Coziness and angst

I spent my time post Portland with K playing house. It was 4 days of "let's pretend we're married" living, and it was, in all fairness, quite nice. I have to admit it was, in many ways, the daily life I'd dreamed of for myself with an ideal partner. We went to her gym together, where I hit their erg and she swam. We cooked great things together: Grilled a few times, made my chilled beet soup. Last night was a cherry pie and a blueberry-peach crumble. We napped, watched some Star Wars. We hit a rowing friend's NYE party. We visited with some of her friends. She did yoga at the boat house whilst I, again, erged. Alternatively snuggled and made fun of her cat.

Very good times.

We of course also had lots of quality horizontal time. Having a biological cue that we were in the clear, and ignoring the calendar, we weren't exactly careful. And then this morning I got to work and did some research on the odd symptoms. "Gee, it seemed like you were going to get your period there on day 15 of your cycle with the cramps and the spotting but then nothing and OH MY GOD YOU WERE OVULATING."

So I had a bit of a freak out.

And then more careful reading backed up what K had been saying, that you need to be doing it on days 10-15 of the cycle to make a baby. Because the sperm need to already be all up in the fallopian tubes when the egg arrives, not still milling about on her cervix, asking passing Lactobacillus jensenii for directions.

Sperm 1: Anyone seen an egg?

Sperm 2: I hear we gotta go through the uterus first.

Sperm 3: Where's that?

Sperm 4: Is there some kind of short cut we can take?

Sperm 4,672,391: Maybe this guy knows.

Sperm 1: Hey dude, how do we get to the fallopian tubes?

Lactobacillus jensenii: Do I look sentient to you?

So I'm more calm now. I probably didn't unintentionally knock her up.

But it brings the point home for me: I have no business taking chances if my reaction to the possibility of a pregnancy is not "Oh joy" but "OH SHIT".

Which is a bit of a bummer. Condom sex doesn't have nearly the same emotional satisfaction of "natural sex". But it also doesn't come with the terror. Reaching for a condom feels like I'm vetoing K's dreams, to which I'm not indifferent. But I can't stomach the risk. So it seems I'll need to be sacrificing some satisfaction in the bedroom for sanity.