The Joy of the WTF Pregnancy

When facing infertility it can seem as though the entire world is gestating except for you and your significant other. This leads to a broad range of emotions with anger, jealousy, and guilt at the top of the list. It becomes particularly difficult when friends and family are expecting (usually after trying for a few weeks), and your feelings of excitement and happiness for them are tempered by envy. Of course, this is immediately followed with feelings of guilt as you remember that these are often the same people who have supported you over the past few months or even years.

Unfortunately, every protruding belly is a reminder of your own personal struggle. In an effort to redirect our vitriol many of us turn to what I refer to as "What the FUCK!?!" pregnancies. We know that we shouldn't be angry with our 3rd cousin, but we can sure as hell get pissed off at some drug addled, "C-list" celebrity. The most recent and famous WTF pregnancy is Nicole Richie. Who among us didn't want to put their foot through the television set as a "showing" Nicole walked into the courthouse last week to face charges of drunk driving?

In part, this is what makes WTFs such attractive targets. In terms of their preparations for parenthood they are usually the exact opposite of us. While we are subjecting ourselves to acupuncture, daily injections, and choking down wheat-grass health shakes, WTFs are getting pregnant on a steady diet of Red Bull, vodka, and lines of coke. While we are peeing on sticks, "propping our hips up afterward," and timing our encounters to the minute, WTFs manage to get knocked up by grinding their bony pelvis into some 19 year old Calvin Klein model in the middle of a club at 4 in the morning.

Up until now, the focus of the WTFs has been on young women like Nicole or Britney (what I wouldn't give of K-Feds motility and morphology). Now, I think it is time to expand the WTF designation to include the male professional athletes and celebrities who are "fathering" children across the country. While I am beating off in a cup to 1980s porn, these guys are producing children during a 20 minute layover in Wichita! WTF!

I am sure that many of the men out there play fantasy football. Check out these eye popping stats.

1. K-FED - Rapper? Dancer?
Two kids with Shar Jackson (and a rumored 3rd on the way) and two with Britney Spears.

2. Shaw Kemp - Professional Basketball Player.
Rumored to have 12 to 13 children with seven different women!

3. Evander Hoyfield - Former Heavyweight Champion of the World - Dancing with the Stars Participant. Rumored to have 9 children with numerous women.

4. Matt Leinart - NFL Quarterback
1 child with former girlfriend and USC basketball star Brynn Cameron, but apparently he hasn't done much diaper duty (check the link)! Hopefully, Tom Brady will fare a little better in this department.

5. Krusty the Clown - Entertainer
Rumored to have up to 5 illegitimate children (one who was voiced by Drew Barrymore).

The list goes on and on! So the next time you are feeling low because your 2nd cousin is expecting ("we weren't even really trying!"), just open grab a copy of US Weekly or Sports Illustrated and say, "What the FUCK!?!?"

Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night....

shall keep your postal worker from delivering fertility drugs in a timely manner.


With the date of our first IVF cycle rapidly approaching, I just realized that our drugs are being delivered by the U.S. postal service. Perhaps I am a little naive, but have pharmacies always been allowed to ship drugs to local residences? I guess I have heard of baseball players ordering steroids from Mexico and the elderly ordering drugs from Canada, but I had no idea that you could get a prescription filled and delivered via mail in the U.S.

Frankly, I am a little concerned. We live in an apartment building in an urban area and our packages are frequently left unattended on the stoop. What if our shipment falls into the wrong hands? Imagine a poor groups of teens all strung out on Lupron and Repronex, ovulating left and right, spitting out triplets like slot machine.s Before you know it kids will be dropping out of school and stealing car stereos to support their "L" & "R" habits. Mrs. Beans and I can't have a population spike on our consciences! Furthermore, are they really going to send us a huge bag of syringes? Seriously, how are we supposed to dispose of 30 "dirty" needles?

Maybe we can just mail them back?

Minnesota! Land of 10,000 bad fashion trends!

Motivated by Mel at SQ & SPJ I have decided to tackle the horror that was my middle school wardrobe. Unfortunately, a mere comment section cannot contain the atrocious fashions that I sported in the 80s, so I have dedicated a whole post to the topic.

