What Curious Relationships Us Women Have with Our Wombs.
by Gabrielle on January 16th, 2008
What curious relationships us women have with our wombs.
I bet our adolescent and teen years really weren’t all that different. Those were the years when the fear of pregnancy hung over your head like a guillotine.
Are you really going out dressed like that? You’re going to get yourself pregnant!
Don’t hang out with those girls – they’re going to get pregnant!
I don’t want you dating him – you’re Going to Get Pregnant.
Worse than any venereal disease, more terrible than any other trouble you could get yourself in, if you were sexually active (and by active, I mean even thought about doing it with your steady boyfriend) Getting Pregnant was this thing that you held at bay; this terror for which you constantly had to be on guard. My Catholic school upbringing made it very clear that there didn’t even need to be penetration for that sneaky little sperm to find its way into your virgin womb and F*ck you over big time. One missed pill, one slipped condom, one wayward thought and BOOM!
There. You’ve done it. You’ve Ruined Your Life.
Even I, I who have been using birth control pills as estrogen supplements since age 13 (how’s that for early menopause?), put myself through pregnancy scares. OMG, do I feel something down there? Am I bloated?
But now, some of us are finding that it’s not so easy. Perhaps it never was.
Now, we are in our late twenties, mid-thirties, some of us may even be pushing (celebrating) 40. Now, our lives are in order, our careers on track. We took care of all of those things we were supposed to “do now before you have kids….”
Only now we’re told we’ve waited too long.
Now we are old enough to understand that fertility isn’t some forgone conclusion; it is chance, circumstance, and something that one out of 10 of us will not find on our own.
If you believe everything you see on the news, IVF, donor eggs, ART – these are all “lifestyle choices” for “women who put their careers first,” or have done a whole other slew of selfish and self-centered things instead of making babies at the socially appropriate time.
If by “lifestyle choice” you mean a direct result from often ignored (coincidentally female?) medical conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, or premature ovarian failure, then sure, I guess it was a choice. If by choice you mean waiting until we cleared enough of a hole through the glass ceiling that we could at least sustain ourselves and another little life, yeah. Fine. Call it choice.
But don’t call it a lifestyle choice.
A lifestyle is something you want. A lifestyle is, A way of life or style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person.
And that just ain’t what infertility is.
Tags: , awareness, birth control pills, career, feminism, finances, infertility, introspection, pregnancy, trying not to get pregnant, trying to get pregnant
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POSTED IN: Choice, IVF, feminism, finances, infertility treatments, living with infertility, pregnancy, shared experiences
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