Meanwhile, my period kept coming, and I read more books and downloaded more apps. I took my temperature every morning and learned a lot of things about cervical fluid. I gained five pounds and cut down on CrossFit just in case extra body fat could be helpful. I debated whether I should see a doctor about all of this, and kept putting it off because I knew I hadn’t technically been trying for long enough to warrant real concern. I got even sadder. And then, I asked a colleague (who has an adorable kid) whether she used the Ob/Gyns in our office building and which hospital they were affiliated with — I guess I was in a bit of a DGAF mood, because could that question be any more obvious? She asked if I was pregnant, I said I was working on it, and she said, “It took me forever. It sucks.” I hated hearing that from her, but I also loved it. I needed to hear it. I also needed to read Christene’s brutal and beautiful essay about her multiple miscarriages. I needed to find out that Chrissy Teigen was doing IVF when she shot Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition. I need to know that people try for years, that they give up, that they maybe try again, that they go through hell and that they’re still going, still living a life, whether they’ve added a new person to it or not. And I need to hear this from real people — not just anonymous women on message boards who use acronyms I don’t understand. I need to talk about this because I need to get it off my chest, but also because I need people to talk to me about it. Of course, my husband and I discuss it all the time, but I need something from outside the bubble of our relationship, too. And when I think about the mind-spinning I’ve gone through when I’ve revealed it in the past, I realize my concern wasn’t actually about me. So someone’s going to know my husband and I are having semi-scheduled, tactically-timed sex. Who cares? They’re going to know I’m not 100% happy all the time. So? They’re going to find out there’s some potential that something strange is going on with my luteal phase or with my husband’s sperm count or something. I truly don’t give a fuck. What I have been giving a fuck about, I think, is how everyone else feels. I’m concerned not because they’re going to know a secret about me, but because that secret might make them uncomfortable. I’m freaked out that they’re going to have to experience my sadness secondhand, or that they’ll feel awkward not knowing what to say, or that they’ll start worrying that this might happen to them someday. This isn’t about protecting my feelings — it’s about protecting everyone else’s. A friend of mine from high school (who has four kids btw, shitttt) revealed on her blog last year that she was pregnant — four weeks pregnant. And that even though it’s against the rules to go public with a pregnancy that early, it was simply too difficult for her to stay in hiding about such a joyful and terrifying life moment. After all, she wrote, she’d blogged about miscarriage before, and would do it in the future if it were to happen again, and it’s just so much harder to struggle with the challenges of the first trimester in secret. So real. I may not be in the first trimester (yet, or to be honest, maybe ever), but I’m struggling. And if I — someone who has realistically only been working on this for five months, and who’s still years away from “advanced maternal age” — am struggling, surely others out there have it much worse. So, dammit, let’s talk about it. The secret’s out, and I’m done caring what that means to everyone else. Or at the very least, I’m trying. RELATED: