Attempts to fix my cycle didn’t work. Over time, my bleeding worsened. That’s when my fertility specialist recommended in vitro fertilization. IVF, he said, would allow him to “toy around” with my hormones. As he explained how many types of drugs he planned to inject in my body, I nodded politely while screaming no way inside my head. I was skeptical of high-tech baby-making measures. All that medication didn’t appeal, for one thing. Neither did the odds: I’d seen friends go through multiple failed rounds of IVF (chances are about one in three). From what I could tell, the stress of IVF wreaked havoc on relationships. Couples pillaged their savings and retirement accounts (the procedure is $15,000 a pop). I figured if traditional medicine wasn’t for me, perhaps I could cure my infertility a more traditional way, by changing what I ate and how I lived.

I had no idea that going natural would be so unnatural.

It started off simply. I weaned myself off coffee, kept the wine bottles corked, and threw away my Cocoa Puffs (caffeine might disrupt hormonal balance, alcohol might impair ovulation, and sugar is just plain bad for you, according to my fertility nutritionist). I put the kibosh on two of Ron’s favorite weekend activities: cycling, which could potentially damage his Super Sperm, and grilling out. I was being crazy, I knew, but I promised him it would only last a few months — just until I got pregnant.

Instead of hamburgers, dinner now consisted of daikon seaweed soup, a recipe I got from Julia Indichova, author of the book “Inconceivable” (Indichova conceived naturally after changing her diet and lifestyle, and I clung to her book like a map in the wilderness). I began eating more fruits and vegetables, except for peas, which, according to Indichova, contain a natural contraceptive.

A friend had gotten pregnant with the help of acupuncture. Some studies have found it can boost the chances of IVF success. Though I was skipping the IVF part, I began visiting a practitioner weekly; he poked me with needles to awaken my Qi, which, according to Chinese medicine, is the body’s vital life energy. After listening to my pulse, checking the coating on my tongue, and listening to me spill the details of my life’s struggles in a therapy-like session, he told me that my reproductive area was weak and that the acupuncture would move my Qi to help regulate my menstrual flow. Then he stuck a needle in the external part of my ear, and I yelped in pain. I began to suspect acupuncture wasn’t for me.

Next, I worked with an herbalist who gave me a combination of 15 plant extracts mixed and bottled into a tonic to drink daily. The herbal concoction looked like brown goop and tasted so disgusting I had to hold my breath to swallow the stuff.

When I described my new regimen to my fertility doc, he was open-minded about acupuncture but cautious about the herbs: “Herbs aren’t regulated by the FDA,” he warned. Still, I liked the idea of using plants as medicine; it seemed better than drugs designed to coax my ovaries to pop out 10 eggs at a time instead of one. There was no evidence that the herbs would be effective; other women who had my problem only turned to alternative medicine as a last resort, after IVF had failed. I held out hope that if I tried alternative medicine first, I could avoid IVF altogether.

But even with plenty of sex, followed by Viparita Karani (a yoga pose where I elevated my legs up the headboard to help the sperm along), goji berries (reputed to be an aphrodisiac), and week after week of acupuncture sessions, I didn’t conceive. In fact, I could barely tolerate acupuncture. The needles left me feeling anxious, not relaxed, so I stopped. Instead, I turned back to Indichova’s book to see what additional strategies she suggested to boost fertility: yoga for stress reduction (I practiced regularly), colonics to clean out my intestines (no way), and visualization techniques to bring about physiological changes in the body. That sounded safe enough. A stretch maybe, but much less painful than sticking a hose up my butt.

Indichova cited Gerald Epstein, a physician in New York City, as the go-to guy. So I called him at the American Institute for Mental Imagery and arranged to see him.

Epstein faxed me a visualization exercise to do before my appointment, one that he called the Egyptian Healing. Once a day, for seven days after I ovulated, I was to picture a larger-than-life me taking a journey up my cervix and into my uterus. Maxi-me had five eyeballs —one on the end of each finger of my left hand. I also had five small hands on the end of each fingertip of my right hand. If that wasn’t strange enough, I had to envision using these hands to gather yellow rays from the sun and vanilla beans from a field before climbing into my uterus to take a look around (with five eyeballs, I could see well in there). I cleaned away my hostile uterine lining with a golden brush, planted vanilla beans, and watched orchid petals unfold along my uterine wall. Gold, Epstein said, represented transformation; vanilla was a purifying aroma; and orchids represented strength. I tried to take the imagery exercise seriously, but it was hard not to giggle, which made me feel bad. That’s one of the problems I kept running into with alternative medicine. If I wasn’t diligent and earnest enough, I feared I wasn’t doing it “right.”

