Sure, pregnancy is like the miracle of life or some nonsense (until the machines perfect their way of making more humans…) But unlike being pregnant, I kind of want an apocalypse. I wouldn’t have to go to work. I’m chubby so I don’t expect to be anybody’s sex slave. I could rough it if I had to – if I HAD to. I wouldn’t hate having to spend some quality time locked in a mall playing dress up and sniping zombies from the roof.
All these things sound perfectly acceptable to me—possibly awesome.
However, in a post-apocalyptic world my first stop would be CVS. Well, first a bookstore or library where I’d get a book about drugs, because fokklsncindine doesn’t mean shit to me. (Maybe I should just learn that mess in the present, just in case.) Then I head to the drug store to grab the basics like antibiotics and penicillin and THE PILL.
Yes, bitches. I’d scavenger up some birth control. All of it. The pill, the ring, the morning after pill. Because the last thing I want to be when trekking across a wasteland is pregnant. Or breast feeding. Or carrying an extra 8-37lbs of anything that won’t keep me alive. Or listening to crying and whining. Moreover, babies eat, poop, and SLOW YOU DOWN—it’s almost exclusively what they do.
So here, In Real Life, every third female in my city (and my office building) has been pregnant over the past 2 years. It’s getting stupid. If they’re not pregnant women, they’re either “older ladies,” or men with pregnant females at home. (I’m almost sure there’s something going around.) As a bystander not yet effected by the outbreak but definitely part of the group most likely to be effected, I have found I’m actively frightened of catching Pregnancy. It seems to be more contagious and damaging than swine flu, and that shit was an epidemic (on TV).
Every time I have a bellyache, I have to convince myself not to race to CVS and spend $10.97 on something to pee on. Menstruating is cause for celebration. Yes, even though it’s a regular occurrence. Every month I have a reason to buy myself something nice—usually liquor, coffee, or impractical shoes… Something pregnant women and their offspring can’t also enjoy.
People like to tell me that children like me. I’ve noticed. I don’t know why. It might be because kids are spiteful and half of them are actually changelings who delight in terror and antagonization.
I don’t hate babies or children, per se. Well, I suppose that’s nearly a lie. I really don’t like babies or children. Sure, I like that one, that one, and those kids, but they’re people I know. In general, and especially in public, kids are not something I enjoy. They have no manners, some because they’re too young to, other because they’re still being trained. They’re often saturated in or covered with something I’m scared might get on me. Usually food they’re eating or tried to eat earlier in the day.
Then there’s their curiosity. Aw, you’re curious about the pink cords coming out my ears? Back the fuck up baby, you don’t know me and this is my personal space you’re in. (Why do people act as if they don’t notice the jam-handed babies on their laps or in their arms are steady trying to violate people? It’s not adorable!)
Also, the idea of having to completely rework my lifestyle (read: clean my house regularly, not leave liquor out, but be forced to interact with poop on a regular basis) is horrifying and my sick mind is already offended that some hypothetical baby could be so rude.
Rude, hypothetical baby aside, pregnancy sounds like the worst thing in the world. My pregnant friend had taken to telling me about all the crazy shit that was happening to and inside her body until I finally flipped and got completely stank about it. You would have too if you had to hear about things like “vagina knives” and babies urinating inside, yes, inside, someone’s uterus. I’m sorry but as a wise man once said, “That’s just too much biology for me.”
That’s going to have to end there because I don’t want to get barfy.
Therefore, I’m currently more afraid of catching pregnancy than most diseases or having to actually do stuff to stay alive.
Swine flu? A vacation, where I lay on the couch watching anime and sip Robitussin.
The apocalypse? An adventure where I get to play sci-fi and maybe even join a resistance movement or befriend a robot!
Pregnancy? Suffering, responsibility, and slavery.
Pregnancy Symptoms — Early Signs of Pregnancy : American Pregnancy Association.
Maybe some of you who have either been pregnant or experienced an apocalypse could share your insights on the matter as I’m speaking from a place of fear of the unknown.
I too believe that something is going around. Almost all the women (including my wife) are/or have been pregnant. We are hopping that the apocalypse will hold off long enough to enroll our child(ren) in some form of martial arts (I’ve yet to find a ninja training course for toddlers, I haven’t given up yet).
*all the women I know, not “all” the women of the world…
My theory is that children are like animals. You know how whenever you’re having a party, and there’s ONE person there who’s allergic to cats, and in a roomful of 20 people, half of whom your cat knows personally, he still makes a beeline for that one allergic person?
Babies know too. They can smell fear…
“Babies know too. They can smell fear…”
HA. This is so true.
Hey, I’m not pregnant. So that makes me the one person on the planet who isn’t pregnant (that you know).
And pregnancy? Not fun. Especially the last trimester. I was so big I had my own gravitational pull. Onesies orbited me on a regular basis. When I went to sleep night (as opposed to during the day, which I also did), I’d launch my husband into the air because the bed would tip over like a teeter totter. And don’t even get me started about getting OUT of bed.
Oh, and there’s the whole part about getting the baby, who has been incubating on your inside, to the OUTSIDE of you. Fun times, that.
If me and Jos could have kids that were biologically ours without all of that, I’d be so up for it. Not keen on nine months of my body being inhabited by another being.
As for adoption, we talked about it but he’s really invested in the idea of a biological connection, and it’s as much his say as it is mine. So pregnancy it is.
When I’m giving birth, he is gonna suffer.
I’m still wondering where all these test tubes are that I heard about when I was little. I really thought there was an option to grow a whole baby in a very large tube in a lab. It’s so disappointing that this is really just a turn of phrase.
I also want to be able to work part time and/or hire a nanny.
That’s what I do. Well, I work part time. We were working on the nanny part, but then we moved to a different country.
What about a surrogate? Or possibly just REALLY GOOD DRUGS during delivery. The epidural is awesome. Until it wears off. (And when it did wear off, I screamed,”DON’TWAITFORTHEANESTHESIOLOGISTIWANTMORERIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWDAMMIT!!!!”
But the whole incubation thing is just horrifying and work…
Strange tid-bit: those tramp stamp/ass hat tattoos make it hard to get an epidural. sometimes they can’t because they can’t see the right spot.
I suggest REALLY GOOD DRUGS during delivery. The epidural is awesome. Until it wears off. (And when it did wear off, I screamed,”DON’TWAITFORTHEANESTHESIOLOGISTIWANTMORERIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWDAMMIT!!!!”)
Oops, sorry, I don’t know why that posted twice. I got an error message after the first one saying it didn’t post.