pregnancy

[flatlined]

I have never been preggy, but I have had a lot of friends suffering during the last month.

I agree with everyone else, rant away.

[nearwildheaven]

@April_R

I am having a Girl.
Also I really feel guilty complaining when I think about how hard some women try to get pregnant and never do or who lose babies. I feel like a jerk when I realize I have two healthy children and another on the way and I am bitching about back pain.

Thanks for the sympathy everyone

And the last time, you had TWO babies pummeling you from the inside!

[Smeghead]

My wife was absolutely miserable during her pregnancies. She still has an occasional nightmare about it. I don’t know how anyone survives that last month. As someone once said, a pregnancy takes 8 months and then 12 years.

[FairyChatMom]

There’s something about the last month… My pregnancy was overall pretty easy - no morning sickness, no issues, minor discomfort, but generally nothing to slow me down. Till the last month. It’s like she had a growth spurt and an energy injection. She took up gymnastics when she wasn’t rearranging my internal organs.

We lived in Florida. She was due the end of August. She was born in Sept. I was massive. It was hot. Labor started then stopped, so they had to induce. Good thing she was a cute kid because I’d have sold her to a passing circus in a heartbeat…

On the other hand, it was funny at work. I was the veterans’ advisor at a junior college and I had to cover 3 campuses. My assorted coworkers freaked when I would go to the more remote locations. They wanted phone numbers and contact info - oh, and this was before everyone and his dog had cell phones. They were all sure I’d go into labor at work. Lucky for them, it started at 2AM.

Anyway, enough about me. Hang in there Apes! Just remember that in 40 or 50 years you’ll get your revenge when your kids will be changing YOUR diapers!!!

[April_R]

Lol. Cool story FCM;)

[Kobal2]

@April_R

Why can’t we just bud like yeast or split our cells in half like amoebas ?

You’re in luck ! Dracunculus Labs Inc. has been working on the problem, and we have found a solution ! Now, first you need to find a suitable host to inject your larvae into…

[Dustin_the_Wind]

@FairyChatMom

There’s something about the last month… My pregnancy was overall pretty easy - no morning sickness, no issues, minor discomfort, but generally nothing to slow me down. Till the last month. It’s like she had a growth spurt and an energy injection. She took up gymnastics when she wasn’t rearranging my internal organs.

We lived in Florida. She was due the end of August. She was born in Sept. I was massive. It was hot. Labor started then stopped, so they had to induce. Good thing she was a cute kid because I’d have sold her to a passing circus in a heartbeat…

On the other hand, it was funny at work. I was the veterans’ advisor at a junior college and I had to cover 3 campuses. My assorted coworkers freaked when I would go to the more remote locations. They wanted phone numbers and contact info - oh, and this was before everyone and his dog had cell phones. They were all sure I’d go into labor at work. Lucky for them, it started at 2AM.

Anyway, enough about me. Hang in there Apes! Just remember that in 40 or 50 years you’ll get your revenge when your kids will be changing YOUR diapers!!!

I remember being about 8-1/2 months pregnant with my younger son (almost exactly 23 years ago!), at work. Had to bring a full banker’s box from underground to third floor. In order to push the floor button on the elevator, I had to balance the box on my tummy. My boss, when he saw me, almost had a baby himself, right on the spot! It made a great shelf.

[Silver_Fire]

I’m 15 weeks right now. I’ve been in a “threatened miscarriage” state pretty much since I found out on Valentine’s Day, with cramping and bleeding and hcg levels that won’t cooperate (and I know, I know, it’s not a reliable measure because of the huge range of normal; still, it shouldn’t go DOWN, you know?). This is my last baby, my fourth pregnancy with two boys at home and, damn it, I want it to work out (and to be a girl but we won’t know that until October).

I can’t wait to be in my last few weeks.

August is going to be a total bitch, though. I know because my youngest son will turn three two days before this baby’s due date so I’ve been that huge in August before. I must be some kind of crazy to go ahead and do it again.

[shantih]

Preach it, sister! I loved my first pregnancy, with my son, except for the last month. I was in a permanent bad mood in my third, with my daughter (miscarriage inbetween), particularly in the last month. Can’t find a comfortable position, can only sleep on my left side, and then only for short bursts before I need to shift around, hot, nothing fits or feels right, even breathing takes on a new and awkward character … I’m with the other ladies above, that last month is purely to make you welcome labor and delivery because no matter how unpleasant, it means finally you’ll be done with the pregnancy!

(And good luck and sticky thoughts to you, Silver Fire!)

[Zsofia]

We’re sort of thinking about the whole forming babby thing - we decided we wouldn’t Discuss it until our first anniversary, which is in October. Because he knows, and he’s right, that if we talk about it there will be an imaginary baby hanging around.

But so, if we decide to go for it, I suppose there’s no point in waiting - I’m 33 - but if we do it and it works soon I’ll be pregnant as fuck in a South Carolina summer.

