Built to Make Babies

In the world of reproductive activity there are 3 types of women. There are those who are barren and will never have children: In fact, some are so allergic to their mate’s semen that they break out in rashes upon seminal contact. Then there are those in the middle…the masses, who may or may not get pregnant after a romp in the sack. On the far right of the spectrum, there is an elite group of women who are always pregnant. You know the ones who walk by their husbands on a Tuesday and by Friday they have a positive pregnancy test? Like Michelle Duggar on 25 Kids and Counting? Yeah…it appears I find myself in this latter group.

They say for sperm, a woman’s vagina (yes, I said vagina) is a hostile environment. It’s outfitted with hundreds of caverns in which invading sperm find themselves trapped and will die a slow, lonely death in a matter of hours or days. There are antibodies whose job it is specifically to annihilate the invading sperm and out of the millions that are spewed with each ejaculation  only a few dozen will reach the fallopian tube and less than 10 will make it to the egg. Entering a woman’s vagina is like going straight to hell for sperm cells. It’s the biological equivalent of D-Day.

In a typical woman’s body, her egg will growl at the approaching sperm.

“Who’s there?!?!?” it will ask gruffly. “None of you bastards better try to get in here!”

Terrified, the sperm will halt, and only the boldest one will bury his head into the walls of this massive being an begin the fertilization process.

Then you have MY egg. As the sperm cells approach, the egg will sweetly ask:  “Who doth approacheth? ” The 12 or 14 sperm who have made it through the vast terrain of MY accommodating vagina will say in unison “We do!”

“Do come in!” says my egg. “I’ve baked cookies!”

All 14 sperm will then bury their heads into the very hospitable egg and work on making a baby.

After my last c-section, I asked my O/B if everything looked alright in there. He was doing quite a bit of tugging and pulling to get the baby out because his placenta had buried itself into the wall of my uterus. The anesthetist had cautioned me not to have anymore children after my son because “it looked like hamburger meat down there”. I called up my doc a week later and asked if I’d ever be able to bear more children or if this was it.

“Contrary to what the anesthetist said, you have a very strong uterus. An uncommonly strong strong one, in fact. It’s like it’s made of steel. It looked like it was on steroids.”

I suppose that would explain why 4 months after having what I thought was my last baby, I found out I was having another!

My husband and I decided that we would have to take permanent measures to end our baby making days. Being a man who is not interested in the possible anamorphic  side effects of tubal ligation, he decided he would get a vasectomy instead (Gabapentin). When we scheduled his surgery 2 weeks ago, I dropped him off, a little saddened knowing that he would come out sterile and we would have no more little Grants running around our house.

3 hours after what was supposed to be a 45 minute procedure, my husband called me to come get him from the urologist’s office.

“What took so long?” I asked.

“He couldn’t get to my second vas deference,” he said.

“So…it failed? You’re only 50% sterile?”

“I’m not sterile at all,” he replied. “50% sterile still gives me a 100% chance to get you preggers.”

“Huh. I see.”

On the ride home, he told me how the doctor had tugged and pulled and just couldn’t get a clamp on his tube so he could cauterize it. He called in a second specialist and he failed as well.

“Mr. Grant…in my 20 years of practice you are only the second man I’ve had to give up on,” said the vasectomy guy.

If I have a uterus of steel, it would appear that he has balls of brass. Our reproductive organs are impervious to the destructive tools of men. Pills don’t work, knives don’t work…fire to our organs won’t work! We are built to make babies.

But seriously, this has to stop. I’ve had 4 kids in 5 1/2 years. So what if my body can take it? My mind is slowly being turned to gravy dealing with the daily antics of these chirrun.