Friday, October 9, 2009

It's Mating Season!!

by Helen E. H. Madden


Ah, October! The start of what would normally be Mating Season in la casa de Madden had I not been flat-on-my-back sick the last two weeks. Had I just been flat-on-my-back, that would have been just fine and in keeping with the spirit of Mating Season , but no, I had to be sick as well. Blergh.


I am on the road to recovery, thankfully, and should be fully up-and-at-'em by the time the Hubster returns home from a business trip. With luck, I'll be ready to make up for a late start to Mating Season. But why is it Mating Season, you ask? Well, let me explain. Around here, when the weather turns cool and the sky takes on that particularly crisp shade of Autumn blue, yours truly suddenly feels the need to breed. A lot of this has to do with the temperature. In my opinion, summer is just too damned hot and humid for me to want to touch another person. All that heat and muggy air just drains the life right out of me. We have AC, of course, but something about artificially cooled air really just kills my appetite for sex (I know, I'm weird).


Winter isn't bad for sex. Cold weather is the ideal excuse to snuggle under the covers, so long as holiday shopping and preparations haven't stressed me out to the Nth degree. Spring is okay. The temperature is good (i.e. not too hot), but for some reason Spring just sort of puts my libido into hibernation. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I know Summer is on the way?


Anyway, my sex drive is very much a seasonal thing, and right now we're at peak season. I look at the Hubster, who has just started wearing those cozy, cuddly flannel shirts I love so much, and all I can think of is, "EAT HIM NOW." Which, if the kids aren't home or are safely preoccupied with the current Disney Princess movie du jour, is exactly what I usually do.


None of this frisky Fall mating activity, however, has ever resulted in a child. Yep, that's right. My need to breed is completely stymied by obscure biological reasons.


Let me tell you about what lies behind my own personal closed door. From the time I was 18 until the time I was 28, I took the pill religiously and it was probably the biggest waste of money I've ever spent. At age 29, after a year of trying to conceive, I was pronounced infertile and my whole life turned upside down. I have never experienced any greater misery than what I went through during the three years that followed that diagnosis. There were tests galore, some of them quite painful and all of them inconclusive. There were doctors, most of whom had about as much sympathy as a rat's ass for what I was going through. There were people all around me who got pregnant. I kid you not, at one point, there were five people in my office, including me, and three of them were expecting. My non-expecting co-worker, Janice, had adult children and was way past menopause. Thus I became the prime target for my three expectant co-workers who developed a nasty habit of giving me the hairy eyeball and asking, "Aren't you ever going to have kids?" This, in addition a workload that was practically killing me, is what led me to quit my day job.


There were home ovulation detection tests, the kind that required me to pee on a stick for a week straight. There were morning temperature chartings, also intended to track my ovulation. There were pregnancy tests, all of them negative. In my book, pregnancy tests were almost as big a waste of money as the pill. There were holistic cure-alls and prescribed medications, all of which made me incredibly moody and very ill.


And through all this misery, there was the Hubster. Calm, steadfast, patient, loving. The Hubster was the one who helped me track down the right specialist for our problem and then researched all our insurance options to make certain we could afford what needed to be done. He was the one who held my hand and wiped away the tears and kept track of my menstrual cycle on the calendar when I was too emotionally exhausted or too hormone-addled by drugs to care. Nothing tests a marriage quite the way infertility does. I've seen couples divorce because partners blamed each other for being unable to conceive. That never happened to the Hubster and me. There were never any arguments or any blame over what was happening, only his steadfast determination to go through the process with me until we came to some kind of a solution.


It was the Hubster who convinced me after yet another failed round of treatments to try just once more. This time, the specialist recommended a procedure called ovulation induction. It involved a series of hormone injections designed to make my ovaries produce multiple eggs, followed by an HCG shot that would time the release of said eggs. Once the HCG was administered, we needed to be at the clinic exactly 36 hours later to do an artificial insemination. Hubster would go into a comfortable room furnished with a couch and pornographic magazines to "produce a sperm sample" and then once that sample had been rinsed and concentrated, the doctor would thread a catheter through my cervix to deliver millions of Hubster sperm directly to my uterus and waiting eggs.


