The unintended secret

Before I start, I must sincerely apologize. I always resented the bloggers who dropped off the face of the earth for months, and now I have become one of those bloggers. Second, before I get into the meat of this post, I should let you all know that I'm doing fine. I'm 31 weeks along, and beyond hemorrhoids and a potential yeast infection, I'm perfectly healthy. I'm currently spending the week at a marketing agency as a writer-for-hire. Basically, that means I sit here in case they need a writer while their full-time writer is on vacation. A sweet gig, yes, but it makes for a long day--especially with pregancy-induced back problems that make it difficult to sit. And now for the main event... At the beginning of this pregnancy, I vowed I would not be secretive at all about how this baby was conceived. I was not ashamed that we underwent IUI, and certainly all our close friends and family know our story. But I have realized I have told our story to very few people outside our inner circle. Not because I don't want to tell, but because the subject has never come up. The simple truth is, people see a pregnant woman and they don't care how she got that way. All they want to know is the due date. And if I endeavor to bring up the IUI in casual conversation, it feels awkward. I could tell them I underwent IUI, but then that brings blank stares, and I must elaborate further: intrauterine insemination. And here's where my fifth-grade sensibilities come in. I have a difficult time saying the word "insemination," mainly because of its inclusion of the word "semen." If we had done IVF, that would have been much easier to talk about. But when I say "semen," chances are you're getting a mental picture. And that mental picture is not ideal in a casual conversation. So I just smile and answer their questions about how I'm feeling. Sometimes I'll slip in "...and it took us a long time to get here." But nobody ever asks whose eyes I was looking into when sperm was sent on its way to meet egg. In this case, the means doesn't really matter to my extended circle of acquaintances; it's all about the end.