Everyone I know is pregnant. Alright perhaps not everyone, but a lot of them. It is one of the perils of my hanging around 20-somethings so that they can look a lot older than they really are. It’s my gift to the young’uns because everyone knows that the good stuff doesn’t start happening until your 30s. Even if you were silly enough to have babies before that.
At least 3 women in my LIFT group are currently pregnant and who knows how many more spermy/egg things are happening.* It just goes to show that you need to be careful around the gym because you never know what you’re going to pick up off the floor. Of course I can’t blame the new location because these women are well into the throes of their pregnancy which means that the nasty business occurred when we were at our old gym. No big surprise. A staph infection was the least of your worries there. That place was chock full of testosterone, there’s no way those guys weren’t knocking one out in between sets of squats, grunting and comparing jerks and snatches. Hand shandies all round.
We won’t know about the fertility of Travis County Strength until some time around September. However, we have been doing an awful lot of handstands recently and apparently these are what you should do after sex if you’re trying to keep it all in. The women doing the vigorous box jumps are just trying to shake it all out. It’s like the bloody hokey-pokey in there some mornings. Oh and the ones doing burpees are the bedroom whores.
Apart from making me feel horribly old, all of this estrogeny stuff has me thinking about the babies I never had. I exist only to flout god’s sole purpose for my existence. For as long as I can remember, I never wanted children. I take after my mother that way. haha, this is even funnier when you know that I’m adopted. My eggs jumped ship a while ago having discovered that I am a poor carrier, being neither religious or interested in poorly drawn crayon portraits of my family.
I know myself well enough to accept that I would make a horrible mother. I am jealous, greedy, competitive and unable to utter the word ‘potty’ without experiencing a degree of self-loathing that I haven’t felt since I was 15 and playing with matches. I am also unwilling to put myself through that degree of pain or to have anything pass through me that requires my fanny to be sewn up afterwards.
But there is something fascinatingly creepy about the whole growing a baby in your stomach thing. Even more so than growing a chia pet (not in your stomach though). It’s hard to look at a big preggo belly and try to imagine what’s going on in there. It’s a shame there isn’t some sort of transparent viewing panel, like an oven, with a little light so you can check on the progress. This really would be an excellent idea and the lack of it is just more evidence of god’s incompetence. Lackadaisical jerk. He probably designed women on that same sunday when he took the day off and killed all the dinosaurs.
Fortunately, most people seem to know about my fear of babies and so the topics of childbirth, breasting (my own and far better term for nursing) and other unpleasantness involving forceps and placenta fried noodles, doesn’t really come up. Worst is when someone starts talking about conceiving, as in, ‘we’re trying to conceive’. This is not a subject for normal conversation as you’re simply telling everyone that you’re having purpose-filled sex on days pre-marked in a calendar, possibly with a smiley face or gold star or more sensibly, the words ‘have sex now’. Oh you can post FB photos of yourself doing a handstand in some exotic holiday location like you’re a badass athlete but we all know the truth.
Of course my weirdness over kids has absolutely nothing to do with being a bastard child. Nope, no issues there at all. Well apart from the fact that the woman giving birth to me was half-Welsh. And she thought that taking the daughter she was reunited with for the first time in 20 years to a West End production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya would be a great bonding experience. It wasn’t.
But before I am banned from Travis County Strength, I will say that it’s pretty inspiring to see pregnant women working out, staying fit, and getting their bodies ready for the big push. I’m proud to call them my friends, so long they all understand our discussion topic boundaries. And never ask me to help make that awful cake diaper that seems to be at every baby shower I’ve been to (a total of 3).
So ignore all that crap about how lifting weights is selfish, unhealthy and bad for your baby. It’s written by lazy, stupid people who would sooner criticize fit strong women than change anything in their own lives. We at LIFT are tough. Our hands may rip but our vag’s never will.
Oops, oven’s just pinged. Baby must be ready.
*I have a rudimentary understanding of this process.