Who's Afraid of the Cervix?

Inside the Cervix...

Before I became pregnant there were many things I did not know.

Many of the things I was didn’t know about were inside me.  Isn’t that always the way? I’ve lived in Italy, Vietnam and Thailand and travelled widely, but the secrets waiting to be discovered were not in ancient ruins or modern temples. They were locked in the uterine vault that would later create another human, inside me.

Take my cervix. In my culture, the cervix is an invisible player. No one talks about it. No one values it. The speculum, a duck shaped medical instrument used to gain access to and a decent view of the cervix, is not discussed in popular culture.

Except perhaps by Annie Sprinkle.

Not so my Indian friends, who chat about the cervix and how they’re hoping for a good dilation over the baby shower gulab jamon. But in my anglo environment, no one is aware that the cervix may be impotent, that it opens and closes, or how it works, except women who are mothers, and a tiny minority who apparently use it to engage in BDSM. Not really something I even want to think about, as I am endowed with a very potent but very sensitive cervix.

Since my first pap smear, I have been aware of my cervix. I asked to see it with a mirror during my first smear, so I know it looks like a pink donut. Well, a healthy one looks like a big pink donut, and changes in appearance and texture during the menstrual cycle and during pregnancy.

After the whole labour ordeal, I have a new awareness of the cervix’s potential and limitations. I enjoyed three days in hospital being plied with tablets inserted by medical staff into the back of my cervix. They were up to their elbows inside me and my naughty cervix remained closed despite the best in modern medicine (prostaglandin pessaries by the dozen) and ancient traditions (uploading semen onto the cervix regularly as well as digesting papaya, pineapple and raspberry leaf tea).

I indulged in large amounts of gas to alleviate the pain this process caused. Other women experience no such pain. Those are the women who “feel a little discomfort and pressure” then birth a baby an hour later to not much fuss. Often in the car or on the side of the road. They were born with hardy tough cervixes. Obedient cervixes.

Some facts about the cervix I didn’t know include:

• It can go from 0 to 10cm dilation in seconds - and vice versa
• It typically takes hours, days or weeks to dilate for birth, but all women are different
• The dilation is accompanied by effacement which is a thinning out of the donut
• Touching the cervix is generally uncomfortable and opening or closing the cervix can be extremely painful. A stretch and sweep is performed on overdue pregnant women, where the midwife actually tries to insert something long and sharp into the cervix for the stretch, and to sweep the membranes of the baby's amniotic sac...no comment required.
• According to doctor friends, when a women births a baby vaginally, the cervix pops out of the body, then is sucked back up and into place within minutes.
• If you have cancer of the cervix it gets really messy. It’s a great idea to prevent cancer spread by having regular pap smears, as early detection and treatment will usually prevent cancer spread.
• The cervix is called the neck of the uterus, and is usually 1mm open, which is my gynaecologists joke about their job being like wallpapering a dining room through the letterbox
• Women may have trouble conceiving if their cervix is at an unusual angle

My cervix was correctly noted in my medical notes as being UNCOOPERATIVE. Not unlike the rest of me. In the end, my own birth story concluded with a Csection as the front door was closed for business.

I encourage you to celebrate this silent player and essential component of the continuation of the human race by having a good look at your own or a friend’s cervix, and checking out these beautiful photos of a cervix here at The Beautiful Cervix Project.

Pregnant In Heels

Rosie Pope, WTF?

I watch a lot of television. This only started happening about 18m + 9m ago, when I became less mobile with a placenta and foetus inside me, swollen legs, and climaxing blood pressure making me feel like I weighed over 100 kilos. Oh wait, I did. Then, as is usually the case during a uncomplicated pregnancy, the huge belly transformed ineluctably into an alien baby.

Contrary to my hopes and desires, I became even less mobile, with obesity and major surgery recovery, and a four kilo baby to lug around. Add breastfeeding to the pile and I became a TV addict.

I turned to TV as my lifeline and my connection to the outside world. And baby, did she deliver. I ploughed through the entire 1st, 2nd and 3rd series of Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant, getting parenting tips and pitfalls from Farrah and Amber, learning how to deflect child service investigators and how to recover from breast enlargement surgery with a two year old. the extra expert support from Dr Drew was invaluable.

I was right there with Bentley's toilet training, Leah's parental separation confusion and Caitlin's "Woops I gave my baby away to a complete stranger and now I'll never see her again". I even got right into the second series featuring the hipster Chelsea, off her face Jenelle, workaholic Kailyn and southern belle of disabled twins Leah before getting a serious case of indigestion.