First of all, in my defense, I had the unfortunate luck of attending middle school in a suburb of Minneapolis. Equidistant from the cultural capitals of Los Angeles and New York, fashion in Minnesota was a strange mix of dying fads from the East and West coasts, sprinkled with some independent trends inspired by the Nordic lifestyle (e.g. moon boots). Let's face it, when your local cultural icon is Prince (with his purple cars, motorcycles, and mansions) you are pretty much screwed. Especially, when you're a blond, white kid named Derrick or Angie. My fashion efforts in middle school where further thwarted my heroine addict-like frame. In eighth grade, at 4 foot 10 and 86 pounds, I looked like a more feminine version of Kate Moss, but with a larger head. My big sister lovingly referred to me as E.T. during this very difficult time. Obviously, I could be America's Top Model now with those measurements, but in a land of corn fed farm boys, my slight physique did little to enhance my social status.

Let's work from the bottom up. For footwear it was essential to wear a pair of Minnetonka Moccasins. I have been told that there has actually been a resurgence in the popularity of this trend. However, I have seen that the company has updated their style a bit to resemble the popular Ugg! boots. I owned the classic moccasins pictured on the left. Because they were so trendy, the moccasins were a bit expensive. My family did not have an abundance of means, but my parents did their best to allow my sister and I to keep up with some of the trends. However, in an effort to obtain a greater return on her investment, my mother insisted on "water proofing" my new moccasins, hence turning the soft suede into an impenetrable hard shell. Transformed into wooden clogs, my new moccasins did not afford me the level of coolness that I was so desperately seeking. Oh, and I would be remiss if I did not mention that under no circumstances were you allowed to wear socks with your "mocs." This was somewhat problematic in a state where the average wind chill is about 10 below zero!

For my pants I preferred acid washed Francois Girbaud jeans. I understand from my college friends that this trend came a little later (early 90s) to the East Coast, so I guess I was cutting edge. Many people will remember the pegged and rolled jeans, this was pretty cool, but I was also know to "pin" my jeans, achieving the same look, but with the help of safety pins. What can I say, Minnesotans are a practical people! When I wasn't wearing my pegged jeans, I could usually be found in a pair of Zubaz! (note: the exclamation point is a part of the brand name and not an expression of my excitement over the look). These baggy animal print pants came in cool neon colors; although, I preferred the far more subtle black and white prints. I guess I am just a really conservative guy when it comes to fashion. On the left is a picture of a handsome model sporting the classic red Zubaz! (and coincidently, my 80s haircut).

In an effort to mask my scrawniness I also attempted to "bulk up" by wearing extra large tees and sweatshirts. "Extra large relative to your small 4 foot 10 frame?" you ask. Oh no. I literally wore size extra-large. MEN's XL. Sadly I will occasionally run across an old sweatshirt and it is still a little too big for me. Except now I am 6 feet tall and 200 pounds! To make matters worse, I fell victim to one of the most ill-conceived trends of the 80s. The Gennera "Hyper-Color" phenomenon. Yes, that's right, I wore a color changing tee-shirt, sensitive to body heat. Do you have any idea what a bad idea this is for a middle school boy? The last thing I needed was to highlight my profuse sweating with huge yellow splotches on my blue tee-shirt.

As alluded to above I rocked a sweet mullet. That's right. Business in the front and party in the back. However, in Minnesota we did not recognize the mullet for what it really was and instead referred to the look as "hockey hair." The key was to keep your hair long enough so that it would hang out of the back of your helmet. The best "hockey hair" was somewhat curly (see pic of Jaromir Jagr to the right), mine of course was bone straight. To look at me in the 80s you might think that I owned a flat iron, but alas, I was simply genetically predisposed to very fine and straight hair. How did it look? Let's put it this way, I vividly remember attending mass one Sunday and having an elderly gentleman say to me, "Peace be with you, young lady." Son-of-a-bitch! To this day I hate old people.

Finally, for accessories I had a Swatch Watch where you could see the "inner workings" of the watch and a few shoddy friendship bracelets that I made for myself and then pretend that girls gave me. Don't worry, I was clever enough to make up fictional girls (Stacey and Chelsea), who I knew from fake summer camp (Camp Tall Pines). I am sure my friends never knew the truth.

So that is the sad truth of my adolescence. I will be in therapy if you need me.

Pass the syrup! It's Waffle Time!

I remember clearly the first time we "pulled the goalie" and started TTC. It was way back in January '06. Things were different then. Paris, Nicole, and Lindsay were on the cover of US Weekly, the United States was embroiled in a bitter conflict in the Middle East, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, and Spider-Man 2 dominated the box office, and American Idol was the most popular show on television. It was a simpler time. An age of innocence... well, except for Paris, Nicole, and Lindsay.

After making the momentous decision that we were finally ready for parenthood, we opened a bottle of chardonnay and let nature takes its course. Our immediate response in the aftermath of this cherished moment?

"Holy SHIT! What the hell did we just do!"

