No longer an impregnable fortress of alien communications am I... I went on Thursday and found a nice, soothing, comforting doctor with sufficiently warm hands and no sudden movements, who, after a 5-minute conversation, was willing to remove my IUD (and show it to me, which I'm not certain improved the relationship) and send me on my merry way. If only more interactions were so decisive.

Though, in all honesty, I don't think I would want a 5-minute chat with the checkout girl at Hannaford to result in her asking me to scootch to the end of the conveyor belt. No matter how warm her hands are.

So I'm dealing with some, as the medical community likes to term it, "mild discomfort." Whatever. I've defeated the aliens, and that's what really matters.

And for the immediate future, Willem and I are carefully avoiding eye contact, and we won't be washing our underwear together. While I do want a third baby someday, maybe, I don't want to start that process NOW, and we have a knack for knocking me up at the slightest provocation. I've been pregnant four times, each time on the pill or the patch.

Yeah, go ahead and read that again, you ladies who are out there protecting yourselves from the onslaught of diapers and drool with one tiny little pill a day. Not that it could happen to you, but, well... apparently it could. Two kids, two losses, four pregnancies all on the pill. Happily, three of those times we had recently had a conversation that started with, "I think we could start trying in a month or two..." and BAM.

Anyway. Now that I've had that thing removed, I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to return to my normal, better-living-through-chemicals state, in which I trust that slapping a little square sticker on my hip will somehow prevent a population increase in my house. Medicine is weird.