On Wednesday I went to have my pap smear, done every three years here. The clock ran out, the legs had to be spread, the waddle (aka "hey that's an awful lot of lubricant you had to use there, did you expect I'd be as chafing as sandpaper?") to the tissues would be done.

In the past I'd take a bit of extra time and attention getting ready for these things. I mean, if they're going to be sizing up the woman bits you want them to look reasonable. But through the last several years of doctors, midwives, medical students, and Jesus, who knows, maybe the NHS tea lady who thoughtfully came round the ward with the caffeine four times a day, I am no longer remotely bashful. All you have to do is shine a flashlight in my direction and I'll spread them.

I head to the office while the babies snooze in their cribs, Angus working from home in the study. I sign in, wait, and pick up a 4 year old National Geographic. It has something to do with penguins. Or maybe it was global warming. Or penguins causing global warming, who knows. When my name is called I head into the room.

I walk in and am greeted by a nurse bearing the title "Sister", which never fails to make me giggle because I am nothing if not hopeless and occasionally immature. She greets me with pleasantries - how are you, lovely weather today, aren't parking fees a nightmare - and then starts to collect my data for the computer.

"Do you have any children?"

"Yes, two."

"Ages?"

"Four months old."

"Both of them?"

"Yes, they're twins."

"Oh how lovely. Have they moved out of the house yet?"

Um...uh...I look at her. "They've been looking around but prime real estate is so costly in this part of England. They may wait to move out until they're 5 or 6 months old instead, see what happens with the interest rates."

The nurse stares at me, then shakes her head. "Sorry, yes, of course they're infants. I have twin sons, they're 30 and still living at home."

Oh, so we were just projecting there.

"Have you had an internal exam before?"

I'm almost 34. I've had one hundred thousand people looking up my hootch this past year, including getting fingered by no less than a dozen people with latex glove foreplay. I'm more familiar with the structure of my uterus on a grainy ultrasound TV than I am the back of my elbow. I think I'll be ok here. "Yes," I answer with a smile.

"Planning on having any more children?" she asks, filling out the last of the paperwork.

Planning? Nope. Not planning. "No, no more babies."

"Shame," she says idly.

It is, actually.

They say that after you're pregnant, your body has a way of forgetting what pregnancy was like. I always blew the notion off, forget how pregnancy was, please, but there's something to it actually. I know I had a hell of a time, I remember that I had restless leg syndrome, I know I spent many a night screaming on the toilet as my bladder and kidney hung out, shredded, and I have seen video of me sitting on the couch panting like a dog as Nora bounced around by my lungs and diaphragm. I know how hard it was, and yet I have to sit there and think about it to remember it.

I absolutely hated pregnancy and I know that, I remember that. The part that I did love was finally meeting the inhabitants bouncing around in me, holding them and sniffing their heads and watching them grow. That part, it has been brilliant.

The truth is I have slightly changed position. I would love more children. I would love to add to the flock, but knowing that the path from here to there is fraught with IVF, knowing that my body doesn't do pregnancy well (it remains to be seen if I've done lasting damage to the bladder and kidneys), knowing that Angus absolutely positively doesn't want more (and I really don't blame him there-he's about to be 46 and has 4 children. Any more kids and he'll be a statistic) means that my brood, it ends here. From every single angle - financial, physical (hello kidneys? Razor blade peeing, anyone?), emotional, and time - we're all done.

And I accept that.

My kids were born in the Chinese Year of the Golden Boar, which some say happens every 60 years or 600 years. I say 600 years (don't wreck this for me, m'kay?) This is supposed to be a lucky year and children born during that time are meant to be good fortune. I haven't yet won the lottery, but I imagine if I keep reminding Nick and Nora they'll get right on that because what good are kids if they can't arrive in a lucky year and help you win the lottery? Sheesh. Always wanting something for nothing.

I'm not superstitious and I don't know how much I subscribe to astrology, although if I have a newspaper I will check mine out. But the Year of the Golden Boar (or Golden Pig, depending on where you read it) always felt like a sign to me. It was meant to be. Now the clock has rolled over to Year of the Rat, and with the passing of the Chinese New Year it's as though I'm putting things behind me. It's time to look ahead, while trying to celebrate the anniversaries as they happen.

When my exam is finished I slip and slide my way to the car (no one is that dry they need that much KY, lady. No one. If you have to shake the canister three times and then go for three long squirts of goo, you've just overdone it.) and head home to my little Golden Piglets.

-H.

PS-I had a long interview with a reporter from the Houston Chronicle for an article they're doing. Hopefully, something comes of it. I'll keep you posted.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:27 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1020 words, total size 6 kb.

1 Bacon *yum*... If mothers would not forget what pregnancy is like, the human race would have ceased to exist shortly after having learned how to stand on two legs. :-) Lily

Posted by: lily at February 08, 2008 11:30 AM (Y8m4l)

2 Good luck with the potential article following the interview! )

Posted by: Mas at February 08, 2008 01:13 PM (UGBIN)

3 Survival of the species! It's sort of mystifying though. I can't remember pregnancy either. Which is really evil, because during pregnancy I was all "NO MORE BABIES" and now I think .... maybe. Evil!

