Greg Bales

Stress

In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb

We talk a lot about stress in our house in part because K doesn’t react well to it. Her heart races sometimes—I’ve heard it—such as when her coworker drinks the potion and becomes Mr. Hyde, which happens all too often now, as if Hyde were taking over. Or like Spike when the Initiative installs a chip in his head, a nuisance but no less dangerous for being harmless. (The coworker has got nothing on James Marsters, though.) Ways to keep heartbeats regular are precious around here.

During our year of trying, before we knew the facts of the matter, I thought things would be more likely to happen if we (she) would just take the procreating more easily. “Relax,” I said. “You’ll never get knocked up if you’re always so tense!” I remained positive myself and tried to convince her that statistically, it was bound to happen. As it turned out, of course, relaxing had nothing whatsoever to do with it. K could have been comatose for every one of those twelve months and I wouldn’t have been able to seal the deal. By the end, I suspect that my reassurances (no longer so convincing even to myself) were almost as onerous as was fact that she kept not becoming pregnant.

I use that history as explanation why Peggy Orenstein’s essay in the New York Times Magazine, about how stress is probably more a cultural bogeyman than a real causal factor in modern life, is worth a sheepish link.