Or why can’t we lay eggs..?
This week is better. Last week was a bitch. Constant pain produced by a tiny human inside your belly, or rather produced by his/ hers very existence inside your own body… well, that makes you wonder a lot, especially on the design.
I know, elephants are pregnant for two years. Whales are close behind with 480-590 days. Cats for 66 days, Dogs for 63 days. But the platypus? the animal we all aspire to be some day… well, they lay eggs!
Maybe, you can say, laying eggs doesn’t sound as great as all that, given all of the chicken jokes roaming around the cyberspace. But imagine this, you produce an egg, and then lay it (yes, close to labor or so, but it is round, no shoulders to be afraid of) and you are done! while you are waiting for your little egg to hatch you can stop recuperating your pre-mummy tummy. Given the fact that your body wasn’t hijacked for 9 months pre-egg-laying, it shouldn’t be that hard. Right?
You might question my logic with “well, but wouldn’t you have to sit on it for 9 months instead?’. Well, maybe. But we humanoids are so advanced and complex that we have designed carry-ons for tiny humans and dogs alike, so why wouldn’t we be able to design some for of warm/safe/cute/fashionable carry on for the egg we are gestating outside our bodies?
We could also have surrogate sitters… ‘hey Emily, what are you doing this weekend? I am going to do some rock climbing and I don’t want to take my egg with me, can you sit on it for a few hours on Saturday? I promise it is a well behaved egg!’
Another design option could be a marsupial one… in order for that to happen we would need to have some sort of pocket somewhere, with boobs in it, or at least the extensions with nipples at the end. We would give birth to a baby that would not be longer than our hand who would crawl to that said pocket… or we could give it a hand, and it would attach itself to the nipple inside the pocket. And done! one month of gestation and then the actual baby caring begins. Koalas are born at an inch, so it is feasible to deliver a baby without any huha trauma, right?
So these are my two cents. We should be able to choose to lay eggs or have pouches instead of carrying tiny humans inside our bodies.
Why is pregnancy not my ideal state of being? I have had sciatica pain since week 12, my lower back is in constant pain due to the weight, my hereditary varicose veins are getting worse and more painful due to the weight gain, my feet are in constant acute pain because the fascia has become inflamed (more on that in another post), I can’t sleep well because everything is uncomfortable and mostly, I miss my lean, movable body.
I hate it when other women (including my mother) say how amazing pregnancy is and how well they felt, etc. Yes to the miracle of life, yes to me being lucky being able to procreate, yes to all of that. Thank you universe. But making a human, creating a child is very hard work! Eggs. definitely. Or pouches.