NOT NOT TRYING

I’m at the age where in any given month, five or more chicks I know from high school announce they are pregnant. After dozens of social media case studies, I’ve found there are basically two types of conception. The first is heartbreakingly difficult. It involves miscarriages and thousands of dollars in medical bills and years of life wasted. These people end up using terms like “basal temperature,” “ovulation calendar,” and “cervical mucous” in everyday conversation. The women drink red raspberry leaf tea, take dandelion and maca supplements and do pelvis-strengthening yoga. The men buy looser pants, quit carrying their cell phones in their pocket and stop jerking off in order to save sperm for the real deal.

This type always happens to couples who really want to have kids. They’re the ones who already have a birth plan written and school system selected. If you believe the universe is a purposeful place, then you might say these are people who need to learn lessons about patience and giving up control. But it might just be that the universe is an asshole and no one gets everything they want.

The second type occurs when couples are too lazy to use birth control correctly or too drunk to pull and pray. This type happens to people who have never kept a plant alive. It happens to people who don’t know the deductible on their health insurance plan either because the last time they went to the doctor was 2007, or because their budget includes enough money for weed or health insurance but not both. Maybe it’s these people who really need the lessons about patience and giving up control. Or maybe the universe is an asshole and an idiot, because what intelligent force would choose these sort of people to reproduce?

I got pregnant in 2015. I’ll give you three guesses which type of conception I had, and the first two don’t count.

Okay, it wasn’t a complete surprise. About two weeks before my offspring took over my lady parts, my then-boyfriend and I had a conversation about a pair of friends. We’d just gone out of state for their baby shower and discovered it had taken them two years to get pregnant once they started trying. We knew we wanted to have a family and agreed we’d be ready for a baby in about a year, but we didn’t want to start trying in a year and then have to wait two years to conceive. So…we kind of took it easy on birth control. And by “took it easy,” I mean we stopped giving a shit entirely. I guess this is the third type of conception: not not trying. You’re not putting any effort into getting pregnant other than having totally unprotected sex, and because you’re having totally unprotected sex, you can’t get mad or act surprised when you get pregnant.

Once I had my first ultrasound, I was able to trace the date of conception back to my boyfriend’s birthday. I remember that night. We went downtown Atlanta and saw a burlesque show, then went drinking. Winding down I-20 East on the ride home, my boyfriend drunkenly told me he loved me and wanted to get me pregnant. He was slouched over, rubbing my thigh from the passenger seat. I was the designated driver because I’d only had five beers instead of eleven and could’ve passed a field sobriety test in a state with very liberal DUI thresholds. As it is, I live in a zero tolerance state, but I made it home alive and then we made a baby.

The universe is a fucked-up place.