From "avoiding" to "trying"

[HerCrazierHalf]

Isn’t it interesting how we spend our teenage years and the time as single adults avoiding pregnancy (presumably by abstinence given the audience here) but then we get to a point in life where all of a sudden it is not only ok but expected?

Am I the only one who found this transition to be rather sudden?

 

[Xantippe]

Isn’t it interesting how we spend our teenage years and the time as single adults avoiding pregnancy (presumably by abstinence given the audience here) but then we get to a point in life where all of a sudden it is not only ok but expected?

Am I the only one who found this transition to be rather sudden?

Well, there are demographics where people immediately start nagging their unmarried 18-year-olds for grandkids…

 

[heidi_storage]

It is rather funny, giving the ol’ machinery the go-ahead after many years of trying to avoid pregnancy. Then when you become pregnant, a whole lot of your anatomy is being used in a dramatically different way and feels almost like a new body. While you’re pregnant and nursing, your body is performing functions that it never has before, and never will again after you’re done, but the experience of it is transformative.

 

[Xantippe]

It is rather funny, giving the ol’ machinery the go-ahead after many years of trying to avoid pregnancy. Then when you become pregnant, a whole lot of your anatomy is being used in a dramatically different way and feels almost like a new body. While you’re pregnant and nursing, your body is performing functions that it never has before, and never will again after you’re done, but the experience of it is transformative.

There used to be an infertility blog with a title something like, “And I wasted all that birth control.”

 

[AnneElizabeth]

Isn’t it interesting how we spend our teenage years and the time as single adults avoiding pregnancy (presumably by abstinence given the audience here) but then we get to a point in life where all of a sudden it is not only ok but expected?

Am I the only one who found this transition to be rather sudden?

Actually, I remember a friend, newly married, very much having this same issue. It felt very strange for her. She said even though she was married, it felt ‘wrong’ somehow, like she wasn’t supposed to be doing it. She said the same thing you did.

 

[heidi_storage]

There used to be an infertility blog with a title something like, “And I wasted all that birth control.”

It’s kind of awesome for the author to bring humor to a very painful situation.

 

[nodito]

Isn’t it interesting how we spend our teenage years and the time as single adults avoiding pregnancy (presumably by abstinence given the audience here) but then we get to a point in life where all of a sudden it is not only ok but expected?

Am I the only one who found this transition to be rather sudden?

I was a virgin when I married my husband, and I’ve always associated sex with the possibility of pregnancy, but the adjustment from “you can never do this” to “you get to do this as much as you two like” vis a vis sex was quite striking. Even several years later I can remember thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I’m allowed to do this!”

 

[SusanneT]

I was a virgin when I married my husband, and I’ve always associated sex with the possibility of pregnancy, but the adjustment from “you can never do this” to “you get to do this as much as you two like” vis a vis sex was quite striking. Even several years later I can remember thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I’m allowed to do this!”

I was the same and I know exactly what you mean ! It is a very strange and sudden change.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

It is rather funny, giving the ol’ machinery the go-ahead after many years of trying to avoid pregnancy. Then when you become pregnant, a whole lot of your anatomy is being used in a dramatically different way and feels almost like a new body. While you’re pregnant and nursing, your body is performing functions that it never has before, and never will again after you’re done, but the experience of it is transformative.

And as the guy other weird part is that after deciding to protect your wife you consider starting a process with the possibility of serious injury, death, or other lifetime conditions. But of course that is rather rare these days.

I think part of the shock is that a child is a lifelong commitment that’s made with limited knowledge. I don’t know what will be for the next 20 years yet we would be making a decision for another.

 

[pensmama87]

And as the guy other weird part is that after deciding to protect your wife you consider starting a process with the possibility of serious injury, death, or other lifetime conditions. But of course that is rather rare these days.

I think part of the shock is that a child is a lifelong commitment that’s made with limited knowledge. I don’t know what will be for the next 20 years yet we would be making a decision for another.

Even more shocking is that some of us decide to go for it again!

I do in part wonder if abstinence was psychologically easier in the past because childbirth was more dangerous.

 

[AnneElizabeth]

Even more shocking is that some of us decide to go for it again!

I do in part wonder if abstinence was psychologically easier in the past because childbirth was more dangerous.

Interesting point… and just to add to what you said… births were home births, so the likely hood that most people sometime in their life witnessed what labor was like and probably a few deaths (mother, baby or both) along with that… could be traumatizing to those who are most sensitive.