Posted by: Dotty at February 08, 2008 01:58 PM (KJE2B)

4 Funny how that works, isn't it? I still occasionally get the odd baby pang even though I took pains to make sure the factory is closed forever and I'm way beyond truly wanting to start the roller coaster from the beginning of the line again anyway. I love bacon. Now I'm hungry.

Posted by: Lisa at February 08, 2008 02:03 PM (EcHBm)

5 Dear Helen, that was such a good retort about the interest rates... I envy you your quick thinking. That lady must have been quite confused there. That pregnancy amnesia is strange indeed, isn't it? My sister-in-law spent both of her pregnancies suffering from hyperemesis, including repeated hospitalizations, but she maintains today that she loved being pregnant and felt great... She had to be reminded that at one point she had begged for death. As a matter of fact, when her first child was born and she was holding her after the birth, her husband asked whether it was worth all the puking. Her response? "What puking?"

Posted by: Kath at February 08, 2008 02:07 PM (ZixVK)

6 Your post are always interesting and/or humorous, and sometimes both - like now!

Posted by: kenju at February 08, 2008 02:16 PM (yvCMb)

7 Pap smears-ugh. Not that I really dread them, but it is just a nuisance more than anything. And all that lubrication? Come on, it is not like they are going to start a fire with that speculum if they don't put enough in. You know that I hated being pregnant-although compared to you it was a cake walk. It is bittersweet at times that I will have no more babies, but I agree that what lays ahead is wonderful and exciting. I am very superstitious, and think that it is so cool your kids were born in the year of the Golden Boar. Educated as I am, I still love reading my fortune out of the cookie. Except that one time my cookie was empty. I don't know-you think that was a bad sign?

Posted by: Teresa at February 08, 2008 02:22 PM (xEIiS)

8 Woot! You'll have to keep me posted if they print you up. I can get 5000 copies to send to you. And if I tell my mother my friend was in the paper, you might even get a copy from me that's been pasted to bright construction paper and LAMINATED, like I did when she read the article I was interviewed for for the Wall Street Journal.

Posted by: amy t. at February 08, 2008 04:53 PM (3dOTd)

9 One hundred thousand people looking up your hooch last year? Y'know, if you had started charging admission fees for the show, you'd have diapers and daycare well covered right now. During my wife's last pregnancy, when she finally went to the hospital (said product is now 17 years old) so many people came by for a peek under the sheet that she told them it was going to cost them a quarter per look. Oh yeah, and bring your own popcorn and beer.

Posted by: diamond dave at February 08, 2008 08:42 PM (wmTrX)

10 I had to laugh outloud when you called your babes the Golden Piglets! I think I am going to start calling my kids that. I know what you mean. I am sad sometimes that I won't be adding to my family. FINANCIALLY, I just don't get how it would be possible. I know that the only way there is through IVF, and I would be willing to try that again. My company just decided to offer IF benefits (AFTER I paid out of pocket for mine last year, figures, right??). So we could get it covered. And my first IF treatment ever was my first IVF that worked. So I'm not even that jaded. But we could not afford to have another child. And sometimes that makes me so sad that money will dictate the size of my family. So I mourn the fact that I will never be pregnant again too. I forgot how scared I was the entire time, how much I wished it away so that I could just meet them. You write so well. I love to read what you have to say, because I feel like I get you. Maybe one day Jake and Hailey can meet Nick and Nora. Double wedding, perhaps? Can't wait to read the article!

Posted by: Erica at February 09, 2008 01:14 AM (D6tE/)

11 Wonderful comeback! That's the kind of thing I think of hours later, but rarely in the moment. When I babysat my niece as a wee one, I always thought that her cuteness in the morning (at an ungodly hour) was the only thing that saved her....yet another thing helping the human race survive.

Posted by: sophie at February 09, 2008 01:58 AM (ZPzQL)

12 I am well beyond my child bearing years and it is amazing how along with the hormones, the desire to have children also completely disappears, while before that I was imagining having one every month. That would have been a little too much of a good thing and I had only two children, a boy and a girl. In the Netherlands, that's called "a rich man's family." I am sure you know very well how lucky you are with the two children you have, nobody needs to tell you that, but it is very normal to keep wanting to have more. That is just your body telling you to, so you are going to have to ignore that natural message. It's a very precious thing, to have children and now when I look back on it, I can't believe I did it. Wow, bringing two human beings into this world!

Posted by: Irene at February 09, 2008 04:29 PM (RL+iu)

13 Hmmmmmm. NHS had me wait until 6 months after giving birth (both times) for a pap smear because they said it wouldn't be accurate otherwise. And they got cranky the last time, because it hadn't been three years, even though they told me to come in after the 6 month mark. Twits.

Posted by: ewe_are_here at February 09, 2008 08:55 PM (bnUaz)

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