When did I reach a place where I could say words like sperm or intercourse without blushing or at least having to take a deep breath first? I would guess that happened early in our fertility treatments.

When I was younger, I was much more reserved than I am now. I did not talk about things like sperm or ejaculation. The next thing I knew, I was driving across town with my husband's semen in a see-through container, hoping that I would not be pulled over and have to explain to a police officer what I was carrying. I probably could have handled explaining the presence of beer in my car when I was underage more calmly than I could have explained the presence of a semen sample in my car as an adult.

If you are going through fertility treatments, you are going to have to adjust to throwing around and hearing words like sperm and intercourse on a regular basis. FertilityCommunity.com has a good article called Fertility Definitions that defines numerous fertility terms. Just scan through the pages and count how many times you see embarrassing words like sperm, breasts, or vagina. When you enter the world of fertility, you enter the world of embarrassing words.

FertilityCommunity.com has another article called Infertility Lingo Guide that defines many acronyms that you will see online, particularly on message boards. One of my favorites is AF, which is short for Aunt Flo (referring to a woman's menstrual cycle) and is used in this context: "I thought I was pregnant this month, but then Aunt Flo (or AF) showed up."

I never dreamed that I could talk so openly about my periods or my husband's sperm count, and I am sure there were people in my life who wished I were not as open as I was when I was going through fertility treatments. However, I needed to talk about these things. I needed to talk about the tests we were enduring and what the results meant. I needed to lean on my friends, and I could not do that while talking in code.

As hard as it was, I had to make these embarrassing words part of my vocabulary. I tried to mirror the vocabulary that my doctor used so I could see these discussions as what they were - medical discussions about a medical problem.

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