I’m a very private person. Contrary to what you might think after reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility, I am very much an introvert. So when people ask me what I do, I’m often reluctant to say, for fear that my cover might be blown!

But if I am prodded, I typically have no choice but to reveal the real me. Inevitably, I will get the usual questions about how I got into the seemingly obscure field of Fertility Awareness (“Wait . . . what’s that?”), or what prompted me to write a book?

Once I regale them with tales about the trials of writing it, especially the first edition released over 20 years ago, people often think that story alone would make a great book. But what’s so interesting to me is the reaction I often hear from women after I give them the Cliff Notes version of the ordeal. Invariably, women will respond with something along the lines of how the production of my book sounded a lot like gestation and childbirth.

Little did they know that when my book was first released back in 1995, the announcement above is what I sent out to my friends and family.