 

[AnneElizabeth]

And as the guy other weird part is that after deciding to protect your wife you consider starting a process with the possibility of serious injury, death, or other lifetime conditions. But of course that is rather rare these days.

I think part of the shock is that a child is a lifelong commitment that’s made with limited knowledge. I don’t know what will be for the next 20 years yet we would be making a decision for another.

I wonder how common it is for men to fear loosing their wife to childbirth these days? Maybe it wouldn’t ‘hit’ them until pregnancy or just before? That’s a great point you bring up though! I can imagine that if you are man who just found the love of your life after much searching , and having the knowledge that sharing that love (sexually) can lead to loosing her/hurting her- what a frightening mind warp that could be.

 

[SusanneT]

I wonder how common it is for men to fear loosing their wife to childbirth these days? Maybe it wouldn’t ‘hit’ them until pregnancy or just before? That’s a great point you bring up though! I can imagine that if you are man who just found the love of your life after much searching , and having the knowledge that sharing that love (sexually) can lead to loosing her/hurting her- what a frightening mind warp that could be.

It certainly illustrates how far the modern secular attitude to sex a little more than a recreational activity with no moral consequences differs from God’s plan.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

I wonder how common it is for men to fear loosing their wife to childbirth these days? Maybe it wouldn’t ‘hit’ them until pregnancy or just before? That’s a great point you bring up though! I can imagine that if you are man who just found the love of your life after much searching , and having the knowledge that sharing that love (sexually) can lead to loosing her/hurting her- what a frightening mind warp that could be.

On the other hand, in the times when childbirth did have a high mortality rate, many people didn’t have the luxury of holding out to marry “the love of your life” but simply married whoever their parents arranged for them to marry.

So, maybe it was easier to be detached about the chance of a wife dying in childbirth if you didn’t really love or even like her, and knew that if she died, you’d just marry some other woman ASAP to take her care of the baby and any other children.

Of course the women involved might have taken sex more seriously, since the consequences could literally kill them. Of course, there is still a risk of dying in childbirth, but much lower than even 100 years ago.

 

[AdamP88]

I was a virgin when I married my husband, and I’ve always associated sex with the possibility of pregnancy, but the adjustment from “you can never do this” to “you get to do this as much as you two like” vis a vis sex was quite striking. Even several years later I can remember thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I’m allowed to do this!”

Yeah…this is prettymuch how my wife and I feel. It is strange to be suddenly “allowed” to do something that you spend years of your life not doing, avoiding doing, and even avoiding situations where doing it might more easily occur.

 

[Anglewannabe]

Well… from a secular perspective what kills me is people in their mid 20’s are pressured to marry, newlyweds are pressured into having a baby, parents of a toddler are pressured into having a second, and the minute the woman is pregnant with the second every tells them ‘Ok, no more’

If we live in a secular world that frowns on more than 2 kids, why so much pressure to have them early?

 

[AdamP88]

Well… from a secular perspective what kills me is people in their mid 20’s are pressured to marry, newlyweds are pressured into having a baby, parents of a toddler are pressured into having a second, and the minute the woman is pregnant with the second every tells them ‘Ok, no more’

If we live in a secular world that frowns on more than 2 kids, why so much pressure to have them early?

In fairness, this doesn’t bother me at all. Obviously it’s lamentable that people feel like more than two kids is too much. But I came from a family of six and I remember other teens making comments like “she should get her tubes tied” about my mother when she was pregnant with child no.5. You have to be thick skinned and be able to tell them to mind your own business.

 

[Xantippe]

Well… from a secular perspective what kills me is people in their mid 20’s are pressured to marry, newlyweds are pressured into having a baby, parents of a toddler are pressured into having a second, and the minute the woman is pregnant with the second every tells them ‘Ok, no more’

If we live in a secular world that frowns on more than 2 kids, why so much pressure to have them early?

The urge to get on to the next thing.

 

[Anglewannabe]

In fairness, this doesn’t bother me at all. Obviously it’s lamentable that people feel like more than two kids is too much. But I came from a family of six and I remember other teens making comments like “she should get her tubes tied” about my mother when she was pregnant with child no.5. You have to be thick skinned and be able to tell them to mind your own business.

Being Catholic does bring on the need to have thick skin. But to the single never married woman without kids in her late 40s, my perspective is going to be different than the newly wed man

 

[Anglewannabe]

The urge to get on to the next thing.

yeah but in the secular world, the next thing is divorce and blended families