No, it was a drawing. Anyway, I'm sure you can see already that it made a profound impression upon me. Kidding aside, it freaked me out a little bit.
I've heard about IUD's before, and I know what the basic concept is. They stick a little piece of plastic up in there, and your body thinks it's a fetus. Naturally, since you can't get preggers when you already are (thank god, by the way, how weird would that be?), it's a pretty effective method of birth control. When I originally heard about it, I was 16--newly sex-fiendish and mad for any information I could find on any and all types of birth control. Most of what I read about BC was slightly outdated, and the information they had on IUDs was that they were potentially dangerous. I think they used to use crazy things to make them, or something. Anyway, my point is that I always pictured this little tiny piece of plastic sticking to the wall of a giant, cavernous uterus. Yummy, yes? For some reason, I always think of the uterus as a hotel for babys, room to swim and all that goodness. Not so, apparently. It's tiny.
Well, not microscopic or anything, but when they say it expands they mean it. I'm looking around and trying to find something to compare it with, to give you folks an idea, but I'm coming up with nothing. Best I can do is tell you to get some paper and marker and draw a triangle. Not a teensy one, but not one that takes up a quarter of the page, either. Ok. That's the size of a uterus.
What really blew me away was that the IUD they had sitting in front of the picture of the uterus was made to fit inside the whole freaking thing. Thoughts on this:
- Where did I get this crazy notion that uteruses (uterii?) were cavernous?
- Babys really don't have a lot of room for stretching, do they?
- I never want to have children.
Ok, so that last one is more of a lifetime's worth of thoughts, less of a light-bulby thought that happened when I saw a drawing of a uterus. But I mean it. I guess my sister will have to hurry up and get married to someone else and then start spitting out kids, cause she's my mom's last hope for grandchildren. When I start feeling nostalgic about having kids (usually it only happens about once a year), I just go down to the mall. The people with strollers full of crabby babies are more than enough reminder that I have no maternal instinct.
5 comments:
I have no maternal instinct either (it's the overproduction of testosterone, I just know it) and yet somehow I ended up with three. It's the damnedest thing.
Medical-types that I know always compare an unimpregnated uterus to a thumb. In size and shape, it's about right. Except it's, you know, hollow.
Yeah, I totally don't want babies either, except that I am 'paired up' with an appropriate man, every second person for the last 4 years has asked me when we're having children.
We're not!!!
And they always say Well, you're young, you'll change your mind...
But the thing is, kids will always be annoying to me, snotty and needy, and just not a passion for me.
Plus, my partner has been fixed :) so no stupid birth control for me, yahoo!!
J
When I was your age (Do I sound like your mother? Because, shit, I don't want to sound like your mother), I honestly had no maternal instinct either. I never envisioned children in my life at any point. Never wanted them or thought they would be something I would ever relate to. It meant, like, no more cigarettes, one night stands and/or drunken karaoke, so who the hell wanted that? It is quite a normal 20s thing to think.
All I'm sayin is never say never. And be not afraid of the uterus. The only thing more amazing than the uterus is the placenta--an organ that only appears when pregnant. Now that sucker blows the mind.
Famous last words. Check six!
That, my friend, is fucking gross. I just keep thinking of the movie "Alien" when the little beast blows out of the gut of the host. Think of that every time you think of pregnancy. mmmmmmm, tasty.
B
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