I took it for six months, but nothing happened. That was the beginning of my pregnancy depression.

By that time, she'd decided I definitely had a problem, so she began what she called an "infertility workup." The main thing was to check my Fallopian tubes for blockages and look for ovulatory abnormalities. But everything turned out to be fine. Depression City.

"Well," she said, "maybe your body just thinks you've released an ovum. We need to do an ultrasound scan to make doubly sure an ovarian follicle has ruptured when it's sched­uled to and dropped an egg."

It turned out, however, that all those hormonal stop-and-go signals were working just fine. In the meantime, Steve and I were doing it like bunnies and still no pregnancy.

Okay, she then declared, the problem may be with your Fallopian tubes after all. Time to test for abnormalities. "This is not going to be fun. First we have to dilate your cervix, after which we inject a dye and follow it with X-rays as it moves through the uterus and is ejected out of your Fallopian tubes. We'll know right away if there's any kind of blockage. If there is something, we can go in and fix it."

"Sort of check out my pipes," I said, trying to come to grips with the procedure. I was increasingly sinking into de­spondency.

She did it all, and for a while she suspected there might be some kind of anatomical problem. Which brought us to the next escalation of invasiveness.

"We've got to go in and take a close-up look at every­thing," she said. "It's a procedure called laparoscopy. I'll have to make a small incision near your navel and insert a tiny optical device. In your case, I want to combine it with what's called a hysteroscopy, which will allow me to see directly inside your uterus for polyps and fibroids."

But again everything looked fine. I began to wonder what had happened to everybody's mother's warning you could get pregnant just letting some pimply guy put his hand in your pants.

Prior to all this, I should add, Steve had provided samples of sperm to be tested for number and vigor. (Both were just fine.) Then, toward the end of all the indignities, he actually paid to have some kind of test performed involving a hamster egg, to see if his sperm was lively enough to penetrate it. No wonder he finally went over the edge.