When I met Epstein in person I liked him right away. He wasn’t a quack. The more I listened to him, the more I felt what he said had merit. He believes that the mind is a powerful force. “It can both create and destroy health,” he said. To demonstrate how the mind exerts influence on the body he had me hold my arm in place, parallel to the ground, while he pressed down on it. I had an easier time resisting his push when I thought of things I loved (like my husband), but my arm sank when I thought of things I hated (like acupuncture). I was surprised; Epstein wasn’t. “People try to separate the mind and body, but they’re one,” he said.

Along with my fertility nutritionist and my ex-acupuncturist, Dr. Epstein wanted to “investigate my inner conflicts.” Especially those surrounding parenthood. Like most women, I was worried about whether I could successfully juggle my career and motherhood. I hated to admit it, but I was dreading the pregnancy weight gain, and I could easily work myself into a panic when I thought about the logistics of pushing out an 8-pound baby. We also talked about the fact that my extra-long periods began the same month I’d learned Ron and I had to leave California for Washington, D.C., a move I was less than thrilled about. Could my unhappiness about our relocation be causing my period problems? Epstein thought so. He told me about a cluster of cells in the mid-area of the brain known as the locus coeruleus, or blue nucleus, which typically sends neurochemicals to other parts of the brain to help the body function optimally. But in times of anxiety, the adrenal gland secretes stress hormones that deactivate the blue nucleus. To get it functioning again, Epstein suggested that I try reducing my stress hormones with visual imagery and by taking long, slow exhalations.

“Your mental concerns are reflected in your uterine instability,” he said. Now that’s something I never heard from my mainstream doc.

Maybe a super disciplined person can “imaginate” (as Dr. Epstein termed it) faithfully, practice yoga every day, and resist all urges for peanut butter cups, but I struggled to maintain all the rules of my routine. As I fed beets into my juicer, I felt grateful, I did, but I also felt impatient and frustrated. It’s hard being crunchy.

Two months later, my cycle did begin changing; my luteal phase had lengthened by a day. Was it thoughts of vanilla beans that made the difference? The Bound Supta Baddha Konasana I practiced on my yoga mat? With so many factors in play, it was hard to know for sure. But instead of feeling buoyed by this turn of events, I began to feel like a prisoner of my kinder, gentler routine. Giving up cookies was one thing, but after trying to give up wheat (too inflammatory!), meat (too acidic!) and dairy (too mucus-y!) I felt like a martyr, especially when I’d stare hungrily into my cupboard, bare but for a container of uncooked quinoa. I also felt perpetually paranoid. Would I sabotage my chances of pregnancy if I drank one cup of coffee? I canceled a weekend trip with girlfriends — what if I ovulated while I was away? I spent my free time Googling holistic fertility treatments. Ironically, I was caught up in the fertility obsessiveness I’d wanted to avoid in the first place. And I also couldn’t help thinking that while there may well be power in positive thinking, there is also value in giving voice to truth, even if that truth involves a messy uterus and the sadness of infertility.

Whether I pursued holistic medicine, Western medicine, or took a middle ground, I was beginning to suspect there were things I could control (diet and exercise) and things I couldn’t (whether a blastocyst implanted in my uterus). I’d been frantically running in mad little circles with my yoga practice, baked kale chips, and visualization exercises, hoping that I could create a baby by dint of sheer determination. Meanwhile, I’d ignored the fact that there are things that nobody can bring about by force. No matter how perfectly I tried to follow any routine, there were no guarantees I’d conceive.

A few days later, when Ron brought home a bottle of red wine, I let myself enjoy a glass. I needed to loosen my grip on other areas, too. Because whether or not we eventually ended up with a baby, I wanted to move forward in my life, welcoming whatever lay around the bend.

