When are we going to stop asking newlyweds this rather rude question?

Forget “How was the honeymoon?” –  this is the question newlyweds hear the most. And this writer has had it up to here…

I got married a little under twelve months ago.

I think I made it all of 4.2 seconds before someone asked me when we were going to have kids. I’m not kidding. I made it back down the aisle and started receiving the guests – it was in that line that I heard the first mention of little people.

Since then there has been an increasing flow of comments from family, friends and people who really don’t know me at all. Everyone seems obsessed with the state of my uterus.

It seems not a day goes by where I don’t hear some form of: “So when are you and [Husband] having kids?”

I’ll let you in on a little secret; my husband and I have been doing the deed fairly regularly for the last four months without protection. I haven’t gone down the road of ovulation predictors or holding my legs in the air for half an hour or drinking weird fertility herbs.

I didn’t think I needed to.

I come from a line of fairly fertile women. My mother fell pregnant first time with all three of us children; my grandmother was so fertile she fell pregnant with twins. It’s a running joke that women in my family only need look at a penis to fall pregnant.

Now I’m not naive, and I know there is way more to it then that. Many, many factors affect a woman’s fertility. Heck for all I know it could be my husband who isn’t performing. We’re only at the very beginning of this journey, and there are still many roads we can take.However, for the last four months I’ve been greeted with the unwelcome visitor that is my period, and each month it’s become that little bit harder.

Last month I actually got my hopes up. It was too early for that all-important pee test but there were signs! My boobs were tender, and absolutely everything stunk. I was exhausted all the time, and taking naps during the day.

I spent the week acting like I was pregnant, avoiding the necessary foods and my usual high intensity exercise. I was convinced that this was it, this was the month there would be two lines on that stick.

It wasn’t to be, and I burst into tears.

I felt like a failure as a woman. In all other respects my body is performing like my mother did or her mother before her. I expected by now that those first seeds of a little person would be growing inside me, that soon I would be answering those questions with a knowing smile and: “You never know, sooner rather than later.”

For the moment, I dread those questions. I don’t want to be asked about when I’m having kids, because the answer is ‘I don’t know!’ And if I’m completely honest, it’s none of their business. When I’m pregnant, I’ll wait the appropriate twelve weeks and then sing it to the rooftops. I promise that every person within a hundred-kilometre radius will know.

Until then, there are more polite questions to ask me. Because honestly? I don’t think you actually want to know how frequently or in what position my husband and I are doing the deed.

Were you asked about when you'd have kids soon after being married? Is it an impolite question?