A letter of complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write to complain about the human body, female model.

I am the owner of the above product and I wish to draw the manufacturer’s attention to the fact that it is not well-equipped at all to deal with the rigours of pregnancy.

The User Manual lists pregnancy as one of the Extra Conditions the basic model can withstand perfectly well. It is right there, in black and white, alongside puberty, ageing, the entire decade from age 18 to 28 sustaining varying degrees of alcohol or ridiculous footwear-related injury, permanent stomach constriction from too much elastic belt wear in the 1980s or scalp tear from hair-teasing in the same decade.

I fully admit my particular model rolled off the production line some 35 years ago. Perhaps in some markets, this could be seen as too old to be shouldering, or wombing, the burden of a baby.

But no one, body manufacturer or not, would dare to suggest in polite, 2011 company that women should get their child-bearing duties done before the age of 25.

And actually, I doubt younger versions of your product do any better at this pregnancy game either.

The fact is the female human body is not well-designed at all when it comes to having a baby.

Even the moments before conception are fraught.

The female body is equipped with the Uterine Attack Force (my term) designed to seek and destroy sperm, making it a medical miracle that fertilisation even happens in the first place.

Fortunately I am in a same-sex relationship and conceived via IVF, so the closest I came to having live sperm in my body was sitting next to my male work colleague at the neighouring desk.

And thank goodness for that.

There are clear exterior appearance indicators, also, that the female body cannot deal with pregnancy.

Stretch marks blister otherwise-normal skin (even moreso in younger, more taut models – not me); water is retained causing unattractive bloating and an alarming inability to wear shoes, while necks thicken and the walking gait of a pregnant lady becomes a Waddlegate of presidential and scandalous proportions.

Then there’s the extra weight gained. Strangely enough, they tell you that 90% of that weight is fluid, not the actual baby. SO WHAT IS THE POINT? What the hell is that fluid for and why is there so much of it? Baby, in the real world, you want a house with a pool, you've got to WORK for it! You don't get it just like that *snap*.

Knowing the extra weight is predominantly liquid is cold comfort when you stand gingerly on the scales and see you’ve stacked on 30 kilos. Actually, not me, I have put on 10 so far, but I am eating Milo by the kilo and there’s still time!

Internally, many hormones wreak havoc with emotions and acceptable levels of the universally applied mental health Crazy Scale. Often within the space of mere seconds, pregnant women will explode with rage at being woken from a nap, before sobbing into their seventh bowl of cereal after watching a Huggies ad.

Control, support and dignity functions are ALL compromised. Surely, these are structural basics when designing a product of such importance?

The hormone relaxin is conveniently released during pregnancy. No doubt this is some male engineer’s brilliant idea. He probably thought he was doing something nice, by making the body release a hormone designed to make everything musculo-skeletal more stretchy as the body expands.

You know what, mister, that’s great for the actual birth of the baby (which we will come to later) but in the meantime: THAT FREAKIN RELAXIN HAS CAUSED MY LEFT PELVIC BONE TO DETACH FROM THE TAILBONE AND TILT FORWARD. IT'S ALSO CAUSED SWAY BACK AND KNEES AND HIPS THAT CRUNCH TOGETHER WHEN I LIE SIDEWAYS IN BED, CAUSING ME ENDLESS BACK PAIN, GRUMPINESS AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, OK?

Get thee to your drawing board.

Then there’s the whole watermelon and garden hose thing.

I don’t know which genius decided that a 50-centimetre round circle can fit through a “thing” roughly seven centimetres in diameter. And let me tell you, Googling “average circumference of a vagina” just now has really put me off my dinner.

Alright, it stretches during delivery. Fine. But with that amount of stretching, there are little drawbacks like PAIN and TEARING!

You remember the drawing board?

So, in closing, I would like to urgently urge the entire manufacturing team to begin designing a new model that can safely and easily accommodate pregnancy.

This model should have a penis.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Marshall.

The Pants Gazette

A week filled with music, family, the beach, laughs and cake.

Oh, and a three-dimensional movie of our baby currently growing inside my belly.

We got a few discs from the doctor when we had our 18-week scan but we hadn’t watched them until my mum visited for her birthday over the weekend.

Doesn’t that sound terrible? We hadn’t watched them.

The reason? 99% because life just takes over and we had seen our baby girl wiggling around on screen before our eyes anyway while the scan was happening, and 1% because I think I am still a teeny bit afraid of bonding.

I know this is a boring, tired old theme – and I am sick of it myself – but I cannot deny what I am feeling. And that is still an element of anxiety.

Anyway, 1% or .000001%, let’s accept it is just there.

The baby is moving quite a bit, although I rue the day I read on the hospital admission forms that I could call the midwives at any time if I had certain concerns, among them reduced movement from my baby (less than 10 – 12 movements per day).

It actually said that, in brackets, in black and white. 10 – 12 movements. Per day.

