Unleashing Fertility

June 1 2012

After spending the last 10 years of my life protecting myself from my own biology, one April afternoon, after consultation with my husband, my midwife removed my mirena iud. A fine form of contraception (I was actually on mirena # 2), the first step toward pregnancy was removing my iud and unleashing my fertile self. For the next couple of weeks, I strutted around feeling fertile, powerful, fecund. Much of my adult life was accompanied by some pill, ring, patch, or insert that would protect me from seemingly certain ruin in the form of an unwanted pregnancy. My mother, also a midwife, sent care packages to me in college not filled with candy and magazines, but newspaper clippings and birth control pills.

So here I am, ordering reusable menstrual pads and cups off the Internet, taking a daily vitamin, trying my hardest to avoid foods with bizarre chemical ingredients (despite my affinity for anything with a powdered cheese flavoring), and attempting to create an internal ecosystem suitable for a pregnancy. We're laying the groundwork, cleaning the pipes, orienting my psyche in the direction of the next step.