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Baby Lust
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Here is a smattering of things I did during the six-year quest to conceive my daughter: interrupt love-making to squirt raw egg whites into myself with a turkey baster (it’s reputed to abet the feminine fluid that speeds sperm to egg); substitute two teaspoons of Robitussin for my morning coffee (its main ingredient thins and loosens mucous in the lungs, and although there is no actual proof, it’s thought to work similar juju farther south); down ovulation-stimulating pills that triggered fits of rage; inject myself with the urine of post menopausal Italian nuns (the original source of some fertility drugs, though it’s hard to imagine how the goods are gathered); chug unidentifiable herbal potions that tasted like garden mulch; squander what would have been the college fund on long-shot in-vitro-fertilization treatments; imperil my marriage.
Here is what I did not do: stock up on Häagen-Dazs. That, apparently,was my mistake. According to data gleaned from the Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and published earlier this year in the journal Human Reproduction, women who consume ice cream at least twice a week have a 38 percent lower risk of ovulation-related infertility than those who indulge a mere once a week. What’s more, the piously health-conscious — women who eat two or more servings of low-fat dairy products, particularly yogurt, a week — are twice as likely to have trouble becoming pregnant as those who eat less than one serving of the skinny stuff.More
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Here is a smattering of things I did during the six-year quest to conceive my daughter: interrupt love-making to squirt raw egg whites into myself with a turkey baster (it’s reputed to abet the feminine fluid that speeds sperm to egg); substitute two teaspoons of Robitussin for my morning coffee (its main ingredient thins and loosens mucous in the lungs, and although there is no actual proof, it’s thought to work similar juju farther south); down ovulation-stimulating pills that triggered fits of rage; inject myself with the urine of post menopausal Italian nuns (the original source of some fertility drugs, though it’s hard to imagine how the goods are gathered); chug unidentifiable herbal potions that tasted like garden mulch; squander what would have been the college fund on long-shot in-vitro-fertilization treatments; imperil my marriage.
Here is what I did not do: stock up on Häagen-Dazs. That, apparently,was my mistake. According to data gleaned from the Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and published earlier this year in the journal Human Reproduction, women who consume ice cream at least twice a week have a 38 percent lower risk of ovulation-related infertility than those who indulge a mere once a week. What’s more, the piously health-conscious — women who eat two or more servings of low-fat dairy products, particularly yogurt, a week — are twice as likely to have trouble becoming pregnant as those who eat less than one serving of the skinny stuff.More