[Zjestika]

My friend was having one of those fantastic easy pregnancies and I kind of hated her, but now she has 8 weeks left and she’s so tiny that she’s like 20% baby now. By 32 weeks I was just like “Ha! I’m a whale, everyone!” but my frame was supporting everything and my baby wasn’t protruding that dramatically- it wasn’t until about 37 weeks that I started to get crabby about it, and delivered a week early. Wait, maybe I had an easy pregnancy…

No, I didn’t. Oh, the endless constipation. You know what’s gross? Metamucil. Ugh.

[artemis]

In Brave New World, babies are gestated in bottles. Only someone who has never been pregnant could see that as a feature of a dystopia rather than a utopia!

[April_R]

@Silver_Fire

I’m 15 weeks right now. I’ve been in a “threatened miscarriage” state pretty much since I found out on Valentine’s Day, with cramping and bleeding and hcg levels that won’t cooperate (and I know, I know, it’s not a reliable measure because of the huge range of normal; still, it shouldn’t go DOWN, you know?). This is my last baby, my fourth pregnancy with two boys at home and, damn it, I want it to work out (and to be a girl but we won’t know that until October).

I can’t wait to be in my last few weeks.

August is going to be a total bitch, though. I know because my youngest son will turn three two days before this baby’s due date so I’ve been that huge in August before. I must be some kind of crazy to go ahead and do it again.

Oh man. Hope you feel better soon and everything works out for the best!

[April_R]

@artemis

In Brave New World, babies are gestated in bottles. Only someone who has never been pregnant could see that as a feature of a dystopia rather than a utopia!

Who wouldn’t love a bottle baby ?

[Sattua]

I’ve been trying to get pregnant again for a year now. I’ve had three losses including one full-blown miscarriage. Now I’m capping the year off with an anovulatory cycle. I’ve been through the five stages of grieving about it. I haven’t stopped at “acceptance”… I pinball around all of them. Sometimes I just feel sick to my stomach at the thought that I won’t get a second chance to have a child… a chance to maybe enjoy it this time. To know what I’m doing. To do it “right”. A few more years to play with Lego and ride merry-go-rounds.

But I fucking pit pregnancy. GOD I HATE IT. I dread it with every fiber of my being. I hate the bloating, the crying, the nausea, the hunger, the cramps, the aches, the sleeplessness, the fear, the exams, the depression, the agoraphobia, the constant peeing, the constipation, and the ever-present oncoming locomotive of labor and delivery. I fucking hated pregnancy and I will hate it again. When I was pregnant two months ago, I had a lot of serious “OH FUCK WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE” moments.

I really hate pregnancy.

[Grrr]

I got a paper cut on my pinky finger today. So I can totally relate to the pain and discomfort you’re feeling.

/kidding.

[artemis]

@Sattua

But I fucking pit pregnancy. GOD I HATE IT.

After a few recent bodily-function glitches, I’ve decided this whole “intelligent meat creature” idea sucks in general. I am SO uploading my consciousness to an android body as soon as the technology becomes available! Or better still, transforming myself into one of those pure energy beings we used to see all the time on Star Trek. Reproduction, ingestion, excretion, degenerative aging - who needs any of it?

[outlierrn]

@artemis

In Brave New World, babies are gestated in bottles. Only someone who has never been pregnant could see that as a feature of a dystopia rather than a utopia!

IIRC, they put alcohol in some of them to make sure they had enough dishwashers in the next generation, that’s the dystopian aspect.
Best of luck April R.

[BrainGlutton]

What it comes down to is, there’s a biological, evolutionary, adaptive, differential-reproductive-success-enhancing imperative that the conception should be enjoyable.

No such thing applies to gestation or the delivery.

Pain is nature’s way of telling you it doesn’t give a damn how you feel.

[BrainGlutton]

@outlierrn

IIRC, they put alcohol in some of them to make sure they had enough dishwashers in the next generation, that’s the dystopian aspect.

And, they could’ve made them all geniuses, too. But, as Mustapha Mond explains:

“I was wondering,” said the Savage, “why you had them at all–seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why don’t you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you’re about it?”

Mustapha Mond laughed. “Because we have no wish to have our throats cut,” he answered. “We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!” he repeated.

The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.

“It’s an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work–go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized–but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren’t sacrifices; they’re the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s foredoomed. Even after decanting, he’s still inside a bottle–an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course,” the Controller meditatively continued, “goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It’s obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.”

“What was that?” asked the Savage.

Mustapha Mond smiled. “Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn’t properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen.”

The Savage sighed, profoundly.

“The optimum population,” said Mustapha Mond, “is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.”

“And they’re happy below the water line?”

“Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example.” He pointed.

“In spite of that awful work?”

“Awful? They don’t find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It’s light, it’s childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True,” he added, “they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn’t. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them.” Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. “And why don’t we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It’s the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don’t. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don’t want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That’s another reason why we’re so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.”