“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.”
~Hamilton Wright Mabie
It’s a quarter after midnight and less than eighteen hours earlier, I found out I’m pregnant. My wonderful husband (who is very excited at the prospect of having his mama’s girl become a daddy’s girl) offered to take care of the baby tonight and give me a night off with my girlfriends. We had fun! We talked, exhausting many subjects over and over before finally calling it a night. I drove the hour home and realized that I have to pump my nearly leaking ladies before bed.
As I sit here, pumping, I curiously peruse babycenter.com looking for anything new and exciting and I’d even take a refresher course in the already learned info from about a year and a half ago, when I first found out I was pregnant. I spot a video about fertilization promptly and click because, lets face it, I’m tired and want something mindless and mundane to watch as I pump the minutes away. Tick tock.
It starts with all these wiggly white things and serious music. Add in a British accent and you’ve got a major motion picture! So the camera (if there were one, because you and I know it’s cg), it’s following right on the tail (pun most definitely intended) of all these nearly colliding white wiggleys. I’m feeling a bit short of breath and anxious as I feel a little bit crowded out. There’s so many of them! I turn the volume up a bit. (In British accent) “The sperm move their tales through the dangerous obstacle trap; the acidity of the vagina, the cervix and the uterus. The obstacles claim many lives...the slow and weak give up....” Now I’m focusing on this film. After all, this British chick just called my vagina acidic! Who does she think she is?
Beyond that, I watch with fear as I see the area they are traversing into is dark and scary looking. It looks terrifying. I squint, half closing my eyes to shield the horror. With this music something bad is bound to jump out of somewhere unseen. And they keep going! TURN BACK I think! Many are held back by strong currents. Then the beautiful pearly ball, looking very much like a mix between Epcot Center in Disney and The Sydney Opera House comes into view...I exhale with relief. (back on with the British accent) “Finally, at the end of the tunnel, like a mysterious star, the ovum”. Only about a hundred sperm left, only one will make it. One penetrates, and once she’s got what she wanted, she hardens her shell to keep him in and all else out....bahahahahah! cue evil music...malevolent plan achieved.
“It sheds it’s now unnecessary load and tail...” okay. Well then, the two find each other, meld into one (symbolic I believe) and a new little person is in the making! Wow! I never visualized it quite like that. Each little heroic sperm was given a persona and I felt genuinely bad for the ones that were “failures” as she so bluntly proclaimed. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible miracle how one of daddy’s millions of deposited sperm conquered the near impossible really. But Mama’s egg is really queen bee and knows it from the get go. She doesn’t do anything but sit on her cushy little sea anemone looking things and wait for him to do all the work. Sounds about right! This gave me a hearty albeit quiet laugh before bed as my husband and baby lay sleeping in their beds completely unaware of all the miracles that had been happening.
(written August 20, 2013)