It’s not that I’m ready to reproduce — good God, no — but I do want to have a baby eventually, though the possibility seems many years off. Will I be ready — emotionally, professionally, financially, romantically — before my fertility nose-dives? This longing feels physically acute — a twitching in my ovaries, an itching in my arms to cradle. In the past, I’d always written off the cliché of the woman in her late 20s or early 30s with a “ticking biological clock” as a sexist trope. Now I find myself reconsidering and wondering how real it is, and why it is.

While common wisdom has it that this desire grows throughout a woman’s 30s, Anna Rotkirch, the director of the Population Research Institute in Finland, says studies have shown “the urge appears to be strongest in the late 20s.” (Dude, I know.) Some women, however, “say they have felt ‘baby fever’ more or less intensely since their early teenage years,” she says. “Other women feel it for the first time in their late 20s.” (You heard it here first: Not all women are the same.)

Rotkirch reported in a paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology that her Finnish interview subjects described the phenomenon in terms of “a painful longing in my whole being” or an “unbelievable aching,” sometimes accompanied by the sensation of having “empty arms” or breasts that “became sensitive and hard.” In a related survey, she found that 58 percent of male respondents and 78 percent of female respondents reported having “experienced a strong desire to have a child of [their] own” — although this seems less a measure of sudden, acute longing than of a general desire to reproduce at some time.

As for why this alleged phenomenon might exist, Rotkirch says we know very little.

“All existing studies use written texts or questionnaires,” she says, which tell us more about how women perceive their “baby lust” rather than the actual origins. Still, Rotkirch has found evidence of a “hormonal underpinning,” she says, with “little influence” of social factors like education or income.

In her paper, she pointed out that, in terms of evolutionary biology, “the ‘default mode’ of the female body is to have experienced both nurturing and pregnancies by the early 20s.” Rotkirch suggested that “longing for a baby can develop as a by-product of hormonal changes that evolved to prepare the woman for motherhood,” she wrote. “Such changes could be induced by falling in love; the ‘nesting behavior’ related to settling down and starting to live with a partner; exposure to infants; and/or by the processes of aging.”

If evolutionary theories are too caveman-y for your taste, there is the undeniable fact that women’s fertility begins to decline in their late 20s, right around the average time that baby panic sets in. She says, “My informed guess is that baby fever is one mechanism for reproductive timing” — or, in other words, a way to urge that “now is a good time to have a baby.” It seems to make intuitive sense, but the science on exactly how this mechanism might work is just not there.

Clearly, though, many women do not ever feel the pull of the ticking clock, or don’t feel it distinctly, and “part of the variation is probably genetic,” she says, “as with most things.” It’s also important to note that men have been found to encounter baby fever too: In an exhaustive study surveying the potential causes of the phenomenon, Gary Brase, an associate professor of psychology at Kansas State University, found that men experience it, just to a lesser degree than women do.

Adding to the lists of “could-bes,” baby fever might just be a “superfluous” feeling arising from “general interest in parenting,” she says. (Although, if a nurturing instinct were the sole explanation, pets would be a far more effective — not to mention cheaper and easier — solution to baby fever.) “At an age were most women in our evolutionary past would have been mothers, or at least surrounded by babies and children, many Western women are not, and this may create a situation where you feel a strong urge to have an outlet and object for your maternal emotions.” Rotkirch points to research on baboons and chimpanzees showing a clear variation in maternal behavior: “Some are very interested in mothering and training to become a mother,” she says, while others are not.

But it’s impossible to ignore the social influence and culture of baby mania — just consider the pregnancy porn in celebrity tabloids and the high-profile exhortations to hurry up and settle down before it’s too late! Then, too, girls are often trained as nurturers from the time they’re in the bassinet. However, Brase, who has studied the issue for nearly a decade, found that beliefs about gender roles — for example, a woman’s conviction that her proper place is in the home — were not strong predictors of baby fever. “Desire for a baby is not strongly connected to people’s gender roles,” he told me.

There is good evidence of a different kind of social influence, though. A Swedish study found that women are more likely to have babies shortly after their co-workers have babies. Is might be a coincidence that my sudden baby ache arrived right around the time that my peers started getting pregnant, or it might not. Within a couple of months of each other, two friends, a family member and a co-worker, all but a handful of years older than me, announced that they had a baby on board. Brase also found that one of the strongest predictors of baby fever was prior positive experiences with babies.

