I’ve just emerged from the basement with a linty piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of my foot and, though it’s annoying in a way that only Scotch tape on skin can be, I’m too tired to peel it off. I’m only up here because I need to get another pen, since the ink finally died on my old one, and then it’s back to the basement I go, where I’ll likely just get more tape stuck on various parts of my body. See, it’s there that presents await to be wrapped.

While I would consider myself a passionate Christmas enthusiast, wrapping presents is without a doubt my least favorite pastime of the season. It has largely to do with the fact that I am notoriously bad at it.

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My friend Dustie’s husband texted me last Friday in a panic.

“Call her,” he said. “She couldn’t find anything that fit for the Christmas party tonight. She’s at Kmart now trying to find something that will work.”

I dialed her and she picked up, sounding cheerful.

“I know what’s going on,” I said.

She immediately dropped the happy act. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said, near tears.

I tried to talk her down, assuring her she is one of the biggest fashionistas I know and that if anyone could rock a last-minute dress, she could.

Then I put down the phone and shook my head. See, the reason Dustie was having trouble finding a dress was because she had just given birth to her gorgeous baby three short weeks before. The dresses were too tight because her body was still trying to reconfigure after this monumental change.

But despite this very important fact, Dustie was frustrated and upset and feeling … ugly.

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If the words “turkey baster” have taken on new meaning in the Baker/Kaprowy household this year, so has “rollercoaster,” a ride that started getting very bumpy last month after I underwent intra-uterine insemination.

This was the latest step in our efforts to get pregnant.

Seven days after the procedure, in which a turkey baster-like piece of equipment was used to give my husband’s swimmers a head start in getting to my egg, it was time to turn to First Response to take a test.

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I can say with absolute certainty that the words “turkey baster” have taken on a whole new meaning this holiday season in the Baker/Kaprowy home. For it turns out, in addition to helping you roast a succulent bird, the device can also help you get pregnant.

I learned this interesting fact during one of my many trips to the gynecologist recently. After going over test results, my doc finally laid it on the line: If my husband and I were going to have a baby before I turn 50, we were going to need a little help.

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