Womb gazing
Jan. 28th, 2010 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreaminghopetick - tick - tick - tick
That's not my biological clock you hear; that's my ticking time bomb that may or may not ever go off.
If it can be said, in a broad, unfairly generalizing way, that a man thinks with his penis, I theorize that a woman thinks about her uterus.
Remember the junior high conversations: "I think she's had it", "Has she had it?", "Have you had it?". Always wondering when it is going to happen to your body.
Reach the age of fertility, and start worrying about the doctor's visit: spread and scrape. Done to you, for your own good.
Heterosexual sex usually means one of two questions: "Am I pregnant?" or "Am I pregnant yet?" Watching the body as if from a distance, as if it isn't your own. Observing, watching for symptoms. Nausea in the morning: too much Thai food last night, or morning sickness? Bloating: not enough water, PMS, or pregnancy? Looking for the signs; hopeful or fearful.
If trying to conceive, measure and time the body. Watch the belly expand as a baby grows. It makes sense to be focused around the uterus, doing what it is designed to do. But the in-between, the time when the body is doing something other than reproducing...
I have fairly minor pre-menstrual symptoms, but they are similar to the early symptoms of pregnancy, so every month I worry and watch and hope I'm not and fear that I might be and wonder what would happen if I am.
I never am.
So far.
tick - tick - tick - tick
After fertility comes perimenopause, and the uterus becomes a focus in its decline, generating new symptoms, and are hormone treatments the answer? Menopause means the uterus is finally irrelevant again, for better or worse, for the first time since "When will I get it?". No more cycles of wondering and observing and analyzing. Sounds like freedom to me today.
That's not my biological clock you hear; that's my ticking time bomb that may or may not ever go off.
If it can be said, in a broad, unfairly generalizing way, that a man thinks with his penis, I theorize that a woman thinks about her uterus.
Remember the junior high conversations: "I think she's had it", "Has she had it?", "Have you had it?". Always wondering when it is going to happen to your body.
Reach the age of fertility, and start worrying about the doctor's visit: spread and scrape. Done to you, for your own good.
Heterosexual sex usually means one of two questions: "Am I pregnant?" or "Am I pregnant yet?" Watching the body as if from a distance, as if it isn't your own. Observing, watching for symptoms. Nausea in the morning: too much Thai food last night, or morning sickness? Bloating: not enough water, PMS, or pregnancy? Looking for the signs; hopeful or fearful.
If trying to conceive, measure and time the body. Watch the belly expand as a baby grows. It makes sense to be focused around the uterus, doing what it is designed to do. But the in-between, the time when the body is doing something other than reproducing...
I have fairly minor pre-menstrual symptoms, but they are similar to the early symptoms of pregnancy, so every month I worry and watch and hope I'm not and fear that I might be and wonder what would happen if I am.
I never am.
So far.
tick - tick - tick - tick
After fertility comes perimenopause, and the uterus becomes a focus in its decline, generating new symptoms, and are hormone treatments the answer? Menopause means the uterus is finally irrelevant again, for better or worse, for the first time since "When will I get it?". No more cycles of wondering and observing and analyzing. Sounds like freedom to me today.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 06:31 am (UTC)~hugs~
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 08:46 pm (UTC)Lisa
x
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Date: 2010-01-30 04:23 am (UTC)I'll have to remember that for when/if I go off the pill.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:45 am (UTC)The point stands anyway: Most heterosexual, sexually-active women live with some amount of fear/wonder around the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy from the time they first have sex until they decide to get pregnant or hit menopause.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 02:45 am (UTC)If you're hoping for menopause, or dreading it, let me be one to say that it's not always the horror story that we've been told. At least, (thank you Jesus) not in my family. (I mean, enough crazy is enough, right?)
Like my mother I gracefully waltzed through menopause like it was a breezy summer day...that lasted a few years. I only knew that I was still not finished with it when I would have the occasional break-through bleeding, which was as minor as a sneeze.
THIS is what I wish for you, when that time come. The occasional sneeze on pleasant summer days.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 04:29 am (UTC)My Mom's menopause wasn't awful, but she had these brutal hot flashes. I don't think that's an indication of what's going to happen to me, though, because she was forced into menopause by a medication she was on. So I'm mostly looking forward to menopause... in twenty to thirty years.
The occasional bleeding will probably make me a little crazy, though, because when it doesn't happen, I'll be worrying about surprise!not-menopause-after-all-baby. That's just how I am.
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Date: 2010-01-30 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 10:35 pm (UTC)