Nothing like sex ed

  You have 1 unprotected sexual encounter and you get knocked up right?! Simple. That's what they told us in health class. So you you decide you want to have a baby and you follow these steps: 1. Throw away your birth control 2. Hump like bunnies 3. 2 weeks later you pee on a stick and you see that glorious 2nd pink line 4. 9ish months later you say "honey it's time" 5. Off you go to the hospital to painlessly have your baby.
 
  But then you slowly discover that the 2nd line doesn't always show up. In fact each cycle there is only a 25% chance that a "young" (we'll get to that later),  healthy couple has about a 25% chance of conceiving each cycle. And that's with perfectly timed intercourse. WTF?! An egg and a sperm have 1 job in life and only manage to do it about 25%...or less...of the time. If I only showed up to work 25% of the time I would get fired! Besides that I have a much better work ethic than to only work a quarter of the time. Granted I spend plenty of time with other "distractions" BUT I digress. In reality the steps go a little more like this: 1. Toss your birth control 2. Hump like bunnies 3. Pee on a stick and see 1 sad lonesome line 4. Repeat step 3 daily  5. Get your #@$*!% period 6. Repeat step 3 claiming implantation bleeding. Now that is just the 1st cycle; after than you get a little more crazy. You claim you are letting nature take it's course all the while secretly peeing on OPK's to detect when your body decides to pop that glorious egg. Then you repeat all these steps...again and again and again.

  The reality of TTC is so much different that I ever thought that it would be, and the longer your journey the harder it gets. You learn that your fertility starts to decline after the age of 20. You have the heartbreaking realization that a positive pregnancy test doesn't mean you get a baby; that not bleeding doesn't mean your pregnancy is healthy. Your heart breaks with every baby bump you see, every stroller that passes you on the street. The months tick by and you wonder what you ever did wrong that EVERYONE else is pregnant but YOU'RE not.  First your sad, then you're angry, then you try and take control.