Regardless of whether it stems from our evolutionary roots, there’s no denying that baby fever as a cultural phenomenon or topic of discussion is “a very new and ‘social’ thing,” Rotkirch says. “This is due to the fact that in contemporary developed societies, we grow sexually mature younger but start having babies later than in most other societies through history,” she says. “There is more time to be physiologically mature for a baby without actually having one.”

It’s also the case that women’s greater choices and freedom has resulted in “more ambivalence and decision making,” she says, over whether to have a baby, as well as when and with whom. There are also greater potential barriers related to education and career. Rotkirch found in surveying women that “the longing usually awoke when having a child would theoretically have been possible as the woman was basically healthy and had a satisfying couple relationship,” but “circumstances opposed it, usually the woman’s own life plans, problems in reproductive health, or the attitude of her male partner.”

In an attempt at clarity amid all the hypotheticals, Brase offers, “The short answer is that it is most likely a combination of biology, circumstances and personality.” Does my baby-ache come from a basic, biological imperative? Probably in part. But it’s the tension that results from that urge running up against the constraints of reality that makes it so acute. Without a tension between the two, the ache would simply be an urge put into action.

I am very eager to have babies with the man I love. With us now moving, kids are on the back burner because we won’t have health insurance until one of us lands a job with benefits. We had been trying to get pregnant until the decision to move was made because I have decent benefits with my current hateful job. (One of the reasons I haven’t quit, the other main one being that I’m trying to hold this job out till we can move.) I really want kids soon; I have wanted to be a mother since I was 5. But the stress of life and my failing body seem to want other things for me. I had injured my back at work and now am in physiotherapy to heal it, yet I’m still obligated to work my full shifts. Those eight-hour shifts literally drain me. I haven’t had a period in 3.5 months (my doctor insists it’s stress-related). And most recently, my pap test came back with abnormal cells on my cervix. No further tests have been done, but my doctor thinks my back, lack of period and abnormal cells are at least partly because of too much stress. Hard not to be stressed when all these symptoms have made me worry and fret even more about never being able to have children! The more that I worry, the more stressed my body becomes. The more symptoms of the stress I experience, the more I worry. (A huge catch-22.) One of my worst fears is to end up being barren.

On to my other issue. My fiancé and I both smoke marijuana regularly. I will note here that we do not smoke cigarettes at all, nor do we drink alcohol very often. Although I have heard that it can prevent couples from conceiving, I only “slowed it down” when we were trying to get pregnant. My fiancé seems to have his usage under control. He is able to use on a part-time basis and not every evening and every weekend. I am a different story altogether. I use (abuse) marijuana for stress. I rush to get home after work to have the bad memories of the day dissolve into higher thoughts. I am not high at work, but evenings and weekends are full of my usage. It’s the way I’ve taught myself to deal. Although I don’t think marijuana is an “evil drug” that “leads to other drug usage,” I know that I am misusing it. I have never felt the need to try any other drug (besides alcohol and caffeine). But I barely even notice the effects any more. Despite that, I can’t imagine quitting it altogether. I know that if I were pregnant I would not smoke at all, because there is another human being involved who would be affected by it.

But without marijuana, how would I deal with life’s stress? Plus there is some part of me that feels like marijuana is not bad. You ought to know that in my family, a few other people smoke marijuana. My aunt and cousin probably use it once daily, and my mom and brother once or twice a week, and my dad on occasion. While they never permitted any drug usage as a teenager, I found out and smoked with family after turning 19. Obviously this is a huge part of the reason why I can’t seem to convince myself that marijuana is “bad.”

This new city will not have any marijuana contacts for my fiancé and me, and it is my plan to stop smoking when we move. But really, I don’t want to stop at all, and I feel like I’m lying to myself by thinking that a new city will stop me from finding a way to do it. Plus, my fiancé is moving first, and we will be apart for a month (we’ve never been apart for longer than 10 days in the past four years). I know that with him gone, I will want to smoke even more. Especially because I feel like I want to get as much smoking in before I “can’t” anymore.

I know several people who use marijuana more than I do and who firmly believe that no one can get addicted to it. I guess I’m not so sure about this, but I would like to believe it because then I’m just a hippie and not an addict. I worry about the usage affecting the physiotherapy on my back, but since we aren’t trying to get pregnant, I still smoke whenever I want to. My fiancé knows that I smoke too much, he knows that I KNOW that I smoke too much too. But month after month he still brings it home for us. I have tried to quit before, asking him to keep it all hidden and out of sight. This always fails, because I will find it and sneak some or bug and bug him to get it out of hiding for me.

