When I was a young teenager (about a decade ago, give or take 50 years), I remember the constant assault to my self-esteem from the onslaught of ads for douches. Obviously, I hadn’t yet developed the confidence to question the veracity of such ads. In reality, I wish someone would have told me that our [...]
When interpreting temperatures, you’ll want to train your eyes to “see the forest through the trees.” The key to doing so is to look for a pattern of lows and highs. In other words, you’ll find that your temperatures before ovulation will go up and down in a low range, and the temperatures after ovulation [...]
Orgasms cause women to release eggs. This is an especially intriguing myth — that orgasm can lead to spontaneous ovulation. But alas, it’s completely false. The process that leads to ovulation is the gradual increase of estrogen over a period of several days. Now I suppose if you had an orgasm that lasted from, say, [...]
If you’ve recently been living under a rock, you might have missed the news about the first FDA-cleared birth control app that purports to allow you to prevent pregnancy by telling you when you are safe for unprotected intercourse. I’m loath to mention its name, however, for fear that women will run out and download it [...]
A fairly common mistake that women make is assuming that every bleeding episode they have is a period. And since most of us have been raised to believe that a normal cycle length is 28 days, every aberration from that length is interpreted as either too early or too late. No wonder cycles often seem [...]
Trying to get pregnant when it seems so fleeting can be daunting at times. This list was initially inspired by Rebecca Smith Waddell and Lisa A. Kramer, who mentioned that “the world of infertility provides lots of hilarious inspiration.” Enjoy. Basal Instinct An urge to shake down your basal thermometer BEFORE recording your temperature [...]
You may already know the drill, or if not you, certainly your sister, cousin, or friend does. Whenever a woman gets a positive pregnancy test at the doctor’s office, the first thing the clinician will usually do is grab a pregnancy wheel from the drawer while asking her the first day of her last menstrual [...]
Considering how miniscule the human egg is, it’s amazing how many misconceptions there are about its release! When I first got my period at age 12, and for several years thereafter, I was convinced that if I just looked hard enough, I would find the tiny egg nestled on the sanitary napkin amidst the red blood. So when I [...]
The following is an abbreviated list of medical terms that are still or were routinely used to describe common female conditions and functions. Cover the right side and quickly glance down the list of phrases on the left. After all these years, you’d think someone would have developed more (cough, choke) appropriate means of expressing these concepts. I [...]
Let’s see . . . what do these male celebrities all have in common: Steve Martin, Clint Eastwood, Warren Beatty, Larry King, Luciano Pavarotti, Rod Stewart, and Paul McCartney, to name but a few. Take a second to think about it. OK, time’s up. Answer? They’ve all fathered children when they were in their 60s and their wives [...]
