Three (useless) things I've learned in the last few days.

1. From a medical textbook designed for an audience of France-dwellers: in that country, the time period that a couple must try for a baby with no success before being declared infertile and thus eligible for fertility treatments is ... two years. There was a reference to other countries, like the US, where that time period is "only" one year. Only! On the flip side, in France, most fertility treatments are covered by the national health insurance program. Nice.

2. From another textbook: there is such a term as "reproductive wastage," which I find to be about as eloquent as "products of conception." Anne, Queen of Great Britain was given as a vivid and horrifying example of the former: eighteen pregnancies, twelve miscarriages or stillbirths, six live births, three immediate post-partum demises, two early-childhood deaths, and one wee 'un who survived infancy only to succumb to illness at age eleven. I can't even.

3. From Us Weekly, in whose company I passed a most enjoyable weekend when not hanging out with the afore-mentioned textbooks or with some adorable little towheads to whom some dear friends belong and who only increased my regret over my own reproductive wastage: there is a medical reality program starring a practitioner whose name seems to me the perfect combination of myth and medicine ... Dr. Stork. Totally made me imagine a white-coated, gray-winged creature making house calls, baby in beak. But he doesn't really do that. A little further research tells me that he puts his skills to use in the emergency room instead.

hey. enough about your nest. what about ours?
borrowed ethically from source