HOW NOT TO NOT GET PREGNANT

By Melissa Coleman

About a year ago I noticed a strange affliction befalling my closest friends and even my sister. They were becoming pregnant, and shockingly, going on to become mothers.

The worst part of this affliction was the tendency amongst these friends to talk incessantly about pregnancy and babies.

Normally enjoyable social lunches had become my worst nightmare.

I remember looking forward to lunch with one friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while. She’d just completed med school and gotten married. I wanted to hear all about her career and cute new husband.

Such was not to be the case. She immediately announced that “THEY” were pregnant. I thought my excitement over her husband’s obvious virility would be the end of it.

No. The topic of her impending motherhood went on to dominate all of my favorite lunch conversation topics, food, clothes, career and of course, men.

 Number 1) Food

“I’m eating for two,” she announced after giving her prodigious order to the waiter, and proceeded to explain that a pregnant woman needs an extra 300 calories daily, either feels sick or craves anything with calcium and if you eat broccoli or spinach during the first trimester the baby will like it as a child.

Number 2) Clothes

“We’ll have to go shopping after lunch,” she said.
“Yes!” I enthused, thinking we were on to a safe topic.
“I’m dying to go to that new store, it’s called In a Family Way Fashion,” she said.

Number 3) Career

“So how’s work?” I asked hopefully.
“Did I tell you I decided to be a pediatrician?” she said. “It’s great because I can explain everything that’s happening to me in minute scientific detail. Did you know....”

Number 4) Men

“Did you know that the man’s sperm determines the sex of the baby?” she asked.

I determined that this was a most terrible disease and I must take immediate precautions.

I went right home and researched the absolute safest methods of birth control, only to find out that even the bombproof pill still had a 1 percent chance of pregnancy.

This would NOT do.

At last I found out about the Fertility Awareness Method, or FAM, in which you can determine the exact 24-48 hours when the egg is waiting to be impregnated. Then you must avoid your partner at all costs during that time, no matter how cute or convincing he may be.

FAM requires only two simple steps:
1) Take your temperature every morning upon awaking.
2) Record your temperature on a daily chart.

Herein, you will note a rise in temperature, signaling that the egg has safely left the premises. Then it’s all about candlelit dinners, wine and silk stockings to make up for the past week of deprivation.

Yes, things were going swimmingly. I’d mastered this incredible technique and even found that the week of deprivation made the following week of debauchery all the more satisfying.

But slowly something began to change. The week after my temperature rose became as bleak as the week preceding.

One morning my husband sat straight up in bed like Dracula from his coffin.
“Aggggg,” he groaned. “I can’t take it any more!”
“But my temperature just went up to safe zone,” I smiled.
“No!” he said. “It’s the beeping of that [%@*!&] thermometer! I feel like I’m in some kind of scientific experiment. The last thing I want to do is get romantic with a science project.”

“Oh,” I said, crestfallen, the thermometer dangling from my lips like an abandoned cigarette.

In order to save the romance in my marriage, I moved the thermometer and chart into the bathroom, vowing to go right in there upon awaking and record my temperature.

Well, the romance resumed after removal of said offending thermometer, but my vows to head to the bathroom and take my temperature did not.

It’d been a while since I’d lunched with any pregnant friends so perhaps my resistance to infection was down.

Soon my chart was so out of sync that I didn’t even realize my time of the month had come and gone. Instead I thought the tenderness in my breasts meant my time of the month would start any day. I thought the nausea was the flu. And then, no matter how many times I rubbed my eyes, the little positive sign on the pregnancy test wouldn’t go away.

I’d caught it. The affliction.

“You know what they call people who practice FAM,” my satisfied mother said cheerily. “FAMilies!”

And now look, see? I’ve gone on incessantly about pregnancy for seven minutes running. Please accept my apologies, but this condition is apparently incurable.

However, I must admit it’s a lot more fun now that I’m the one doing the talking.