I don’t think I can stop until he stops bringing it into the house and we get rid of all the marijuana paraphernalia that is around our place. If my fiancé doesn’t want to quit with me, I would be disappointed. But as long as he kept everything out of our house and cars, I think I could do it. I really do want children in the long run and better physiotherapy results in the short term. What do I do?

Moving and Shaking

Dear Moving and Shaking,

You are using marijuana to relieve stress.

Stress is your problem. Whether you stop smoking marijuana or not, you need to learn more and better ways to relieve stress.

Start doing tai chi; start doing yoga; meditate; take naps; breathe deeply a lot; do biofeedback. If you are doing any of these activities already, don’t conclude that since you’re doing it a little it must not work. Instead, do it more.

You may need higher doses of yoga to get relief. Also, if you are consuming lots of caffeine, see about cutting back. Try substituting some herbal teas for caffeinated beverages now and then. Notice the difference. Especially in the afternoon, cut out the caffeine so you can get a better night’s sleep.

You will notice things about yourself this way. You will notice the different qualities of consciousness that arise from various techniques. It will be entertaining and interesting. You will notice a gradual improvement in your ability to go through life in a relaxed, worry-free way. Unpleasant activities like work and dealing with power-hungry blockheads will go more smoothly.

During this time, you might want to experiment with not smoking for a time. Pick an occasional time when you are stressed out, and instead of smoking, do 15 minutes of meditation, or some tai chi or yoga.

Don’t try to quit all at once, especially not on your own. Just learn some better relaxation techniques. Take it easy. Look for gradual improvement.

Once you’ve found other ways to relieve stress, you may not feel so fearful about the idea of quitting marijuana for good. Try going without for a few days at a time and see how that goes. You can always smoke. But experience what it’s like to handle life without it. Try to get accustomed to that feeling. You may feel slightly on edge, but take a deep breath of fresh air instead of a hit of weed.

The thing is, whether you call yourself an addict or not, changing habitual behavior is hard, and it’s especially hard to do alone. It’s hard to do without a program. It takes time, effort and support, and there are ups and downs. So I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop smoking marijuana on your own, or just with your fiancé.

As you say, for a variety of reasons, you are going to want to quit. So what I’m suggesting is that you prepare, in these ways, for the day when you will need to quit. I’m sure marijuana gives you other things besides stress relief; it probably gives you a heightened sense of the beauty of life, of tastes and sounds, and of general well-being. These things you may need to seek out in life; I find that there are other ways to feel these momentary highs. Seek them out.

For quitting things, as you probably know, I favor the 12-step method because it has added benefits: It helps you get your life together and is a lasting program of living. It is a community. It works for a lot of things.

When and how you quit is up to you. I can say that based on experience, it is definitely possible. You can quit and lead a normal, happy life, when you’re ready to. My bottom line is just that A) You should acquire new stress-relief methods first, before trying to quit, and B) what was B? Oh yeah, B) Don’t try to quit on your own. If and when you do decide to quit, do it with a group or a program behind you.

And, hey: Good luck. You sound like really nice people and I wish you the best in life. And say hello to the kids when they come. And say hello to the mountains.

Part of my self-consciousness came from the fact that infertility treatments are an intimate affair. Your private parts are prodded, your internal organs scrutinized, and your bodily fluids drawn. Nobody looks at one little baby and thinks, “Gee, wonder how that thing got made?” whereas multiples beg the question: How exactly did that happen? I wasn’t crazy about my reproductive process being speculated upon or, more to the point, given any thought at all.

But there was more to it than that.

Was I simply ashamed that I couldn’t get pregnant on my own? Did I feel inadequate or even “broken,” as a friend of mine who recently had IVF said she did? Not really. There were times when my husband and I felt frustrated and angry at our inability to conceive, but I never worried that other people would judge me for something beyond my control. Nor do I have any religious or ethical qualms about responsibly administered fertility treatments (i.e., the kind carefully monitored so as to avoid higher-order multiples). No one has ever scolded me for going against “God’s plan,” but if they did, I would politely tell them I disagree. To me, assisted fertility is no more “playing God” than administering CPR.

