It's All in a Name

The Infertile Farmer. I contemplated what to call this blog. I love the creative names of so many infertility blogs that I read... "Stirrup Queens," "Bottoms off and on the Table," "I Can Haz Bebe," "Wanted - One Good Embryo." Just the collection of names displays the vast array of emotions that go along with infertility. Hope and optimism, bitterness and sadness, anger, and even humor. Something that I have had the pleasure of experiencing is being a farmer and being infertile. I use the term "farmer" loosely. My husband is more of the farmer than I am and coming the 'burbs, this is new territory for me. His family has a farm. We have regular jobs, but much of our spare time is spent on the farm, taking care of the beef cattle, bailing hay, and what seems to be an endless supply of odds and ends job that come with farming. With beef cattle, we have lots of Momma cows, a few happy bulls that spend their days breeding. The purpose of the Momma Cows is to make babies. We have two groups of Momma cows - ones that have babies in the spring, and ones in the fall. So twice a year we have a vet come out to the farm and "preg check" the Momma cows. This basically entails the vet checking to see if the Momma cow is pregnant and announcing how far along she is, so we know when to expect the calf. Sometimes the vet announces, "She's open" and that means the Momma cow isn't pregnant in which case the guys usually confer and unless she has had great calves in the past or is a great cow, she is sent to town to be sold or butchered. Harsh, huh? I thought so too (and still do), but if you know the economics of farming, you soon realize you can't afford to feed cows through the winter that aren't producing any money (i.e., calves). That's a whole other discussion for another day. Point is - if you are a Bull and have bad sperm, you are going to have a very short life since the point of your entire existence is to breed cows. If you are a Momma cow and don't get pregnant, you are done too. And so when my husband and I discovered we had infertility problems, it was a bit daunting to realize we were one of those bulls/cows that would have been canned.