I expect it's no exaggeration to say that all nations of the Earth have a variation on the 'Until you can shit a space-hopper/ piss a pineapple, you men can have no idea what it's like to give birth'. There are bound to be women from tribes deep in the Amazon basin - yet to even conceive of the notion of people from cultures like ours - currently berating their man for his lack of appropriate birth-giving reproductive organs with a version of the above lament, possibly involving a giant variant of the coconut genus.
Barring the most Neanderthal of men, all males recognise that they're over a barrel with this one. Given that only the most sexually adventurous (and wrong) of us stand even a vague chance of getting said objects lodged where there shouldn't be, it's a guarantee that we can't experience these pains and therefore we are open targets for abuse. It's not entirely fair, but there it is.
There are lots of other fears associated with this whole 'big thing being forced through a small exit' that are commonly reported, not least of which is the big male fear that the mighty pork sword will no longer be quite so mighty if it's rattling around in a vagina the size of the Chislehurst Caves. I've seen it written that modern women, so used to controlling their own destinies are much less good at dealing with the concept of birth than women from less enlightened times or cultures, who thought the notion of things being outside their control was entirely natural. So there are lots of fears associated with notions of space and volume, some more understandable than others.
Of course, nature is not quite so unforgiving as to try and make mothers force the space-hopper out without any assistance at all. I'm not going to pretend giving birth is a piece of piss since it blatantly isn't, but the body does go through all sorts of magical changes that make things a little better. It's not like shitting a space hopper so much as cacking a basketball (which would be easy let's face it - stop your moaning girls...). So, what am I on about? Well, in mid-pregnancy, the levels of the hormones Progesterone and Relaxin cause tendons and ligaments to soften.
The reason for this is so that they can move out of the way as the growing baby takes up more and more space, not to mention the birth itself. The pelvis consists of two halves of bone joined by fibrocartilaginous tissue and reinforced by several ligaments. This area is called the Pubic Symphysis. It is crucial for the birth that a greater degree of movement is possible in these bones. A much unwanted side-effect can be that because the muscles have to take up far more responsibility for keeping everything in the correct alignments other aches can occur.
And this brings us onto why this apparently far-too-early debate of shitting a space-hopper is happening now. K___'s hips - specifically K___'s hips at night. They're giving her lots of gyp. Fortunately, it's not her pelvis giving her problems because the anecdotal stuff I've read about pelvis problems is really grim stuff. Hip pain is incredibly common in pregnancy. At least, that's what you can read on countless sites if you do a Google for 'Hip Pain Pregnancy'. Loads and loads of sites all telling you it's incredibly common and then saying, 'but equally incredibly under-researched' with the implication that no one actually knows exactly how common it is. The general presumption seems to be, 'Oh well, you can't take anything much for the pain, and it gets better after you have the baby, so put up with it...' Of those sites that do offer solutions to hip pain, it seem to centre on putting a pillow between your knees and another one under the bump, which K___ has been doing for months.
I know if I were experiencing something that meant I hadn't slept properly for months on end and was in considerable amounts of pain, I'd be pretty unlikely to be satisfied with someone saying, 'Yes, but you'll be okay in six month's time...' It seems incredible that there's so little information about it.
As far as K___ is concerned, it's just another reason why pregnancy is not all it was cracked up to be. She always said she'd have liked twins first time out and now she's really feeling that would have been a good idea.
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