Of course we just assumed that we would automatically become pregnant and so we ran to the drug store to buy the first of many pregnancy tests (little did we know that we would eventually need a membership at Costco or BJs). The learning curve was pretty slow. It took a few months before we realized that timing played an essential role in the whole process, so we were pretty laid back. Ironically, for some time we were almost more nervous that it would work! We both knew that we wanted kids, but were we really ready to be parents? Friends kept telling us that you never really feel ready, so we just assumed that this was a natural reaction.

When we started to realize that something wasn't working quite right and once we had a diagnosis, I think it is safe to say that we officially realized just how badly we want children. We joked that at least now we knew that we were ready for parenthood and that we wouldn't be so nervous anymore. So, it has been something of a surprise that some of these feelings have started to creep back in over the past few weeks. We still know that we want to have children and we are doing everything possible to make this happen, but are we really ready for this?

I want to be clear that we are not waffling about our decisions. It is just that Mrs. Beans and I both have what I call, "snowball personalities." We can start with a simple idea and "snowball" it into a natural disaster in a matter of minutes. What might look like a cloud to most people can easily become a biblical flood in the Beans family imaginations. Will we be able to afford a new baby? Where will we live? How will we handle our jobs? What are we going to do about childcare? I think that the idea that we have our first real shot (no pun intended) at conceiving is starting to sink in. While we are definitely hopeful and excited, we are also allowing ourselves to play the "what if" game again. I guess on the upside we are playing the "what if" game with a positive conclusion, but I wonder if we are both a little bit crazy. Well, I know that we are both a little crazy, but I guess that I am just surprised to find ourselves in this state (emotionally, not geographically).

Paging Dr. Tony Robbins

Our IVF protocol has been confirmed and we will be starting IVF in September. I don't know if it is because we are Spiffy (Self Paying In - F*cking - Fertiles), but I was expecting a little more guidance for 12,500 dollars. When we purchased our car a few years back the dealer took the time to explain all of the features and doo-dads, they even gave it a quick wash. Let's just say that we have not received the same level of concern at our clinic. For example, our phone call with the IVF nurse went like something like this.... "Hi, this is Nurse Ratchet from the Baby Bank Clinic. The doctors have determined your protocol and you will be taking Lupron and Repronex. Really Expensive Pharmacy will send you the supplies and you can watch the injection training video on their website. Let us know if you have any questions. Click"

Okay, I realize that we will be getting to know the clinic quite well in September, but at the moment September seems like a long way off. Mrs. Beans and I just want to feel like we have some measure of control over the situation and we want to be doing something productive now. Isn't there anything that we should be doing?

Ideally we would like a specific training regimen so that we can show up in September in unbelievable IVF shape. We want the doctors to gasp and exclaim, "because of your efforts you have doubled your odds for success!"

Cue "Beans Family IVF Training Montage." If you are unfamiliar with the "training montage" genre, it became popular in the 80s and generally involves a series of short clips backed up by cheesy music played on a synthesizer. Some of the best examples include Kevin Bacon teaching Chris Penn how to dance in Footloose, Daniel fighting his way to victory in The Karate Kid, and of course the classic scenes from Rocky (my favorites are the original Rocky and Rocky IV vs. the Russian).

Our montage would include shots of Mrs. Beans and I sprinting up sand dunes, banging out sets on the adductor machine in the gym, grimacing through acupuncture treatments, and solemnly pouring out bottles of Chardonnay into our kitchen sink, all dramatically culminating with Mrs. Beans jamming her first Lupron shot into her ass, a la Ivan Drago. Of course, this will all be set to Van Halen's Dreams.

I guess that we are just looking for a little direction to get us through the next few weeks. Perhaps a few motivational words from our doctor. Is that too much to ask?

*apologies for getting carried away with the links this week! I guess I am feeling nostalgic.

And now for something completely different...

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry why I saw this video. Sadly, other than the annoying soundtrack, this is pretty much how Mrs. Beans and I imagine our reproduction systems at work. We regularly anthromoporphize our internal organs during conversations. Although, I must say, that I still prefer my "running of the bulls" analogy.

I really do wish that I had a definitive answer like "chemicals." The doctor's don't seem to care too much about the source of the problem. They are far more focused on the solution, but I would still like to know if "something" happened. Was if growing up next to that nuclear power plant? Too many hockey pucks to the groin? Too many beers in college? Was it that brief time in my life when I was hooked on smack (just kidding)? I guess we will never know.

Mrs. Beans and I are off for a small vacation, but please check back in next week, as I will continue to keep up with you.