Go sit in some woods at midnight, ululating with wolves.

This photo comes by way of my friend Justin's brilliant photoshopping skills. That's my face, alright, but the rest of it (including those enviable abs) belongs to Angelina Jolie. But it was the perfect photo to kick off this post.

So, I tried belly dancing the other night. The all-women gym in town offers yoga and dance classes, and you can drop in for $10 a pop instead of committing to an actual membership, so I said why the hell not. Why the hell not because part of "maximizing fertility" is doing gentle exercise every day as well as focusing/meditating on the womb. I know, I know. It all sounds like hocus pocus. Anyway, I got there and was easily the youngest person there by a decade. Also, the most underdressed: the other ladies had shown up with long flowing skirts. The oldest woman student in there--probably in her sixties?--was wearing black harem pants with golden stripes as well as a tiny wrap around her waist bedecked in bells. As if that didn't make a statement enough, she was salsa dancing while also carrying on a conversation with another woman, who had wrapped her arms around her middle and caved her chest in awkwardly, as if protecting herself. I felt like I was wearing khaki and a safari helmet, peering around my jeep whilst deep in the savannah, clutching a telescopic lens and binoculars, and observing the wildlife. Look, the submissive females of the pack. How fortunate to spot the dominant lioness while she performs her dance of intimidation, just daring any of the others to think about usurping her position. How FASCINATING.

What I liked about the class was the positive focus on the body and "its hows," as e. e. cummings once put it. The class was pretty much the antithesis of all the women's magazines that tell us to: Fight the Flab! Burn that Belly! et cetera. The teacher didn't have washboard abs, she had a belly that was wonderfully feminine and moreover able. And as for the "hows" ... when the teacher broke it down enough, our bodies actually could do the same sinuous, undulating things hers could. 'Course once we had to worry about arms and abs, or god forbid do the movement four times as fast and/or to music, all bets were off. But my point is: our bodies are so much more able than we think they are. Than we give them credit for. Sometimes we just need a lot more patience and a little more faith.

Of course you know where I am going with this. Do I feel a little silly meditating on my womb in yoga class or taking belly dancing because of its positive focus on the same region? Do I pull up out of myself sometimes and float in the corner and question whether any of this is really making a difference: not having that cup of coffee I want so badly; drinking chlorophyll in my water to up my red blood cell count; beginning each day with a cup of hot water with lemon to support my liver function; taking seven pills a day; largely cutting out meat and ice cream and dairy; giving up running because the overaerobic quality of it could put me at risk for a repeated miscarriage; letting this go, and that go, and that, too, because it's better to not stress myself out; et cetera.

But I had to try something else. Peeing on strips every single day and worrying about whether or not I was going to ovulate and when and whether I'd miss the small window in which to conceive ... having a recipe of when and how to have sex ... putting up with the indignity of taking hormone supplements after having sex to "correct" my body, as if it didn't know how to do this most natural of things right ... remembering with uncanny mathematical certainty how long it's been since I miscarried (1 yr. 8 mos.), and thus how long we've been trying (1 yr. 6 mos.), and how long we've been really trying, with assistance (7 mos.) ... well, to put it mildly, it was kind of fucking with my happiness and self-worth. Instead, I did a little self-medication: I went to Hawai'i without my husband and thusly had zero sex, missed my ovulation window, drank coffee every morning and alcohol every night, had one hangover that took me back to my early twenties (ouch), and generally stopped thinking about any of this at all. It was healing. And when I came back, I didn't even wait a day before delving into Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility, which had arrived from Amazon shortly before I left for Hawai'i.

So, here I am, opening myself to the wideness of possibility. You tell me that acupuncture can help? Then I will overcome my fear of needles. You say I need to drink a tea of a particular concoction of herbs once a day? I'll just add it to all the other shit I'm supposed to do. I'll do yoga and dance-worship my belly, and if you tell me it's been proven to work, I'll go sit in some woods at midnight, ululating with wolves. I am trying to keep my chin up and my heart anchored somewhere between steeling against disappointment and reaching, over and over again, for hope.