Explaining the Impossible

Men may not want to read this, and if you don't - that's fine. Just don't read it and then cry about TMI. Consider yourself warned! :) Also, don't lecture me about playing the martyr. This post isn't about martyrdom, I'm just sayin' it's difficult to explain to someone else - so zip it. ;)



Last night, my dear Hub asked me a profound question.

“What does it feel like to have a baby?”

I really had to think hard about that answer.

Now, explaining to another woman isn’t as challenging, as we all have the same – eh – structure. And if I’d refer to certain sensations in certain anatomical areas, she’d understand what I’d be talking about to a much more successful degree. But how do you describe something physical to someone who not only would never be able to experience it, but doesn’t even have the proper equipment in which to even relate?

To me, labor felt like increasingly excruciating menstrual cramps. But what feels like menstrual cramps besides menstrual cramps? So I described it as imagining really bad diarrhea cramps, but about twenty times worse, and centralized between your belly button and your – eh – peepee. Combine that with an immense and unique form of internal pressure from the inside of your pelvis, splitting those bones apart. And a burning sensation, as if the skin of your most delicate nether regions were being stretched to (and beyond) the point where it can remain intact.

Yes, I had an epidural. But it wore off mid-birth and I remember the subsequent sensations very, very well.

Did he understand the parallels I was trying to draw? I’m not sure. So I ask my women blogfriends with children, how would you describe the sensation of childbirth? Foregoing the typical “squeezing a bowling ball through a keyhole” illustrations, I mean actual comparable sensations. As if to someone who has no concept – what could they expect?

I imagine a similar dilemma would arise if I’d ask him what it feels like to be kicked in the jewels. Something that is, no matter what he would say, a sensation I’m sure I will never fully be able to grasp.

BTW, speaking of motherhood, today is my Grandma's birthday. She died in 2005, but she would be 98 today. Happy Birthday, Grandma - I miss you!