Getting up close and personal with "that which shall not be named"
Renowned Hoo-Ha Doctor Wins Nobel Prize For Medical Advancements Down There
Oh, the Onion. So funny, because it’s so sadly true.
One of the things infertility strips you of (beside any shame or dignity) is the illusion that women are taught anything useful about their bodies in health class or in the stirrups. You learn things about your body during infertility treatment that are astounding, thing that every women should know about her body and reproductive system (whether she intends to use it or not), but even that isn’t good intimate knowledge of the body, of your body. It’s clinical, medicalized and based on averages. When you read about the luteal phase, the second half of the cycle, you're told it is always the same length,with little variation. However, mine varies wildly, from 11 to 18 days. When I asked my reproductive endocrinologist (one of the best in the area) about it, he started at me boggle-eyed. "That's very unusual," he said, and when I asked if that could be impacting my fertility, all he could say was, "I don't think so, but I don't know." And that was the end of the conversation. It was only though a Google search that lead me to a livejournal post, that I read of someone else having the same issue, and her RE's claim it's related to PCOS. Mystery possibly explained. Thanks, Dr. Google.
And that's how it all is, trying to find meaning in clinical abstraction. For all the detailed descriptions and line drawing and explanations of where your cervix is, what it looks like, how its position changes throughout your cycle, and the changes in cervical mucus that indicate fertility sound great, but it’s like trying to picture the reality behind an abstract painting.
Do a Google search on pictures of ovulation. Most of what you see are grainy ultrasound images or line drawings. The process makes logical sense, but until I saw this: Ovulation moment caught on camera, I had no real visceral connection to this process that was (or was not) happening to me. I saw this, and suddenly so much more of it made sense. And when you consider that capturing that image was a fluke, something that just happened for the first time in 2008, the societal adherence to the whole mysteries of womanhood schtick starts to make sense.
And then one day I saw this: www.beautifulcervix.com. A 25 year old doula and student midwife, with the help of her boyfriend and a clear plastic speculum, had taken pictures of her cervix every day during her cycle to better understand it, and then posted it online. She’s gotten volunteers to do the same, building a gallery of women of different ages, pre- and post-childbirth, pre- and post-coitus, all sharing an utterly invaluable resource.
It is a stunningly simple, yet utterly revolutionary.
And largely of no surprise that she’s had trouble finding webhosting, both for high traffic and "inappropriate images." Because of course many women want this knowledge of our bodies, specifically because it’s deemed vulgar or dirty or inappropriate, and we can’t find it anywhere else.
Oh, the Onion. So funny, because it’s so sadly true.
One of the things infertility strips you of (beside any shame or dignity) is the illusion that women are taught anything useful about their bodies in health class or in the stirrups. You learn things about your body during infertility treatment that are astounding, thing that every women should know about her body and reproductive system (whether she intends to use it or not), but even that isn’t good intimate knowledge of the body, of your body. It’s clinical, medicalized and based on averages. When you read about the luteal phase, the second half of the cycle, you're told it is always the same length,with little variation. However, mine varies wildly, from 11 to 18 days. When I asked my reproductive endocrinologist (one of the best in the area) about it, he started at me boggle-eyed. "That's very unusual," he said, and when I asked if that could be impacting my fertility, all he could say was, "I don't think so, but I don't know." And that was the end of the conversation. It was only though a Google search that lead me to a livejournal post, that I read of someone else having the same issue, and her RE's claim it's related to PCOS. Mystery possibly explained. Thanks, Dr. Google.
And that's how it all is, trying to find meaning in clinical abstraction. For all the detailed descriptions and line drawing and explanations of where your cervix is, what it looks like, how its position changes throughout your cycle, and the changes in cervical mucus that indicate fertility sound great, but it’s like trying to picture the reality behind an abstract painting.
Do a Google search on pictures of ovulation. Most of what you see are grainy ultrasound images or line drawings. The process makes logical sense, but until I saw this: Ovulation moment caught on camera, I had no real visceral connection to this process that was (or was not) happening to me. I saw this, and suddenly so much more of it made sense. And when you consider that capturing that image was a fluke, something that just happened for the first time in 2008, the societal adherence to the whole mysteries of womanhood schtick starts to make sense.
And then one day I saw this: www.beautifulcervix.com. A 25 year old doula and student midwife, with the help of her boyfriend and a clear plastic speculum, had taken pictures of her cervix every day during her cycle to better understand it, and then posted it online. She’s gotten volunteers to do the same, building a gallery of women of different ages, pre- and post-childbirth, pre- and post-coitus, all sharing an utterly invaluable resource.
It is a stunningly simple, yet utterly revolutionary.
And largely of no surprise that she’s had trouble finding webhosting, both for high traffic and "inappropriate images." Because of course many women want this knowledge of our bodies, specifically because it’s deemed vulgar or dirty or inappropriate, and we can’t find it anywhere else.