Archive for the 'Reproduction' Category

Just wish I knew

admin March 28th, 2007

So I have peed on three sticks now, all of which tell me that I am not pregnant. The thing is though, I am four days past my cycle time last month, and no sign of a period. So, that’s odd. Every time the stick shows a single pink line, I feel a kind of let down, and then relief. I think I would just like to know FOR SURE. The other thing that I’m worried about is that I managed to convince myself I wasn’t, and then went ahead and had a beer one night, a couple of margaritas two other nights, and now I’m wondering if that was a big mistake. Please forgive my stream of consciousness run-on sentences. Sigh… No wonder I seem completely unable to do anything constructive these days. Well, maybe that and my allergies. But the plants, they are gorgeous!

I’m also thinking quite a bit about what I want to do when I grow up. I have always wanted to be a professor. Always. It seemed like such a nice life: teaching and research, school holidays, distinguished colleagues, bright young pupils, freedom to be an individual, job security, travel, and time and flexibility for a family. This is why I am in grad school, this is why I am working on my PhD. But, I keep reading about how difficult it is, how women must fight to maintain work-life balance, how the money isn’t bad, but it’s not great either, how there is no guarantee of tenure, how I will most likely after all this work STILL need to go post doc, uprooting myself for low pay, how so many women have fled for law, business, or medicine, and I start to think maybe I should flee too. It doesn’t help that all the very distinguished professors around me seem to have sacrificed almost every other aspect of their lives, and many still don’t live that well. You still have to work like a dog in business or law, but at least you get compensated for it. You might never get tenure, but then you don’t have to worry about not getting it, and best of all, you don’t have to ask the government for your money. People actually pay you. If I want to have a kid soon, I will either have to usurp my husband from his job and somehow survive for a while on just my pay with the added cost of a child, or I will have to live apart from my husband and constantly worry that my child either won’t know me or my husband. I just don’t know if I am willing to do that. Plus, once the stint is over, we will most likely have to move AGAIN. Now, I love to move from place to place and to travel, but that unknown, that horrible possibility in which we don’t have enough money for ourselves, much less a family, terrifies me. And I shouldn’t have to worry like this. I am smart, creative, and spunky. I work hard. At the end, I will have a PhD in the sciences, and I will have to worry about FEEDING MY FAMILY? I am all about deferred gratification. But how long must one defer? I have worked my ass of for years, and I am getting the feeling it is high time to get some reward.

On the other hand, if I leave, I can never go back. And that scares me crazy too.

Where is the career fairy when you need her?

Sick, in the morning

admin March 21st, 2007

As I told you in my previous post, I am cultivating a rather nice list of blog topics for future postings. I tend to have my best ideas in the middle of completely inappropriate times, like say at group meeting, or driving, or in the middle of a day of seminars in which the presenters try to convince a panel to fork over more money. Not exactly great times to pop open my computer and begin typing away. At any rate, they can pop up at any time so I like to keep a paper pad handy and write short topics to go on my list.

I had planned to post according to some of the items on my list today, but I was surprised this morning by something rather unexpected and I decided that I should instead share this with you as it will be new and fresh and you can get my unreflected, untainted gut reaction. What was this unexpected occurrence that I decided I just could not not share with the infinite blogosphere? NAUSEA.

Now, while certainly unpleasant, nausea is something that I have experienced in the past and don’t usually take too much note of once it is gloriously over. Times of past occurrences I can immediately recall are at about 10PM one night following an early wrap up to my bachellorette party (followed shortly thereafter by nausea’s close cousin, vomiting), just before one of my horrible thermo tests, or after some questionable cooking at a greasy spoon. Never do I recall getting nausea like this after a perfectly normal morning on a perfectly normal drive to work. I was perhaps a bit hungry after my small breakfast of a diminutive banana, but felt otherwise completely normal. Husband is sick, but has had no sign of nausea. So you see it was odd, and rather unexplainable, except…*grins*

Aside from odd timing of this sensation, there is a particular fact that I have been withholding that may make this event one of some note, a fact which I have considered off and on for the last few weeks or so, and that fact is that I AM GUILTY OF UNPROTECTED SEX. Yes, dear readers I did it, once, with my husband, without a condom, in the absence of hormones, and what a glorious occasion it was. Why, you say. Why would an educated woman do such a thing? Well, first of all, it was with my very loving and trustworthy husband so get off my back a little. Secondly, we only had one condom left, and we kinda thought, well, maybe we should save that one for next time (yeah, I know). And mainly, we were in the moment, which the stopping for the condom tends to kill, and boy is it ever better without that little rubber friend between us. Also perhaps we are secretly and subconsciously trying to get pregnant. I don’t think so, but then isn’t that just always the way with your subconscious? I mean, I want to get pregnant, and soon, but right at this moment really doesn’t fit our time line. Still, since it happened I have been avoiding caffeine and alcohol like a good little girl just in case, but I really didn’t think that one time, just ONE TIME would make it happen – until this morning. Sickness, in the morning, about a week before my period should start. Wow.

I told the husband and went home for lunch to pee on the stick. Sadly? Happily? It yielded only one pink line, but since it really is too early to tell, that doesn’t give me conclusive evidence either way. I have to admit I was a little disappointed at that measly single line, but putting off a few months really logically would be the best. So there it is, readers, what do you think? Am I pregnant?

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