Charting? What?

In January, realizing we were ready to set things in motion, Heather and I met with a local nurse/midwife.  A friend of Heather's knew another lesbian couple who had worked with the nurse-- let's call her Nina-- when they inseminated.  They got pregnant on their first try, so we got to calling.

"Hi, my name is Rachel and I got your number from X.  I want to knock my girlfriend up and we need some advice."

Heather, overhearing, was horrified at my wording, but Nina was not, and I felt that boded well for our relationship with her.  If this lady was going to squirt semen into my girlfriend's vagina, we'd better go ahead and get down to brass tacks.

We met with Nina at the library.  I was overflowing with passionate opinions about home birth after reading the excellent Baby Catcher and watching The Business of Being Born... but I'd skipped right past the getting-pregnant part, and apparently that's a big deal.  We never even got to birthing pools.

We told Nina we wanted to get pregnant around September, having agreed to wait till our two-year anniversary.  She said we were at a great point to get prepared because this gave us a lot of time to chart and research.  Charting?  Shit.  I don't know how I thought we'd find out when to inseminate, but tracking Heather's fertile mucus was not what I anticipated.

Nina suggested we get ourselves over to Amazon and buy The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth.  I'm a big fan of online shopping so I was all kinds of ready for that.  I was not ready for what I'd be reading.