The One With the Questions and Answers
Hi! I’m your high school friend/brother/uncle/old music professor/work acquaintance. This is weird.
Not a question, but sure. We get that this isn’t super traditional. Feel free to ignore, we don’t mind.
What’s a ‘waterbear’?
Waterbears are microscopic water-dwelling eight-legged squishy things that are scientifically known as tardigrades and less scientifically referred to as ‘moss piglets’.
They’re hardy little buds, basically resilient af, and they’re found everywhere (volcanoes, rainforests, mountaintops, the Arctic). They’re also one of those things, like a grape or a lentil or a croissant, that are used to give new mothers an idea of just how big the alien growing inside them is. (A waterbear’s the size of a fetus right when most women find out they’re expecting.)
During our first pregnancy loss, we got WAY too excited WAY too quickly. We started talking fondly about our lil’ waterbear well before that particular journey precipitously went south. Since then, the term’s been our internal fertility-project codeword, so, when we started discussing this series, it seemed like a natural title to go with.
What can we expect to see on here?
I’m very sure that Project Waterbear will morph over time, but I do have a few general ideas to start:
- I want to go over the science behind things that I find myself stress-Googling every twenty minutes re: fertility (how long luteal phase? how can tell if eggs suck? is [ENTER SYMPTOM HERE] pms or pregnancy? how much of this is my fault?).
- We've got a few fertility experiments planned vis-a-vis diet, lifestyle, etc, so we'll document those and discuss the results ad nauseam. (SO FUN!)
- Anyway. I also want to document how Ted and I are doing in our pre-parenthood life, because no matter how this project ends, that’s likely to change. We'll discuss making over our home, check in with my business, and likely post one too many pictures of our dogs.
Why is this relevant to me, if I’m a dude/mom/single lady/woman who just doesn’t want kids?
FANTASTIC question.
First of all, insofar as fertility is how we keep the human race going, I think everyone should be interested.
Secondly: A lot of ‘fertility health’ is just ‘best women’s health’. Even if you’re not in a place where you’re trying to have kids, getting in a place for optimal fertility often just means getting to a place where you’re happier and healthier. I used to have ridiculously intense insomnia; I made a few lifestyle changes in the name of fertility, and I sleep pretty well and consistently now. That’s been a huge win, and not one that I likely would have stumbled across otherwise.
Thirdly: It’s crazy how much of this isn’t standard, well-known information. Ted and I have ranted internally AT LENGTH about how our sex ed programs failed us, often giving us overgeneralized, misleading, and simply unhelpful guidance. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that includes the NFP one that we took before we got married. (We’re practicing Catholics and happy about it, but we also know that not everything the Church does or has us do is innately+inarguably perfect, and that’s one example.)
Anyway. We both think that everyone should know some basic facts about, like, how a women’s menstrual cycle works...seeing as just about everyone either is someone who has a cycle or someone who will regularly interact with a cycle-haver. Same goes for the extreme basics of things like PMS, pregnancy, and postpartum. I’ve not yet lived through two of those things, but the number of stories that women have shared with me re: the ignorance and insensitivity with which they’re treated during those times...just...it isn’t cool.
So. We’re doing our part to make some of this info a bit more mainstream.
Are you going to be asking us for money?
No! Nope! Not at all! We know that we aren’t the first people ever to have put an infertility story online, and we know that other people have used their platforms to crowdsource funds for IVF/etc or adoptions.
Great for them! Not for us. We’re starting this because we needed a place to rant about what we’re learning that’s not our living room, not because we’re going to ask our friends and family for money :)
What if you do get pregnant?
Irony would dictate that I start some big, public project promising to delve into our (mostly) real-time possible-infertility journey...and then I get a positive pregnancy test, like, the next day. While that’d be great for a lot of off-screen reasons, I get that it’d be a little unfortunate for this series.
