Cynicism, glorious cynicism

So here I am, checking out one of Karen's genius recent posts. An issue of contention has turned out to be non-pregnant women parking in the parking spaces reserved for the poor, neglected pregnant ladies. These women that are parking in these designated spaces (of which Karen is not even one), are adopting, and therefore are by definition "expectant mothers". Somehow, people find this objectionable. Somehow, adopting mothers are just evil bitches with a hateful vengeance for knocked up women. Of course. All infertile women detest the pregnant. Perhaps it is not pregnant women that piss us off, but the veneration they receive when long-suffering infertile women are viewed with disdain and tremendous misunderstanding. You would think that as pregnancy seems to be the pinnacle of life's experience as ordained by society, that women who struggled so long unsuccessfully to be so would not be the enemy but rather admired for what they have endured but failed to achieve.

What I wanted to focus on is not this perceived notion of the pregnant versus the non-pregnant, but rather how this long slog of infertility has made me jaded and cynical with all things pregnancy and parent-oriented. If I got pregnant, I wouldn't use a parking space designated for pregnant women on principle. Pregnant women aren't disabled. I figure if they are mobile enough to waddle around a store and shop for onesies, they can walk an extra 20 paces from a normal parking space.

Wouldn't the natural inclination be that if someone struggled so long to be pregnant, that she would grab onto this opportunity to park in a space and for once be seen as "normal"? To me, this notion of the feeble pregnant woman is irritating and outmoded. Easy for me to say, I know, being distinctly not pregnant, but it's the reproductive equivalent of "women and children first". Women's lives are more valuable then the lives of men in times of disaster, and pregnant women need to park an inch outside a shop entrance because they can't walk. They'll walk around plenty IN the store, but don't ask them to walk too much OUTSIDE the store. The moral to this story is - no pregnancy parking space for me. Well, principles, and I don't drive.

Secondly, you will never hear me talk about how my baby is my little "miracle". It ain't no miracle that unites the sperm and egg in a petri dish. It's science. A miracle would be me getting pregnant naturally; polycystic posterior ovaries, tilted cervix and small-headed sperm uniting to create a life. That said, even if this happened I would still never call the child a "miracle". The very thought makes me want to roll around in babydust and set myself alight.

I am a member of a mailing list for American ex-pats residing in the UK. One of the women on the list had a baby last week and announced his birth to the list today. After giving the rundown of the usual crap - length, weight, disposition, etc...the beaming new mother said, "I probably won't have much to do now except be a mother", at which point I threw up in my mouth more than just a little. Christ on a bike woman, did you not have anything to do pre-baby? She wasn't even infertile! Surely it is just infertile women, people who have spent ages focusing on procreation, that would momentarily forget that there are more things in life than pregnancy and children? Oddly enough, we are the women who don't say things like that.

That is my drug-induced rant for today. Stay tuned for the next installment when I write 4 paragraphs on how my co-worker's stirring of Cup of Soup makes me want to crawl out of my skin and beat her with the pelt.