It is, however, a choice. And in the eyes of many people it’s a selfish one. Just read the comments thread under any story on this topic. And this, I realized, was at the heart of my reluctance to let people know how my twin daughters came to be. I worried they would think I’d acted selfishly. On some level, I wondered if they were right.

Having infertility treatments is selfish, the argument typically goes, because the world population is burgeoning. Meanwhile, there are thousands of children out there in need of good homes. So why don’t infertile couples (or “these women,” as it’s more typically put, as if their partners are merely being dragged along for the ride) just adopt?

Back when we were in our 20s, my husband and I always said we’d adopt if we weren’t able to get pregnant on our own. If it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be. But when I was just shy of 30, the desire to have a baby kicked in, and it kicked in hard. I wanted to experience pregnancy, and both of us wanted the experience of creating and nurturing a person who was genetically linked to us. It was a primal and surprisingly powerful urge.

By that time we’d learned that “just adopting” is anything but simple. Fees and expenses can run anywhere from $5K-$50K and whether you adopt domestically or internationally, the process can take years, and can be a roller coaster of anticipation, disappointment and complex legal issues. In addition, adopted children are more likely to have special healthcare needs, developmental delays and mental health issues.

So when making a baby on our own proved challenging, we didn’t say, “Guess we’ll just adopt.” We went to a fertility clinic, got tested, and talked over our options with the doctor. They were confident that they could help us, and we agreed to give it a shot. This was what we wanted.

Our insurance required that we try the least invasive approach first: ovulation stimulation drugs, with careful monitoring to try to prevent a multiple pregnancy. We were fortunate that our route to conception was a relatively simple one. On our third attempt, I was pregnant. And we were thrilled — in spite of being taken aback by the fact that there were two babies on the way.

Now, our daughters are 5 years old, and we can’t imagine life without them. These days, I don’t much care if people think I was selfish to have undergone treatment to help conceive them. I honestly don’t think my choice was any more selfish than anyone’s choice to have a child.

One woman I spoke to recently on this topic put it perfectly. Like many women who struggle with infertility, she was asked by friends if she considered adoption before getting infertility treatments. She said to me, “I always wanted to ask them, the ones who were parents, in particular: Did you consider adopting before you went and tried to have a baby on your own? And if you didn’t, why should I?’”

Why, indeed, should infertile couples be automatically expected to adopt? Why should the onus be on them to make this noble and unselfish choice, when the desire for a biological child is something shared equally by fertile and infertile couples?

Yes, my husband and I would probably have pursued adoption if we had exhausted the possibilities for having our own children, provided we could muster the financial and emotional resources to do so. Adoption is a wonderful avenue for building a family. But the technology was there for us to conceive a child — and, as it turned out, children — of our own. We had every right to use it.

My friends moved to a progressive, Midwestern college town so he could complete his Ph.D. and she could have two more wonderful children in quick succession. She had uncomplicated pregnancies, had those babies at home, breast-fed like a champ, and is now interested in private (Waldorf) schooling for the children as they enter the preschool years. All the while they’ve had the financial support of retired, secure grandparents to make some of these things possible that wouldn’t be on a graduate student stipend alone.

My husband and I had our delightful daughter in a hospital setting, I went back to work when she was 11 weeks old (also breast-feeding and pumping for a year plus), we pieced together childcare from the generosity of my sister, neighborhood baby sitters, and finally a daycare close to work and now a great preschool. None of those events happened without difficulty — financial and emotional – but we passed through them and have a loving, happy little family.

It’s been four hard and wonderful years — interspersed with a significant illness on my part that delayed trying for a second baby (and trying, and trying) until — yes! — I was finally pregnant and ready to share the news with my good friends (who had since moved only an hour away when my friend secured a professorship at a nearby college).

The earthquake: We go up to their house for the weekend, our kids go off to play, I share that I’m pregnant and then … well. Questions about how my daughter was born (didn’t they know? I thought I told them?) turned into a strong push for my husband and me to consider having a home birth for this new baby. And they weren’t particularly nice about it. They made it clear that the birth of my daughter was an awful experience (if only I would recognize it) and that I clearly hadn’t done my research (I did). When it was evident from my shaking voice and tearing eyes that I was upset, and as I attempted feebly to defend my goddamn “birth experience” and my intelligence, they (sort of) dropped it and we all played a game of Balderdash. I so desperately wanted things to be OK that I pretend that they were.

