Cajungal
Staff member
I wouldn't mind teaching them. I bet they're awesome.
[Question] What do you fear?
- Thread starter Yoshimickster
- Start date
- Status
North_Ranger
Staff member
I completely disagree. Talking to other women about their pregnancy and birth experiences, and even some of the infancy and breastfeeding stuff, scared the bejesus out of me! They all seemed to have these horror stories that made me want to seal my nethers shut. From severe complications in the pregnancy, epidurals that didn't work, and nearly dying during birth to having their nipples practically ripped right off their breasts and being deathly ill due to mastitis - it seemed like nearly every woman I talked to before I became a mom tried to one up the last one in the awful experience department. I think if I had not gotten pregnant with my son "by surprise" (we weren't planning to have a baby just yet) I might have gone the childless route partially because of the things other women told me.
Not all of them. If they didn't talk about it like it was a papercut, then they talked about a hangnail like their finger had been chopped off due to gangrene. Honestly, once I was pregnant I found many things over-exaggerated by other women and in a lot of the advice books out there.
The psychology of pain is really interesting to me. The anticipation of an event - whether pleasurable or painful - is often heightened compared to the actual event. The anticipation of sex can make one somewhat disappointed when the sex actually occurs because it wasn't as good as anticipated. The anticipation of a shot or medical procedure can be worse than the actual shot or procedure.
Yeah, there are a lot of really, really difficult and painful things that occur during pregnancy and childbirth. But I suspect there's a few forces at play here that make women who have gone through it talk about it the way they do.
One is that they anticipated it to be much, much worse than it actually was. So by comparison to what they previously expected, it wasn't so bad. Compared to not being pregnant and delivering, though, it was still difficult and painful, but they had built up this conceived notion of what it was expected to be like, and it turned out to be easier than their expectations. It would be like the hospital pain scale - the worst pain is 10, and before you have a child you might think childbirth should be awarded an eleventy-thousand on the pain scale. Perhaps it actually turned out to be a 12 or 20 on the hospital scale that only goes to 10, but it wasn't the "lets add a few more zeros" range either.
Humans don't remember the pain after awhile. They remember they were in pain, and remember it was the worst pain they've ever experienced, but time tends to soften the way we view pains from the past. I haven't yet met a woman that would want to go through childbirth again within a few days and weeks of childbirth, but after a year or two many seriously consider it.
Humans also tend to focus on the unexpected and exceptional cases when discussing common experiences. Try talking to someone about their highschool experience and you won't get the reports about the day to day activities such as homework, class lectures, lunchroom conversation, and common bullying, you'll get the stories about the kid who died on the football field, or the extreme cases of bullying, or the pranks people pulled. Get a group of people together and they'll slowly remember the more exceptional events as they discuss things, and while it seems like they are one upping each other, it's more simply that they are playing off each others memories and remembering more and more outrageous and very exceptional events. It's the same with pregnancy and delivery. Yes, most women have morning sickness and feel bloated near the end. Most women feel like they're waddling, and they have to learn a new way to get into the car and out of chairs. Most women have some form of pain control during delivery, and feel like they are passing a basketball. They aren't going to tell you about having to use the restroom every thirty minutes - it's something they think is uninteresting because it's so common. It's common to have a relatively uneventful pregnancy, and deliver a healthy child at around 40 weeks after several hours of uncomfortable labor, and 30+ minutes of extraordinarily painful labor. Instead they're going to focus on the exceptional times when things went wrong, or portions of the pregnancy were abnormally difficult and unexpected. It's much more interesting to talk about the woman who was in the labor room for forty hours than the woman who was in labor for 5 hours with only 30 minutes of active labor. It's a more interesting topic when the pain control methods don't work, or cause an unexpected reaction such as stopping contractions. It may be that this is something found out third hand, and is very rare, but who wants to talk about how their shoes don't fit anymore when they could talk about the woman who delivered twins, one vaginally and one Cesarian?
But yes. Get a group of mothers on the subject of pregnancy and delivery and you'll hear some very exciting tales. Most of which are very exceptional and rare. Then when you express your fears they go back to issue #1 above - it wasn't as bad as they anticipated.
I get the feeling I could have summed up the above post as "humans be crazy, yo."
