Getting Pregnant

I LOVE the look that people give me when they want to ask if Wolfram and I had sex to conceive. They tilt their head down a little, look up at me through their brow, and start with some variant of “Um, I don’t know if I can ask this… but…” No one’s ever had to finish the question - I’m a super merciful conversationalist. Depending on the friend or the context, I cut them off with “GROSS!!!” or “HAHAHAHA NOOOOO” or, more formally, “Oh, we relied on the turkey baster method.”

I’m continually shocked by how little people understand reproduction. I’m a grad student working on a social-science PhD, so I hang out with a lot of overeducated people. So many of them think that you can only get knocked up by sticking a penis in a vagina or spending thousands of dollars at a fertility clinic. 

We did neither of those. Our first attempt was throughout the week after Wolfram and Winchester’s legal wedding in New York (they had their real, but unofficial wedding in Western Home State). I bought myself a clergy membership online in order to officiate the wedding. I encourage people to call me Clergy Member Deputy, but no one ever does. 

The operation is simple. Wolfram went into a room to procure his semen in privacy, where he then got it into an oral syringe. I think a plastic baggie was used in the process, but you’d have to ask him for the details. He then gave me the loaded up syringe, and I started my part. They say that one should let gravity help in the process -- but I probably took this to an extreme. I would get myself into a shoulder stand with most of my body perpendicular to my bed before inserting the sperm into me. Really, this was more about fun for me than about gravity. I’m not a flexible person, so I felt like a fucking acrobat hanging out in this position for, like, up to twenty minutes. EVEN BETTER: orgasms are supposed to be important for conception, so I also managed to masturbate upside down! I did need help from a vibrator though, as neither the position nor the context was particularly sexy. 

The first attempt didn’t work. Well, I got my period about 10 days early, so I suspect I had a chemical pregnancy (like a really really early miscarriage) but I don’t have any proof of that. After the honeymoon, Wolfram went back to Western Home State and Winchester stayed in New York, where he’s also a grad student in my program. Since they had decided that Wolfram would be the bio dad, I got shipped off to Western Home State for attempt #2 over Thanksgiving. 

Attempt #2 stuck.