The old infection had become a whole future in my head
Years ago, I had a pelvic infection. One evening I searched whether it could affect fertility and, within twenty minutes, had built a frightening version of my future out of genera
Find your place in the conversation.
Read at your own pace. Ask what matters to you.
Personal accounts and clearly labelled fictional experiences, with room for the details.
Read without joining · Use a display name · Choose Public or Members only when posting
52 items to explore
The announcement came before the Monday meeting
Two colleagues announced pregnancies in the same month. The second email arrived eight minutes before our team meeting. I read it, typed congratulations, and went to the bathroom b
We stopped waiting for a perfectly settled year
The conversation began on a Sunday evening while I was packing for another week in Berlin. My partner was checking train times back to Leipzig, and I said, again, that perhaps next
I made a list called “words I can ask about later”
I was on the sofa with six browser tabs open when I reached a paragraph containing three terms I did not understand. I searched the first, found five more, and closed everything. M
I asked about age without asking for a prediction
At 36 and eight months into trying in this fictional situation, I had read enough headlines to turn every birthday into a verdict. I wanted to ask when to seek an evaluation in my
I took my own questions out of the family advice
By the time my preconception appointment appeared on the calendar, my phone held advice from my mum, two aunties and a family group chat. There were foods to eat, foods to avoid, s
I used the same answer three times at Eid
The first question came before I had taken off my coat. “When will we hear good news?” I smiled and said, “We are keeping that private, but thank you for caring.” Then I asked abou
The sentence we agreed to use at family gatherings
Before a family lunch in Amman, my partner and I practised one sentence in the car: “We will share news when we have news we want to share.” It sounded formal, but the usual questi
I stopped trying to make my notes match the mucus chart
Every description online seemed to use the same handful of words, and none sounded like what I noticed. I would stand in the bathroom comparing an ordinary observation with a polis
I photographed the supplement labels before seeing my GP
My feed made supplements look like a starter kit: prenatal vitamins, CoQ10, fish oil, powders and products with reassuring names. I had started a prenatal but could not tell where
The evening I stopped comparing the two apps
There were two predictions on my phone and they disagreed. I had been off contraception for about four months, and I was standing in the kitchen trying to decide which coloured cir
The word “unexplained” followed me home
The clinician said our basic results were normal, then used the word “unexplained.” I nodded as if the second statement followed neatly from the first. On the bus home, the word sa
I changed my IVF list from answers to questions
When IVF was mentioned as an option, I began a document called “Everything I need to know.” Two days later it had links, definitions, cost figures from different places and several
“You already have one” landed harder than I expected
The comment came at a barbecue. I said we had been trying for a second child for fourteen months, and someone answered, “At least you already have one.” Our daughter was drawing wi
I put the detox tea, supplements and fasting advice in three columns
At breakfast my family mentioned detox tea. At lunch Instagram served me a supplement ad. That evening a friend sent a podcast about fasting. By bedtime, eating had begun to feel l
I photographed the labels at work instead of guessing about exposure
After reading about environmental factors, I began noticing every bottle in the cleaning cupboard and every plastic container at home. The labels became threatening simply because
I wanted us to talk about comfort, not about fixing me
We were clearing the table when I finally said that I wanted to talk about intimacy. I chose that moment because we were both fully dressed, busy with something ordinary, and not a
Our weekly check-in was not allowed to take the whole evening
My partner and I have usually been good at talking. After months of trying, conversation began to feel loaded. A question about the calendar could become a discussion about disappo
I told one person at work, not the whole story
I chose Maya because she never turned someone else’s news into office currency. That was the entire test. Not whether she had perfect advice, but whether I had seen her keep confid
I described what I noticed instead of searching for the right term
For several months, pain during sex had come and gone. Every time I tried to write it down, I rejected my own words. “Sharp” seemed too dramatic on one day and too vague on another