Let’s assume for exactly one second that that happens. Full stop: The Internet isn’t going to be the first place I share fertility success. We’ve had a couple of early pregnancy loss situations, so we’re likely going to be slow to get excited, ourselves, if I do get a positive test. Once we actually believe it’s happening, we’ll tell family and friends before I throw an announcement all over this site/the socials.
Bottom line: Even if I find out I’m pregnant the day after this goes up, there’ll still be a good bit of content up here before this suddenly turns into a pregnancy project.
That said, we want to keep this real, so we’ll be writing about any further losses/our reactions to promising test results as they happen: we’ll just be intentional about timing those particular updates as it makes sense for our mental health.
Also also: If I get pregnant, this will just become a place where we discuss hereditary gestational diabetes and embryonic developmental statistics in gory detail. If I don’t, then Project Waterbear will likely become an adoption story. If y’all stick around long enough, you’ll probably see us picking a second cute animal codename for sequential spawn. We don’t know how it’s going to end, and that’s part of the … fun?
You know what’s also fun? Boundaries! So, let’s chat:
- I’m specifically not going to talk about how long we’ve been trying or my numeric stats (cycle stuff, weight, hormone levels, etc) because I don’t want this to turn into a comparison game. For every couple who’s been trying to conceive x months with y conditions, there’s someone who’s been trying longer, with more intense barriers to overcome. There’s also someone who’s just starting out on their infertility journey whose pain I don’t want to minimize or discount. I want to be helpful and relatable for everyone, so, I’m going to keep some of our details more general, as it makes sense. (I will say that we meet generally-agreed-upon standards for ‘we should definitely have a kid by now’, lest anyone think that we’re overreacting. I mean, we probably are, but not about that.)
- Probably don’t need to say this, but I won’t be talking about my sex life? Seems like a good thing to talk about on the internet approximately never, so even though I’ll be talking a lot about how reproduction goes down, gonna go ahead and draw a line in the sand up front: We’re sharing a lot of personal stuff here, but nothing that’s both personal *and* PG-13.
- As far as advice goes, please trust that we’re approaching this sensibly. Fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth are topics that -- for whatever reason -- every person alive (myself included) tends to have extremely strong opinions about. Unless you see clear evidence that I’m unknowingly doing something incredibly stupid and harmful, we’d ask that any comments or input be limited to support, recipe suggestions, or compliments about our hair.
- That said, if you have helpful info to contribute that you wouldn’t mind me sharing, by all means, reach out! If you have an infertility story, stat, or suggestion that is constructive or comedic, talk to me at rebecca@rrcorgan.com.
This sounds like Rebecca typing. Is this Rebecca typing?
Yep, it’s me. I’ll be slipping in and out of first-person-singular and plural as it makes sense. However, everything that I’m writing about is something that Ted and I have discussed at length, and he’s reading, editing, and okaying everything I write.
A lot of this is going to come through in my voice simply because writing comes very naturally+easily to me, and it doesn’t so much for Ted. Every so often, he’ll pop in with a specific thought or two in his words, and I’ll make sure to mark it as such. (Will we refer to that as a ‘TedTalk’? Of course we will.)
In the meantime, know that I’m typing but the sentiment+research is coming from both of us.
LAST REALLY IMPORTANT THING:
I’m not a doctor. Neither of us are. Nor has either of us successfully carried a baby to term. We really, really, really don’t know what we’re doing.
What I am is a professional writer with a strong scientific background. I’ve studied biology, biochemistry, and developmental biology at the graduate level; I’ve worked in a pediatric hospital’s research lab, and I’ve worked in big data at a CRO or two. Now, I do freelance work for market research firms, and I write ebooks, white papers, and lifestyle pieces about wellness, fitness, nutrition and eye health (among a zillion other things).
SO. I would somewhat objectively say that I have above-average skills for delving into the theory behind fertility, pregnancy, and biological aspects of early humans and their growth. That’s it. Theory. By no means should ANY ANY ANY of this be taken as, like, something you should do. Use your own best judgment; we’re just using ours.
The next post can be found here. Go! Do it! Doitdoitdoit!