Yeah, there are a lot of really, really difficult and painful things that occur during pregnancy and childbirth. But I suspect there's a few forces at play here that make women who have gone through it talk about it the way they do.
One is that they anticipated it to be much, much worse than it actually was. So by comparison to what they previously expected, it wasn't so bad. Compared to not being pregnant and delivering, though, it was still difficult and painful, but they had built up this conceived notion of what it was expected to be like, and it turned out to be easier than their expectations. It would be like the hospital pain scale - the worst pain is 10, and before you have a child you might think childbirth should be awarded an eleventy-thousand on the pain scale. Perhaps it actually turned out to be a 12 or 20 on the hospital scale that only goes to 10, but it wasn't the "lets add a few more zeros" range either.
Humans don't remember the pain after awhile. They remember they were in pain, and remember it was the worst pain they've ever experienced, but time tends to soften the way we view pains from the past. I haven't yet met a woman that would want to go through childbirth again within a few days and weeks of childbirth, but after a year or two many seriously consider it.
Humans also tend to focus on the unexpected and exceptional cases when discussing common experiences. Try talking to someone about their highschool experience and you won't get the reports about the day to day activities such as homework, class lectures, lunchroom conversation, and common bullying, you'll get the stories about the kid who died on the football field, or the extreme cases of bullying, or the pranks people pulled. Get a group of people together and they'll slowly remember the more exceptional events as they discuss things, and while it seems like they are one upping each other, it's more simply that they are playing off each others memories and remembering more and more outrageous and very exceptional events. It's the same with pregnancy and delivery. Yes, most women have morning sickness and feel bloated near the end. Most women feel like they're waddling, and they have to learn a new way to get into the car and out of chairs. Most women have some form of pain control during delivery, and feel like they are passing a basketball. They aren't going to tell you about having to use the restroom every thirty minutes - it's something they think is uninteresting because it's so common. It's common to have a relatively uneventful pregnancy, and deliver a healthy child at around 40 weeks after several hours of uncomfortable labor, and 30+ minutes of extraordinarily painful labor. Instead they're going to focus on the exceptional times when things went wrong, or portions of the pregnancy were abnormally difficult and unexpected. It's much more interesting to talk about the woman who was in the labor room for forty hours than the woman who was in labor for 5 hours with only 30 minutes of active labor. It's a more interesting topic when the pain control methods don't work, or cause an unexpected reaction such as stopping contractions. It may be that this is something found out third hand, and is very rare, but who wants to talk about how their shoes don't fit anymore when they could talk about the woman who delivered twins, one vaginally and one Cesarian?
But yes. Get a group of mothers on the subject of pregnancy and delivery and you'll hear some very exciting tales. Most of which are very exceptional and rare. Then when you express your fears they go back to issue #1 above - it wasn't as bad as they anticipated.
I get the feeling I could have summed up the above post as "humans be crazy, yo."
It also doesn't help that every woman, every pregnancy, every delivery is different. Also, I agree that people tell the gory details and exaggerate because it makes for a more interesting story than talking about a run-of-the-mill experience. That's true for any retelling. If you went to the bank to make a deposit and nothing out of the ordinary happened - meh. If you went to the bank to make a deposit and were there during a robbery - excitement!
Only if they are there to witness it. Otherwise...meh. LOL
GasBandit
Staff member
You're breaking a string of uncountable generations of women all squeezing out that melon, all with less advanced medicine standing by, just so you could exist. The weight of eternity rests squarely upon your shoulders. Will you fail evolution's test, telling your mother, grandmother, great grandmother and every woman (and man for that matter) before you in line that all conspired across the eons to make you that, sorry, it was all for nothing and you're snuffing it without passing it on? Do you admit your inherent inferiority to such a degree that you care not if your genestock vanishes from reality, never to return, invalidating every faith those progenitors had in your future?
You could always put doomweasels in your will as heirs.
Spiders. Oooh I hate spiders. They're just so creepy! I hide them under containers until Mike's able to take care of them. The only reason I don't vacuum them up is because I usually have to walk away to grab the vacuum, and I KNOW the spider will have disappeared by the time I get back!