I then consumed entire series of old faves Californication, Dexter, the new Homeland, Revenge (patriotic to Rabbit Proof Phillip Noyce to the end) and Covert Affairs and ending up with half unfinished True Blood and Pregnant in Heels (PIH).

Pregnant in Heels stopped me in my obese tracks.

WTF is a Maternity Concierge? Who are these women? And where on earth did Rosie Pope, God bless her, pick up that bizarre bastardised accent?

And why does every chick show require a gay, preferably black, trickster?

Before exposure to PIH I thought women who had never cleaned, women who insisted on two nannies per baby and women who swore they would never change their new baby's nappy were urban myths. Or, fantasies. My fantasy, to be precise.

Then, lo and behold, I discover entire neighbourhoods in a small, anthropologically distinct island in the Atlantic are packed with women who never smell or even see their own baby's shit. You should have heard my whining. My husband was ready to pack me off to the meat packers district or Noho in an abattoir refuse box.

We watch reality TV to sneak into other people's lives. But watching PIH I was blasted into several truly bizarre scenarios every episode that made Jersey Shore and Real Housewives look like the nightly news. Or a mild case of chlamydia compared to the major herpes outbreak that was PIH.

Suffice to say, it had me on the edge of my seat and I'd give PIH a rating of 9/10 for pure madness. Only in America? I hope not! Give me two nannies any day!

On Being a Fat Chick

Snooki losing weight

I have been fat, curvy, chubby, voluptuous, a cakelover, Rubenesque, rounded and plain obese for most of my life. The thing is, I think I look great and have never considered using my appearance to my advantage. And I think that should end.

Everywhere I look I see fat chicks banging on about how life is as a fat chick, and skinny chicks bemoaning the fact they have no ass. It’s the pet topic of the underweight Ms Mamamia Mia Freedman, who can be found in most media outlets harping on about body image and promoting fat chicks in magazines.

Being fat made that fat chick from The View famous. Khloe Kardashian got instant street cred for “celebrating body diversity” in her fur shoot. And Jersey Shore’s Snooki gained an overnight fan base from flashing her rapidly shrinking ass. The retro Fat Chicks in Party Hats was one of my first favorite websites when I was a teenager.

Fashion editors and designers glance up from their strips of silk and lines of coke long enough to say “hey we’re not cutting cloth for fat chicks”, Anna Wintour doesn’t bat an eyelid (but does she ever, even during bukaki?), and the world keeps on turning, a world where chubby girls are treated like dogs every day of their school life until they become mums and everyone urges them to celebrate their curves.

But while we’re all pretending that fat chicks are the bomb, it’s about time I started making a living from my enlarged moneymaker. I can’t help it that I love chocolate. It’s a permanent fixture in my life. Last week over easter I ate over a kilo of chocolate and I really don’t care what it does for my already oversized curves. When I wasn’t married, I knew if I didn’t find a husband in Australia, where men drive utes with “no fat chicks” bumper stickers, I’d go to the USA where the guys adore curves.

The only downside of being fat – especially the year I became a mother and sat in the obese category for quite some time – were those nasty Kmart knits. Oh and the dirty looks I get at the gym. But because I go to the beach 300 days a year and enjoy slurrying around in my black lyrca uniform, or nothing at all, clothes generally aren’t an issue for me. And dirty looks are something I got used to a long time ago.

So here you have it: moi, fat mamma famous for being fat? Nice to meet you.

Why Nice is the New Grey

PND caused by boring mums

I’m sitting in playgroup with a bunch of bored looking mums. Little Max is throwing cookies up in the air and Cooper’s crushing them under his toddler sneakers. My daughter runs into the fray grabbing for someone else’s treats.

“Oh your daughter's eating off the floor” says one mum to me “Oh, she does that all the time” I say flashing what I hope is a disarming and friendly smile. Everyone turns to look at my 18 month old licking crumbs off the ground. I roll my eyes internally at the constant pressure of judgement that came down on me like a grey UNHCR issue refugee blanket since I did the last thing I remember I wasn't judged for: had sex without a condom and deliberately conceived a child. The judgement is hard and fast. She's too cold, says a granny at the supermarket. She needs more fencing, says my neighbour as he watches her climbing our deck. Hungry, tired, too thin, too fat, no shoes, no manners, too loud, too immature, too cheap. And only just turned one year old.