Why did they write a number? Don’t give me a number! Don’t set me medical parameters that cause me to either relax if I comply or freak out if I don’t!

Now I am bloody counting all day! If I wasn’t so busy at work, and mostly sane for the majority of my waking hours, I would keep a running tally sheet every time I felt a flutter and then either collapse in a heap or rejoice in happiness at the end of the day once I had revised that day’s count.

But mostly it’s all good. The sun has started shining with a bit more intensity, the damn bugs and spiders are coming out and we are forced yet again to utter our Spring refrain “when is the bloody pest control man due again?”: a sure sign summer is on its way.

I am suddenly asking myself seriously what type of attire I shall be able to wear when swimming at the beach and pondering whether I can be brave enough to just let my bare belly see the sun’s rays, unburdened by the ubiquitous rashie I have felt compelled to wear since my late 20s when beer and fine food of the brown, chocolatey variety conspired to gift me a generous spare tyre.

T and I went to the local music festival on the weekend and spent a glorious eight full hours together without our three-year-old.

How strange it was to sit and read the paper in the shade while we waited for bands to set up. How unusually peaceful it was to place a lazy body on the grass and stare at the cloudless sky until even lazier eyes dozed shut for a few precious minutes.

How bizarre to not have to endlessly ask each other if one of us needed to go to the toilet, if we had brushed our teeth or, over dinner, if we could please eat two more spoons of rice before we could have any sweets.

The festival was awesome. We saw The Baby Animals, Missy Higgins, Paris Wells, Watussi, Diesel and Little Red. Bloody brilliant. Although tough to do sober!

Speaking of pregnancy wardrobe, and I know this has emerged as a common theme, but let me leave you with some more news on pants.

The festival marked the second time in a fortnight I had ventured to a public event with my pants undone.

Not just a fly open, or a button missing its loopy mate by mistake. Pants completely and utterly open.

See, I have jeans that fit well, leg-wise and length-wise. But from the bottom of the zipper to the top, there is no way on this earth those two flaps of material will ever meet across my belly.

Ever.

Where they should be the letter I, they are doggedly the letter V, with __ leanings.

But luckily, or not, the good lord of genetics has afforded me with quite a sizeable inner thigh circumference, such expanse of skin that acts as quite a handy magnet to most pants at that point of fabric join. Pants are at their most taut at that stage of my leg, let’s put it that way. Like most humans I guess. Um.

And thankfully, the good lord of fashion has brought back enormously long shirt lengths, hopefully thereby banishing for good those atrocious midriff tops we all wore in the 80s when we had waists and zero belly flab.

Put on one of those 80s length shirts now, after the inevitable middle-age torso spread has woven its wretched magic, and people think you are wearing a scarf with sleeves.

So, I am fortunate for the moment to be able to couple my undone jeans with an almost knee-length top, add a few more layers and whether monster trucks or music festivals, no one knows the difference!

Genius.

Until the wind blows...

Creation

"Your blog has been created"
Were ever more thrilling words ever written? Haha, I will try and suspend the melodramatic. Although, I must warn you all, I am currently on some wacky drugs designed to put my body in a menopausal state. So melodrama may in fact end up being the dominant theme of this little blog.

Hello, this is me.

I have just taken my first cautious steps aboard the IVF rollercoaster, although my female partner has been there are done that - the ups, the downs and the final spectacular, exhilirating rush to the finish that produced our little boy, Jay, who turned two last month.

Now it's my turn and I am 14 days into my first round of IVF treatment. That's 28 doses of a nasal spray called Synarel (cue the menopause and the homicidal thoughts) which helps prepare my ovaries for a round of stimulation injections. And they are now more imminent with the arrival of my period today.
Hang on.
What was that? I think I just heard all the men click out of this blog, right? Haha. If you had a penis and had already read the words "menopause", "ovaries" and "period" just five short pars into a blog, would you hang around? Really?

So, hello ladies, and hello to you, lone man who has stood tall in the face of judgment and hung in there, perhaps out of interest, or perhaps because his computer has frozen stuck on this page. In my mind, you are called Terry, you live in a garage above a kebab shop and maybe you are intrigued by this strange IVF process. I'm with you on that one.

I have started this blog to document my IVF...no, I refuse to say it. There will be no "journeys" here - in my mind, journeys should remain firmly confined to the realms of Idol, Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance (and they shall be accompanied by fake tears and sob stories). This is my experience with IVF - it may be like yours, it may be like that of someone you know, or it may be completely different. But like Dr Phil...or someone, once said, "It's healthy to share". And now that I have joined a blogosphere that for better or worse doesn't seem to understand the concept of "too much information", here I go.

Feel that? Butterflies in your stomach, dry mouth and a whoosh of air as, thud!, into your body goes the bumper bar which has just lowered and clamped to your chest. It's meant to secure you snugly into your seat, but you are shit-scared you might fall out, that something will go wrong or it might not be as good as you'd hoped.
Ready? The rollercoaster has just taken off.
Click, click, click. Here we go.