What A Way to Go

Okay, so I'm reading the BBC news site (me? reading the news? but really, I was) and I stumble across a series of stories about women (primarily women) abducting other, heavily-pregnant women, and slicing them open to remove the foetus.

Ouch.

I have to say, I've had 2 kids, and while it wasn't exactly a summer stroll along a sun-kissed beach--more that crack from that movie about 'pushing something the size of a watermelon through something the size of a lemon'--it at least had the benefit of not, well, killing me.

And there were drugs. Not very good ones, until the epidural (gas and air is probably a good way to get high if you're not in pain, but if you are, it's a whole lotta nothing, and pethidine DOES get you high and STILL does nowt for the pain) but they surely at least take the edge off. Labour, via the normal modern means is, while not what I'd describe as pleasant, more than bearable.

Unlike being carved up by a supposed friend's kitchen knife, so they can get to the gooey infant-sized goodness within.

!!!!!

I've honestly never understood the reason being pregnant is *such* a ridiculous faff; I kid you not, every waking moment of the first 3 months or so, you just lie there and pray to die. You are so sick, so retchingly, heavingly, stomach-turningly ill, you would genuinely trade your life for a respite from the unrelenting nausea.

Then, as soon as you begin to feel a bit better, you get hit with what the midwives unconcernedly refer to as 'ligament pain;' for the love of God, it feels like someone has every muscle between your knees and your belly button stretched to the breaking point on an old-fashioned clothes wringer, and they are cranking the handle randomly, upon a whim, whenever their own sadistic tendencies require. There is *nothing* that can be done for ligament pain. Lying still, sitting up, uncrossing your legs, taking a gentle walk, reclining in a hot bath (not too hot, because you'll faint and your blood pressure will skyrocket and nevermind your agony, THE BABY might be uncomfortable if they get too warm) none of this is *any* use whatsoever. You must just endure, as your legs and abdomen spasm, sometimes for the best part of an hour, until tears are gushing down your face and you are begging your partner, your mother, people walking past the car in which you're trapped, writhing, to bring you ibuprofen that you *know* you can't take.

But ligament pain, though it honestly feels worse than actual childbirth, is arguably not the worst bit... once it stops, and you've entered your final trimester, you become so tired. So. So. So. So. TIRED. I don't mean to repeat myself, but unless you've been pregnant, you cannot know the fatigue of which I speak. No matter how much you sleep at night (not that you can sleep through the night, by this point, seeing as how you're so heavy you can't breathe and so round you literally can't roll over, even with the energetic aid of a loved one and the careful positioning of 900 specially-made pillows) you are incapable of staying awake for more than approximately 2 hours in any one day. If you can manage to wake up feeling rested, put on yesterday's clothes which you've laid out by the bed, and make it all the way downstairs to the couch without needing to stop for air, you *know* you've done well. The thought of then staying awake for another half hour is ludicrous. It'll never happen.

And that, I have now realised, is the way the Good Lord designed pregnancy, so that, as a pregnant woman, you are programmed to stay in your house, doors and windows locked, moving only from bed to couch to toilet and back again, and never leaving the relative comfort and presumed safety of your own home. You're too fucked to walk to the door, so even if well-meaning friends drop by, you can't let them in--this is so that, in case they ARE baby-crazed-knife-wielding-lunatic-asylum-escapees (and you've not realised this, in all the time you've known them) you'll be protected by your own ineffectualness. Unless there's someone else present, someone with a vested interest in your well-being (husband, boyfriend, live-in lover, your mom) then there should, in theory, be NO WAY of getting to within 10 or so feet of you.

If, however, you are a freak of nature, and you're actually capable of going round someone else's house, unaccompanied, without a wheelchair or bag trolley or a circus strongman to ride on, well, what do you expect??? Obviously, you're an abomination, a genetic convergence of such awesomeness that you shouldn't exist, and you WILL be gutted like a fish and your offspring WILL be stolen from your very womb, because the sheer incomprehensible superiority of your DNA, flowing through said offspring, will call to those poor sad individuals who can't have children of their own, and even more than they covet every child they see, they will hunger and thirst after your baby with a passionate greed they cannot control.

And you'll wind up, skull bashed in, decomposing on some madwoman's apartment floor, as your 3-week-premature SUPERBABY trundles along, peachy keen, just fine thanks for asking, 6 days after being forcibly ripped from your body, with not a moment of medical care in all that time.