This procedure has worked for us twice.


It's been 12 years since I last used birth control. Try as we might, Hubster and I can not conceive on our own. Yet thanks to Hubster's persistence and the miracles of modern medicine, we have two beautiful daughters who keep us hopping from dawn until dusk every single day. When the Hubster gets home from his business trip, I'm going to sit those girls down in front of the TV with the Disney Princess movie du jour, and then I'm going to take the Hubster by the hand up to our bedroom...


And close the door.


Happy Mating Season, everyone.

11 comments:

  1. Hey, Helen,

    Sorry to hear you've been so sick... but I'm sure that your divine hubby won't mind waiting for you to get back in the mood.

    I'm wondering whether this is what you had in mind to write about when you proposed this week's topic.

    Anyway, you've opened up another door for us to understand you a bit better.

    Get well soon!

    Love,
    Lisabet

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  2. Insightful post, Helen. Glad you're finally feeling better and that mating season can begin!

    And I'm really glad you found a procedure that worked for you two. I can't imagine not having kids. Plenty of people don't, but I've always wanted them and am quite happy with the two we got, even though we watched Batman and Ninja Turtles and never any yucky princesses. LOL

    Hugs,

    Jenna

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  3. Lisabet,

    Actually, it was our esteemed guest for this week, Philippa Ballantine, who suggested the topic, and I thought it sounded fun. But when I sat down to write, my intended post got waylaid by this one! It was just something about the idea of a closed door and the Hubster being out of town that inspired me ;)

    Hope you've been enjoying your traveling, you jet setter you!

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  4. Jenna,

    I can't imagine not having kids either. In fact, when I try to think back to my previous life, I often scratch my head and go, "What the hell did I do with my time back then?"

    Sometimes, I can convince the girls to watch Sponge Bob or Scooby Doo, which I know some folks find annoying, but man it's nice to have a break from the Disney set every now and then!

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  5. I didn't realize lovemaking is in season now. Wait til i tell my man about that!

    Thanks, Secretia

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  6. Helen,

    I hope you're feeling better and enjoying mating season when you read this.

    Wonderful post (as always).

    Best,

    Ash

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  7. A fine door to open. I tend to be with you on the 'it's too hot to touch' thing in the summer. Fall is just perfect for snuggling. Winter's good too and so is spring, but fall is the best.

    I'm so glad you found a procedure that worked for you. Kids can be extremely trying at times, but they sure are great people when they grow up.

    I hope you and hubster have a wonderful mating season this year.

    Hugs

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  8. Secretia,

    Some will tell you it's always mating season. I envy those folks. To always feel this randy would be decidedly wonderful!

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  9. Ashley,

    I am feeling better, but I usually don't respond to blog comments while actively enjoying mating season. I'm sure you understand ;)

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  10. Jude,

    Isn't it infuriating how some people seem to insist that summer is the season of love? All I want to do in summer is stay in a tub of cool water and not touch anything. It gets extremely humid where I live, and I'm always left swimming in my own sweat. Not something that makes me feel sexy.

    Kids are great, and while mine are trying my patience at this very moment, I have no regrets whatsoever!

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  11. Hi Helen!

    Glad I back tracked and read this. My wife and i had fertility problems just like yours, but without the fortunate outcome. These things are hard to write about. Some day I'm going to try.

    Sometimes I find it painful to read your posts because i envy your husband so much. There is nothing so sweet in this world as to be married to a truly horny woman. So I imagine anyway.

    Garce

    "Beautiful woman. Whoever married her is a fortunate man." –Pallas

    "She's married already to the drummer. They have three children." –Narcissus

    “Then I envy him.” –Pallas

    "He tells me she’s a shrew." –Narcissus

    "Then I envy him his nights, if not his days." -Pallas

    "I Claudius" BBC Television

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