It was just holding hands!

When I was about 7 or 8 years old there was a little boy (whose name I can’t remember) that lived across the street who would come over often to play. One day we decided to get married because we felt if we wanted to play house, we needed to be married. One of my siblings preformed the ceremony under an old pine tree in our front yard. I had a bouquet of dandelions and he held my hand. After that we were married for the rest of the day and any other time we would play.

One day as I was getting ready to take a bath I noticed that I could stick my belly out far and it made me think that I was pregnant. I thought this might be because I had pretend married the boy next door. At that time all I knew was that to get pregnant you had to be married and even though it was pretend it made me wonder if I really was pregnant. I was so worried that I was going to get in trouble because I had “gotten married” without my parent knowing and we had held hands so I must have been pregnant.

Now I don’t remember exactly what convinced me that I wasn’t pregnant but the reason I shared this story is the fact that there are different definitions of what is considered “trying to conceive”. In the mind of a 7 year old the holding had was enough to get one pregnant. On a more adult perspective of it, some feel that trying for a baby is just throwing away the birth control and that is it. Others may think, “Well we aren’t preventing it but we are not actively trying for a baby” and then for some it’s a planned, well thought out process in which they stop using birth control, and start charting and timing their intercourse.

Whatever the method, I believe that a couple is considered “trying to conceive” when they are having intercourse for the reason of procreating. Granted the couple should be having intercourse for fun too but it should be done for the purpose of getting pregnant.

The hard part of the conceiving process is that some people will go into the baby making process already knowing that they will have difficulties, there are those who have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and there are other who are trying not to get pregnant and get pregnant anyways. Such is the trials of life.

Copyright Melissa Witcher http://www.melissawitcher.com/