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Infertility Sniglets

Hilarious, Made-up Terminology

By Rebecca Smith Waddell and Lisa A. Kramer

What's a sniglet? Sniglets are funny made-up words/definitions for those things in life that just don't seem to have any "official" terminology. The world of infertility provides lots of hilarious inspiration.

Psycho-symptom-atic Syndrome: A psychosomatic condition afflicting women during the two-week waiting period; marked by a tendency to incorrectly attribute every bodily twinge and twitch to the early stages of pregnancy.

Yearnation: The overwhelming urge to urinate while recording your morning basal body temperature reading.

Peetience: What you learn to aquire when starting to chart your basal body temperature.

Corp-peeing: Anytime an OPK or HPT is taken at work in the company's Ladies Room. Anyone who has done this, I'm sure, has visions of the looks on their co-workers faces if they come into the Ladies Room the same time your watch alarm is going off after the 3 to 5 minute wait time.

Stall Talking: The time between a corp-pee and test results. Usually things like: "Please, please, please, let's see a plus sign this time!" "Aw come, on hurry up," or, "Man! not again!." A time you hope your co-workers do not hear you – or recognize it as you in the stall by the shoes you are wearing.

Bladder Praying: Praying that your bladder will fill up so that you can take an HPT – because it's day 29 and you KNOW FOR SURE THAT THE TEST RESULTS ARE GOING TO BE POSITIVE THIS TIME.

Basal Bed Bouncing: The earthquake-like sensation you get while shaking down your mercury basal thermometer in bed.

Basal Instinct: An urge to shake down your basal thermometer BEFORE recording your temperature in a futile attempt to work up a sweat and boost up your temperature; usually strikes late in the menstrual cycle, about the time your temperature would be naturally plummeting to indicate the on-set of your dreaded period.