But they’re not, obviously. One game of Balderdash does not restore a friendship. Neither does my friend’s post-earthquake attempts to “like” everything I post on Facebook. I never told them how much they hurt me, but I also have no desire right now to see them. I would rather lick my wounds alone, grow fat with a new baby, give birth in the big bad hospital, and check in with them once the kids are done with college and our early “parenting choices” fade into perspective.

Worse, that one earthquake event made me revisit the slow drift, so now I’m resentful of how “easy” they’ve had things when before that fateful weekend I didn’t give anything a second thought — I was just happy to spend time with them and their kids. Aren’t we just lucky to even have kids? And jobs? And old friends?

If I don’t try to save this friendship now, do you think I can save it later? Should I save it? Can I come to a place of forgiveness without a discussion with them? Or do I have to discuss it with them? What can I learn from this experience about myself that’s positive, or things about myself that I can/should change so this type of thing doesn’t eat me up so much? I feed off resentment sometimes. How can I stop?

Sad Mama-to-be

Dear Sad Mama-to-be,

There are certain topics in the discussion of which otherwise decent, thoughtful people behave like tyrannical bores. One such topic is “the good of the children.” Apparently “for the good of the children” no remark is too tasteless or insensitive or intrusive. When “the good of the children” is concerned, your feelings as parents and friends no longer matter.

Your friends would never so ham-handedly advise you on proper techniques and apparatus for sexual intercourse with your husband. They would never suggest that in your bathroom habits you’re doing it all wrong. That stuff is private! It’s taboo! That would seem weird and offensive. But no offense is too great when it comes to “the good of the children.”

It might be different if the children in question were in danger of dying from unsanitary conditions or suffering brain damage. But just who are these children about whose good we are so deeply concerned, and what is the peril? They are, on the whole, extremely fortunate children, children of wise and loving parents, about to be born in sophisticated modern hospitals where the greatest possible medical advances ensure nearly flawless safety for mother and child in an event that throughout history has involved peril of death for both.

So I join you in your high dudgeon; I am in solidarity with you. Your friends were out of line.

At the same time, I have to tell you: Let it go.

Your friends love you. They are simply flawed people, like all of us.

Birth at home, birth in water, birth in the silent, peaceful dark, that sounds great. I wish I could have been born that way. That would have been great.

But who chooses the manner in which the birth is to be had? Friends? Strangers? Doctors? The state? The church?

You choose. The mother chooses. And the rest of us step back and respect that.

Still, you have to let it go.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Just precisely exactly in what manner on earth are you to just simply “let it go”? How, pray tell, is that supposed to happen?

Me, I am, imperfectly but fairly determinedly, a practitioner of the 12 steps. And one thing we learn in practicing the 12 steps is to concern ourselves with the phenomenon of the disturbance itself. We put aside questions of who was right and ask, Why am I disturbed? In your case, you are uncomfortable with something someone has said to you. Regardless of the content, it is you who must adjust your outlook to accommodate this phenomenon. Sure, someone has been rude. But people can be rude to us with no consequence  to us if we are, shall I say, spiritually fit.

It takes practice, of course. But the 12 steps lead us to a place where we are not disturbed greatly if at all by such intrusive boorishness. We shrug it off. We lovingly let it go. For help in learning to practice the 12 steps you might look into something like Al-Anon or codependents anonymous, groups that use the 12 steps to tackle problems other than substance abuse and addiction.

Now, abandoning the notion of who is right and who is wrong is a huge shift for people who consider themselves thinking individuals, problem solvers, rational, decent people. But that is what the 12 steps call for; that is what is required when all reasonable, commonsense solutions have come up short. When you are driven to the 12 steps, usually your reasonableness has indeed been exhausted. You have seen your situation to be absolutely hopeless.

So. Well then. The only thing that stands in your way seems to be the absence of absolute hopelessness!

Perhaps absolute hopelessness is present in some form. Let’s hope so.

(Please forgive my nerdy attempt at dark, 12-step humor.)

Good luck. I hope you can go back to these friends of yours and admit that you were hurt in that conversation but you value them and love them and want to save the friendship. They sound like good people. You all sound like good people. I hope you can remain friends for a long time, and raise these kids together.