A Surprise, Unexpected, Accidental Mistake

*This post originally ran on 12/23/08 (what a great Christmas read!). Hoping it will rile you up! I’ll be sitting by my email inbox waiting for the hate mail.

Dad Warning: this post may not be a good one for you to read!

Women Warning: you’ll probably all be offended, too. I don’t want to get hate mail on this topic, so just know that I may make your blood boil today.

I loved the book Table for Eight by Meagan Francis (reviewed yesterday). My only problem with it is on page ix, where the sentence reads,

“Maybe you were surprised with a series of unexpected pregnancies.”

Then she talks about the author (Leslie Leyland Fields) of a book titled “Surprise Child: Finding Hope In Unexpected Pregnancy” saying how she “admits that her fifth and sixth pregnancies were the realization of one of her biggest fears. She writes that she was crushed to have to start again at the beginning …”

That’s funny. MY biggest fear is being too dense to realize that pregnancy is caused by sex, especially after I’ve done it FOUR times.

I’m trying to figure out how to NOT freak out here. Where do I begin? I guess some of you will be shocked to learn that I am pro-choice … the CHOICE being whether or not to have sex.

First of all, please do not EVER refer to an unplanned pregnancy as a “mistake” in my presence. A mistake is when I do something mindless like put salt instead of sugar in a recipe or when I call Joel by his brother’s name, NOT when I have sex and make a HUMAN BEING.

Secondly, what about this thing called Feminism? Didn’t we fight to be the hot shi* we are now? So why can’t we take responsibility when something happens in our lives? How is a pregnancy unexpected if you had some sex, ANY sex? This is an insult to all the women who are unable to get pregnant either on their own or with the help of science.

Third, never have I had a pregnancy be a SURPRISE. Um, I pretty much know when I’m having sex, unless I’m asleep for the whole thing, and I’m SURPRISED this hasn’t happened a few times being as how I’m exhausted every night at 9 p.m. So if I’m a big girl and know that the equation is “sex can equal a pregnancy” … then how is it a surprise? That being said, it WOULD be a surprise to me to become pregnant with, say, sextuplets without using fertility drugs.

Fourth, referring to a pregnancy as an accident is asinine. Here’s how I see it going down, and I’ll try not to be too graphic: I have just taken a shower and am naked. My husband walks in, only he TRIPS on his way in. He falls ON TOP OF me just the right way and … voila! He impregnates me! Stupid, right?

Bottom line: Even if you are using a titanium diaphragm, are breastfeeding day and night, your man is wearing the strongest condom ever made AND had a double vasectomy, and you are on 5 kinds of the Pill (including the ones where you don’t bleed for, like, a YEAR) …

Although there are many scientific ways to figure out when you are fertile, IF YOU HAVE SOME SEX, YOU MIGHT GET PREGNANT.

Class dismissed, and please NEVER ask me if I know what causes my large family!

I still love ya’ll, and tomorrow I’ll make it up to you for putting up with my yelling and ranting.

Girls, it’s like I always tell my husband (something stolen from Judge Judy):

Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.