Like millions of others, we'll be seeing The Hunger Games this weekend. We don't go to movies often, but when we do we like to see them in IMAX glory whenever possible. This is actually part of a birthday present for our bestie and should be fun. The missis and I need to do some fun things. We're both under a lot of stress lately. She's writing her professional paper for her Master's and I'm trying to get 25 fifth graders ready for the state assessments in math, reading and science. So we need to do little things like this whenever we can.

Anyway, next myth.

Turkey baster?

Oh. My. God. This has to be the most obnoxious question we get asked. And we get asked it a lot. Did we use a turkey baster? No. And there are so many reasons why that doesn't work that you would think people would have the common sense to know better and stop asking this ridiculous question. Everyone that asks it thinks it's so damn funny. And they usually ask it only half-joking. The other half of them really thinks that this is how it works. And it just rubs me the wrong way.

Can you fit this in YOUR vagina???

First, I would like to meet the man who can produce enough jizz in one sitting to full a turkey baster. It just doesn't happen. Also, have you ever really seen a turkey baster? They are far too long for a normal human vagina. Even if you did manage to fill a baster and somehow get it into your vagina, once you squeeze it to get the jizz out, when you let go it would suck back in unless you pulled it out right away. The whole scenario is just absurd.

Back when we were first considering having a baby, we actually thought we might do the insemination ourselves. We originally had it arranged for the sperm to be shipped to our house and I started tracking my basal temperature to try and figure out when I was ovulating. Yeah, we were serious.

We researched methods of self-insemination and even ordered a kit. It came with a needle-less syringe...NOT a turkey baster. We decided to go with a fertility doctor instead once we learned how complicated it is to inseminate yourself. The sperm comes frozen. Do I thaw it in the microwave or what? And it's such a tiny amount, like the size of a perfume sample cylinder. If we spill it, that's $800 lost.

Plus the timing is so critical. The window when you're fertile enough to get pregnant is only a couple of days. It's a wonder anyone gets pregnant at all, let alone by accident! We could be dropping $800 month after month after month with no results. We figured if we're going to invest that kind of money, we might as well go with a doctor and make sure it gets done right.

And considering all the complications we've had, I am convinced we made the right choice. I'm pretty sure this never would have worked if we tried to do it ourselves.