Game. Set. Match.

Six weeks before our third round of IVF this fall, I literally woke up one morning and decided I needed to do something completely out of my comfort zone. For three straight years, every decision I'd made revolved around beating my infertility rap and turning into a fertile Myrtle.

In no particular order, I stopped running, stopping drinking alcohol, stopped drinking Starbucks short nonfat lattes, stopped drinking soda, stopped eating anything cold out of the fridge ('cause The Infertility Cure told me that my particular deficiencies demanded warm or room-temp foods), stopped using beauty products with potentially bad crap in them, stopped eating refined sugar, stopped eating anything with white or wheat flour, stopped doing sit-ups, stopped drinking water out of plastic bottles, stopped accepting new freelance projects so that I could keep my stress level down, stopped, stopped, stopped.

After all that stopping, I was ready to go, go, go. So, I jumped out of bed, went to the computer, found a tennis club near my house and signed up for private lessons. Why was this so monumental? Because I've never been what you'd call a super sporty gal. Heck, I wouldn't even say that I've been a mildly sporty gal. Sure, I go to the gym, but that's about fitting into my $200 jeans. Competitive athletics that require score keeping, where there is a winner and a loser, not my bag.

My first memory of sweat-inducing fear around sports is from 3rd grade gym class. One word sums it up: Dodgeball. I just don't think that a game where kids throw balls as hard as they can at each other has any place in civilized society. Especially when you're the kid that everyone tries to hit first because you can't dodge the damn ball. From there came softball and kickball and basketball and volleyball and all kinds of other games with balls. The panic was never ending.

Whether my sports trepidation was (is) about a fear of losing or a fear of winning or a fear of people yelling at me because I did something wrong doesn't really matter. But if I had to guess, I would say it's all the above.

The truth is that I don't like to do things unless I can do them well. Scratch that. I don't like to do things unless I can do them perfectly, even if it's something I've never done before. Talk about setting myself up for failure from the get-go. But I'm working on it. And that's why tennis was so huge. Not only was I going to willingly pay money to play a sport, but I was also going to walk straight onto a court of imperfection. It seems my desire to hit the crap out of something was trumping my fear of failure.

Knowing myself like I do, I was quite aware that I had to have a tennis coach who understood my fragile state and knew how to keep my confidence up. Someone who would follow the pro-con-pro approach: Great swing. Don't forget to follow-through. Good job on the footwork. Lucky for me, Terry showed up for work on my first day of lessons. Talk about patience. I wish I could record Terry's encouraging voice and carry it around with me all day long.

In so many ways, my tennis lessons are the best therapy I've ever had. Did you know that the reason people try to hold their racket so close to the head is because they're trying to control the shot? I didn't. Can you guess where I like to hold my racket? Yep. I play tennis like I play life: If I hold on tighter and with all my strength, I'll control the shot. But, guess what? When I let go of my iron-grip, my shot improves. In fact, the ball actually goes over the net. Fancy that.