Dear Mirena

Firstly, as a mother of three, I’d like to thank you for sprinkling a little amusement atop my harried-with-children sort of world. The television commercial for the birth control product you market is hilarious, depicting with remarkable accuracy the inexorable chaos that is parenting. That said, the grocery store scene was classic, wherein you nailed the idea that kids are kids are kids, and inherent within each smallish being is the irrepressible desire to poke and prod fresh produce until it topples to the floor. The watermelon was a superb choice, incidentally.

However, your writers crossed some sort of line between that which is refreshingly funny and that which has led to a profusion of child-generated questions for which I have no answers. Shame on you for that, my dear Mirena.

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Imagine, if you will, my husband, our twin daughters (Seek and Destroy, who are soon-to-be fourth graders) and myself plunked upon our couch watching television one afternoon while an ad for your lovely product aired. Of course, we were greatly amused by the aforementioned supermarket circus as well as the other just-shoot-me-if-I-so-much-as-THINK-about-getting-pregnant-again portrayals.However a seemingly innocuous snippet of speech (i.e. “…you can try to get pregnant right away…or not…”) apparently piqued the interest of a certain nine-year-old, causing her to launch one of the most feared inquiries known to the parenting world.

“So how do you try to have a baby anyway?”

Stupidly, my husband and I sat there in stunned silence, slack mouthed and pitifully unprepared to respond with any semblance of coherent thought.

Again with the question–only louder and more insistent this time, “SO HOW DO YOU TRY TO HAVE A BABY?”

We glanced at each other with a look that shouted, “It’s your turn to field this one,” shifting uncomfortably in our seats and wishing like crazy the awkwardness would dissolve into our less-than-pristine-looking cushions. But it didn’t. If anything, it intensified. Like fools, we simply sat there and waited for a nugget of wisdom to fall from the sky–much like the time we expected the Difficult Question Fairy to swoop down from the clouds and address our child’s very real concerns (i.e. the much-heralded demand to know if daddy’s vasectomy involved removing all or part of his brain). Seriously. One of our dear charges actually asked this.

“Hey, guys!” I shouted, tripping over my pitiful inability to change the subject, “Look at the cardboard boxes! They’re MOVING! Doesn’t that look like fun?! Maybe we should scrounge around in the garage for some big boxes, and then we could cut windows and doors in them like we used to!”

Our less-than-delighted progenies promptly rolled their eyes and attempted to redirect the discussion, “Did you guys try to have us?”

“Yes, yes we did, in fact,” my husband offered, hoping to steer the conversation into the realm of that which was answerable. “We even went to a special group of doctors (Translation: we trekked to a faraway fertility clinic each and every time your mother so much as whispered the words, “Honey, I might be ovulating…”) and they were enormously helpful–those doctors–enormously helpful. So yes, yes, we DID try to have you and we couldn’t be happier about it!”

“Why’d you do that? Were you guys bored or something?”

Needless to say, the Difficult Question Fairy was nowhere to be found and nothing seemed to be falling from the sky–least of all wisdom. Ugh.