...and yet have a hard time doing. I almost always flunk the freakin’ hematocrit. I’ve tried everything I can think of to boost my iron count, from making sure not to try donating at a certain time of month (ahem) to eating iron-rich foods paired with vitamin C foods before I plan to give.

But I’ve been on prenatal vitamins for a while, preparing to have a baby, so I should’ve been in top form to donate when the last blood drive rolled around a month ago. (The kicker? The blood drive was in the lobby of the building where I work, just steps outside my department’s office. Like, no effort at all to show up!) But since I was trying to get pregnant, and wasn’t 100% sure that I wasn’t pregnant, I decided to sit it out. (I checked the Red Cross site first and found that pregnant women are prohibited from donating until six weeks after delivery.) Wouldn’t you know? The next day, I got confirmation that I was not, in fact, pregnant.