, and the first pregnancy was your second one so shut the fuck up.

Presumably, she's suggesting that she had difficulty getting pregnant with number three, one past the national average, one past her greedy point; then why the fuck doesn't she have any sympathy or awareness for others who might be struggling?

Can you tell I'm pissed? Finally!

I May Not Have a Baby, But I Am One

I'm sure my husband could give you many more examples, but today I am going to focus on just one way that I am more like a baby, than an adult.

Bilateral ot*tis media

That's double ear infection to you and me. Based on all the material I've read to try to find relief from the excruciating pain in my ears, I am the only person older than three years old to get an ear infection.

Every single article offers assvice on how to deal with your infant's ear infection. There are questions and answers about whether to antibiotic or not. Warnings about aspirin and Reye*syndrome, but very little about an adult's issues.

So I went to the doctor yesterday and was again confronted with my "youth." When I told her that my teeth had gone gray when I took antibiotics earlier in the summer, she said, "Well, I've heard of that happening to children." And left out the part, "And not adults."

After examining my ears and pronouncing them severely inflamed, she left to write some prescriptions. What seemed like hours later, she had not reappeared. As a good pro-active infertile, I went looking for her.

She apologized that it took so long, saying that she didn't normally treat children so she wasn't sure of the dosing instructions.

Okay, fine, but I'm NOT a child. I just act like one too often and apparently get sick like one.

I told my husband my tale, and Mr. Optimist of course said, "Well, maybe that means you're just too young to get pregnant."

From your lips, Chubby, to my ovaries.

I'll Add That to the List

I really need to start reading a summary of a movie before I plop my ass down in a theater seat or on my couch. Usually, if I hear a movie's good, I read nothing else about it and then head off to the theater or the computer to put it in my queue.

For French movies, especially in the days before Netfl*x, I would just go without even glancing at a précis. Back in the day, I used to speak and understand French and now just want to try to keep up the comprehension part until we return to France for my 40th birthday (or until I meet my father's "friend," a French teacher, who I think is his girlfriend, but that's a post for another day).

If I had read about the movie in advance, I would have spared myself and my then boyfriend, now husband the soft corn porn of Pola X, with its brother on sister cunnilingus (they weren't actually siblings, just pretending, but that didn't help either), Catherine Deneuve's boobies floating atop her bathwater, and the random white horses on the side of the sidewalk.

If I had carefully perused the movie listing, I would have also not sat through the end of Western, an award-winning French film that is not a western and not in the least bit interesting. (And I have a high tolerance for films with no plot, little dialogue, and long, meaningful glances.) When I had decided I had finally had enough with the film and was going to walk out of my first movie, I checked my watch and realized that I only had ten minutes left in the movie. So I stayed. How bad could it be? Bad, I tell you. Bad. I had misread the running time. I had 45 more minutes of that drivel. Each time I thought to leave I figured it had to be ending in five minutes. So I stayed. Big mistake.

That might have been the 45 minutes that my eggs decided to protect my future offspring from such torture and just go ahead and close up the farm.

So did I learn from my earlier mistakes? Nope. Last night I pulled out the latest Netfl*x offering, an Academy-award winner, recommended by queen of the infertiles, Tertia herself: Tsotsi.

It's the heartwarming tale of a young South African thug (tsotsi) who carjacks a woman's beamer and shoots her for good measure when she tries to stop him. Tsotsi later discovers the woman's infant in the back seat. He keeps the baby and falls in love. The redemptive, healing power of the infant helps this lifelong thug turn his back on crime.

Of course.

After drinking like a fish, smoking like a chimney, using birth control, smoking crack like a crackwhore, having my tubes tied, letting my husband heat up his boys in hot tubs for days, I am going add to carjacking to my list of how to get a baby.

Because obviously my ways aren't working.

My Husband Thinks I Still Want Children

And I do, as long as it happens the old-fashioned way, like it apparently has for 44-year-old Marc*a Cross and for 41-year-old D*ana Krall ("Twins run in my family!"). Now I know there is the small chance that these women merely had sex with their husbands. (I do have a friend who just gave birth at 41, and she just bumped uglies with her husband.) Of course, it would be just the luck of these millionaires not to need expensive IF treatments. Besides getting fat from IF treatments would affect their bottom line. Bah de bump.

And there's my favorite: 46-year-old Angela Bass*tt who had twins via a surrogate but the eggs were hers.

I know these women are entitled to their privacy. God knows I haven't run around telling everyone I meet about the drugs, the cooter cams, the feelings of grief and hopelessness, but if I ever get pregnant, I will tell people about our struggles.

I just hate that these women are perpetuating the myth that it is okay to wait, that it's not too late for you and your reproductive organs. And it lays more blame on the rest of us. The general public, already poorly informed about infertility, will see their stories and use them against us.

"Well, if she can get pregnant at 44, why can't you get pregnant at 38?"

I don't know. Neither do any of my doctors.

**edited to add
NinaB alerted me to this story in USA Tod*y: http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-09-06-cross-pregnant_x.htm

I think Cr*ss is admitting that she used donor eggs, but I'm not really sure. What do you think?

Many new mothers in their 40s, she said, rely on donated eggs — at a very costly price tag. "I don't like the average woman being misled into thinking that fertility is something that goes on forever," said Cross.

"When a woman gets older, they get donor eggs, which doesn't make the baby any less beautiful or perfect. One's own eggs only last so long, and sometimes at 43 or 44 you can have your own baby, but statistically it's very difficult and expensive. You don't want to wait that long."