Saturday, September 15, 2012

POAS & the last Frost

The Last Frost: Peeing on a Stick (aka POAS)

http://www.peeonastick.com/

It’s Melbourne’s “Grand Finale” week of icy temperatures… maybe. In a City nicknamed ‘four seasons in one day’- who is ever to really know what nature has in store? I silently cross my fingers that this is indeed the last frost. I’m not sure if the seedlings I started off in my bathtub six weeks ago can be expected to thrive in ‘the real world’ unless ‘the real world’ holds up its end of the bargain.

Compared to the journey of trying to conceive (aka TTC), gardening is cathartic. Himself and I started our TTC Journey in January. We took a break after three months- a break for as long. In our three month break I learned about so-called ‘nature’. I learned that the average women is only fertile for 2-3 days each month. I learned that if I take my temperature with a basal thermometer at roughly the same time daily, AS soon as I wake, BEFORE I DARE MOVE, I can track my cycle that way. Unfortunately, my temps, due to shift work, are erratic. But oddly they are erratic even in spans when my shifts aren’t an issue. I’ve had a few well-meaning comments in fertility groups that maybe temping can’t tell me anything, or my efforts are futile (sometimes it seems like no one is hearing me). Yet I continue.

We all know ‘feminism’ is a contested term. It means many different things to different people. But I consider myself to be a feminist of a Foucauldian persuasion. Foucault was all about ‘power’: who has it, who does not.

As I sit at 10 ‘DPO’ (Days past ovulation) testing… knowing that is likely to be repeated daily for the next eight days… likely to be followed by ‘AF’ (Aunt Flo- my rags), to be followed by ‘enticing my man’ for sex ‘at the right time’…. Repeat process over until I get a BFP (big fat positive-preggo test), only to know that things could go terribly wrong…

I am overcome with respect for women who have been on this path so much longer than me. I may pee on a stick 5 times a month for ovulation and another five times to discover if it’s worked, but many in the TTC community have peed on sticks hundreds, if not thousands of times, and are still waiting for their ‘lucky month’.

And yet there are other women in the world who have and share power, who make dreams come true for couples who have been through this torturous process over and over for years. For same-sex couples, for single men and women…. All of whom dream of one simple thing: being parents. Whilst at the same time legislatures WEILD power by deciding ‘who gets to and who doesn’t and under what circumstances’.

In my mind, it’s not a government’s job to make those choices for us. Their job is provide harm-minimising regulation. But governments have never been good at harm minimisation regulation. It’s not a vote winner.

So I’m not really sure where the power lies.

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