A bit later on a mother I faintly know frumps in with her baby and two year old looking frayed at the edges. I haven’t seen her for two weeks and we discuss how she probably has PND, as did I at the six month stage, as would anyone who hasn’t slept more than four hours in six months.

She also confesses to not LOVING the whole baby stage, which I can more than relate to. Actually she says her husband wanted kids more than her, but now that they're here he's not really all that involved. It's a common story you hear. Babies are a LOT of work and an awful lot of guys understandably make themselves scarce, leaving their partners alone to mop up the milk, wee and tears.

Anyone who gets off being elbow deep in things I thought only S&M mistresses had to deal with has a conflict of interest. And all six month olds I've met fail to say thank you mum, thanks for changing and feeding me seven times a day and making sure my day is filled with an interesting age appropriate but not overstimulating variety of activities! Thank you for letting me take over your life like a virus!

It’s all just so boring sometimes, just the same drudgery, I console. She agrees. And it’s hard to find other mums who feel the same way, I say and she nods vigorously. “What are they all doing, pushing their kids in designer prams and sashaying from coffee date to manicure??” she cries.

“And they’re all so NIIICE” I say. “I KNOW! Is anyone around here not boring?” We sadly shake our heads at the nice but boring women surrounding us – at playgroup, the gym, the park, the beach, library story time and the shops. No wonder Jessica Rowe got depressed - and she had a two Nannies for the morning and the evening according to her latest book. So if even two nannies can't protect you from PND, what can? Ecstasy?

Babies are f-ed, I say. They wreck your lives and make once sexy women into yabbering zombies. The boredom and loneliness of early unsupported motherhood can wreak havoc with even the most upbeat mum's temperament. We both agree, then get back to pouring milk and solids down our respective children’s mouths.

And the Rest of You can go F Yourselves.

She cooks and cleans too

No seriously. So I’m sitting at dinner opposite an ex who didn’t have children with me four years ago. Luckily. Another asshole who now has zero current knowledge of what a csection, torn vag or the inside of a maternity ward looks like (uterine purple walls), let alone a baby slathered in vomit or a toddler stashing its own shit in the sofa.

 He asks me, having not seen me for two years, what I’ve been doing. Um, you know, I have an 18 month old, I say. Yes he says, but what else? Well, I could explain I’ve almost finished a grad dip, I worked briefly as a copywriter for a marketing company before they silently shafted me, and how I can’t seem to snare a part time job.

 But what I really should say is I’ve been to the beach with my toddler twice a day for the past 500 days of her life, to the library 400 times, to the Red Cross toy/op shop 300 times. I’ve cleaned shit off the walls and cot twice, been covered in every possible body fluid in unusual places, sometimes all at once.

That in the two years since he’s seen me, I gave her a spine, a heart and eyeballs, got married in Vegas, fed her vicariously through the womb (mostly not champagne), then fed her nonstop from breast to bottle to goopy rice and pear to toast and weetbix to steak. That it’s an fing triumph when I look up and see her healthy rosy face peering across the table at me, alive, well and alert.

 So this asshole who grew up in Singapore says: You have a nanny right? No I choke, no one in Australia has a nanny. Well, maybe your terrace-dwelling-IVF-twin-spawning-“William/Emily-or-Ruby/Imogene”-Montessori-patronising-friends in the inner west have nannies. Or the TV anchor woman. But not me.

 Now that I am a member of the secret world of mummies, the mysterious world of cafes and playgroups inhabited by designer prams, smart phones, heavily made-up mumazons or trakkie slugging slummy mummies, I am privy to a shocking revelation: Australian women really are doing it all. And it sucks.

Nowhere else in history have millions of women been forced to throw aside their postgrad degrees and six figure salaries, get shafted by midwives and insurance companies alike and lose their body and identity in such a sudden fashion as Australia circa 2012. And they think PND is caused by having a baby.

 Here’s the clincher: their new life of constant harassment and wiping little bums ten times a day is invisible, unnumerated and unsupported by either husband or grandma (who are either working full time to pay off the seven figure mortgage or busy abroad). It is certainly not supported by a thriving nanny economy they may simply tap into for a wealth of affordable talent.

 So when this ex boyfriend suggests I just get a nanny I want to reach across the table and slap him. He also suggests I “suck it up princess” and "get used to being a mum" in reference to my whinge about being booted out of hospital three days after major surgery and noone to take care of me. Ot the new baby.

If this attitude it any indication of Australia’s general feelings towards nannies then I really am stuck up shit creek without a nanny for the foreseeable future.