In the Womb

Mike and I have been watching a series on the National Geographic channel called In the Womb. It follows pregnancy, from conception to birth, of different animals. The last time we watched, they featured domestic house cats and lions. This week, they covered dogs: a Neopolitan mastiff (a dog that I love!), a chihuahua, and a wolf. The animals make birthing look so easy! (Except for the chihuahua, which I'll get to in a minute.) It still looks gross, though, and while I'm not usually a squeamish person, I'm still quite apprehensive about childbirth. But the show is fascinating. Our little Sharkbait is going through similar developmental stages of all other little fetuses. Isn't that cool? I just have to be a brave lioness for the birthing part. (I hope I don't have to be a brave Neopolitan mastiff, who is in labor for about thirty hours in order to get seven pups out!)

In the dogs episode there was a lot of discussion about how humans have selectively bred dogs into so many different breeds with different purposes. The chihuahua has been bred to be so small that it cannot give birth naturally. All chihuahua pups must be delivered by c-section. Doesn't that seem cruel? We've denied an animal a natural birth for our own aesthetic purposes. And the way they showed the doctors doing the surgery looked so, I hate to say callous, but it was definitely impersonal and nearly insensitive. The doctor just rooted around, pulled out pups, snipped the cords, and literally tossed them into the hands of a waiting assistant. They were tossed! Who could toss puppies like that? Rationally or not, watching a chihuahua c-section strengthened my resolve to avoid one myself unless absolutely necessary.

When people ask me if pregnancy makes me feel more womanly or feminine, I have to honestly answer "No" (and that seems to offend some people). I feel like a science experiment. Just add food and water and a healthy baby will come out. I feel like part of something that's natural. I feel connected to other mammals when I watch their development in this series. The lioness doesn't worry about feeling feminine. She worries about delivering a healthy baby. Don't get me wrong, I certainly like feeling feminine. I just don't think it's coming from pregnancy; for me it comes from someplace else.

I was not compensated in any way for this post. However, if you click the link and ultimately decide to buy, Amazon will toss a few cents my way.