Also, heights, but to an extent. Climbing things is fine, ladders are fine, planes are all good, and I've gone bungee jumping. But if I go hiking and there's an edge somewhere, I won't go anywhere near it. Seeing photos of people sitting on edges gives me chills, people going not even all that close to edges to peek over gives me chills, and leaning against rails gives me the creeps too. I get all irrational if there's a chance of falling off/over something, like what if a bird comes out of no where and scares the shit out of me, causing me to trip and fall? Or what if there's a pebble big enough to make me trip and fall over the edge of the cliff? What if the railing is a little loose from other people leaning on it, and I just happen to be the one to make it fall apart so I fall off this really tall building/balcony? What if I trip and cause my friend to fall over the edge instead? >.>
Also, heights, but to an extent. Climbing things is fine, ladders are fine, planes are all good, and I've gone bungee jumping. But if I go hiking and there's an edge somewhere, I won't go anywhere near it. Seeing photos of people sitting on edges gives me chills, people going not even all that close to edges to peek over gives me chills, and leaning against rails gives me the creeps too. I get all irrational if there's a chance of falling off/over something, like what if a bird comes out of no where and scares the shit out of me, causing me to trip and fall? Or what if there's a pebble big enough to make me trip and fall over the edge of the cliff? What if the railing is a little loose from other people leaning on it, and I just happen to be the one to make it fall apart so I fall off this really tall building/balcony? What if I trip and cause my friend to fall over the edge instead? >.>
Feral cats. They just scare the hell out of me! I know what their like, since my friend's cat is probably a feral cat. I still like the cat though, but he be CRAZY!
You know what feral cats are like.. because you think your friend's cat is feral?
If it's a pet, it's probably not feral.
Let him believe as he does, because if a nasty pet is "feral" and causes him to fear, imagine the terror he'd have knowing that real feral cats are much more... well, feral.
GasBandit
Staff member
The office of a doctor I used to go to had a whole clowder of feral cats living beneath in its foundations. Often looking out the window in a room there, I'd see them slinking up out of or down into the underspace. They seemed rather uninterested in humans, and the doc said they really helped the rodent problem.
On the other hand, the feral hogs I've personally observed (and more often, their aftereffects) have been much more irritating and potentially dangerous.
On the other hand, the feral hogs I've personally observed (and more often, their aftereffects) have been much more irritating and potentially dangerous.
Already done. Now I just need to find someone worthy of my empire to take over my underground lair and clean their litter boxes.
Cheesy1, you're my top minion. Would you like the job?
I think he's feral because my friend's sister "found" him. As in she might've taken him from his mother when he was a kitten. As in he is a territorial beastie who will swipe or bite at you if you go near anything. Or he wil come up to you and scratch/bite you any way
That's not a feral cat. That's normal cat behavior that doesn't get played with enough/doesn't have an outlet for energy.
Ooooooooooooh, well they told me he MIGHT be feral. Also whenever anyone goes near him he bites them or swipes at them. So should I tell them to play with the cat more or what?
GasBandit
Staff member
Sure, if you want to tick them off. A lot of people take umbrage at being told what they should do with their pets.
Unless they ask you for advice, let them deal with their little leg-shredder.
I'll keep that in mind, thanks.
Running over an animal and killing it. I have nightmares about it some times.
Animals are pretty spry. The only time I've every hit an animal was when I tried to avoid it. Now I simply maintain speed and direction and I've never hit an animal since. I have done my fair share of driving along dirt roads as a youth too, so it's not for lack of opportunity.
The only time I might vary from my normal position is if it's a large animal such as a deer, and I'm liable to be hurt in the process. Then I'll slam on the brakes if collision is likely and I actually see them in time. Lots of deer around here, but so far so good....
My parents' Siamese cat was like this. She didn't like most people with the exception of my mom and my dad when he would give her table food.
This does help thanks. Its just in the dream I hit a dog and its just covered in blood and what not. Its just the thought of killing something by accident freaks me out.
Yeah my friend's cat is generally nicer to my friend and my friends mom. Still gives them a swipe every now and again but you can tell he tolerates them.
Sure! I could always delegate the litter box job to a lower ranked henchman!
Having any appendage ripped off of me. I have some Grendel issues.
- Status