Info about Fertility
Women Guide For Life
• Celibacy
You might be a woman who isn't much interested in sex. That's OK. Our drives are all different. Or you might be extra interested but unable to pursue it because you are phobic. That's also OK. Get help. But just to make myself clear, if you are a) not at all interested, as a woman you will not behave in the same way as you would if you were b) phobic.
Being a woman, as opposed to being a regular person who goes about her day to day business in a regular fashion, is only really significant when it comes to courting rituals. If you're not interested in the courting rituals, being a woman will be neither here nor there though you may still be reminded of it on a monthly basis.
• Periods
Periods are a complete pain in the butt, though more so for some than for others. When I first had mine, Mrs Thompson from along the road warned me they would last a very long time and I would never get to like them; this was her line on the whole of human life. She was right about periods though. In those days sanitary towels were like plaster casts that you wore between your legs and they ripped all your flesh off as well as leaked.
Things have improved out of sight with tampons but you must be vigilant in this respect. Some women forget what's up there, keep reloading and end up with toxic shock or in hospital consulting a doctor who needs to go in there with a torch.
Be careful, also, about chronic irregularity which is in the family. It can affect fertility but it doesn't always. Fertility and infertility are notoriously difficult to pick and we have a very lovely granddaughter to prove it.
• Public displays of period pain
Some men love the idea of women getting the vapours when they have a period. Then sneer about women's failure to cope at certain times of the month as if they would whistle with searing pains in the stomach, back and legs and chronic blood loss every four weeks. It's my view they sneer because they imagine periods give us magic powers. In dealing with such pig-like men, I advise you to do that curse about the coffee grains and make their hair fall out.
• PMT
Your grandmother says PMT doesn't exist. We were certainly never allowed to have it and I don't. But there's no doubt lots of women do and sometimes one or other of you says you do. This is jolly bad luck. I wouldn't dwell on it. There are things you can take to even out your hormones. I don't know what they are. See a doctor.
• Childbirth
There is much argument as to how much carrying and bearing children separates women from men. Does it render women more able to tolerate pain, give them a greater sense of destiny, make them more immediately and inextricably bonded to their children? Maybe. We are in a cultural flux. With fathers being that much more involved in the process, time could possibly tell.
I do know that your father assumed I knew more about babies than he did simply because you had been inside me, and although I yelled at him for being such a prat, I also encouraged it. I like to have that privileged position in your lives, even if it is fraudulent.
Once I had babies, what it meant to be a woman changed gear for me completely. Wanting to attract men I could sleep with became that much less urgent. More than anything else it meant being a mother and being a mother meant being completely enslaved to the needs and happiness of my children. I'm not saying I didn't have a life. I did in a funny sort of way. But you were, and remain, paramount in it. The same went for your father but it was different and I think it was different because he was a man.
Rule: Your father says If you are ever called upon to punch, keep your thumb outside your fist and your centre knuckle sticking out His friend Bubbles says only girls punch with their thumbs inside the fist and so their thumbs break. Only punch if you can get away with it.