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Sep. 4th, 2009 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hathycolI've been mulling over my feelings on this news story for a few days, as I have two wildly conflicting feelings on the matter.
You see, I had an aunt with spina bifida. She was my mother's younger sister, and died about six months before my own sister was born. It results in my mother's mad and slightly insane belief that sisters chould get on at all costs, excluding her own terrible relationship with her older sister. My grandad is still so upset about the whole thing that he rarely talks about Linda. I know very little about Linda's case, other than that she died at a relatively young age and required a great deal of care, although wasn't at the 'worst' end of the spectrum. I do know that she is the reson my mother is quite open about the fact she feels she couldn't have coped with a disabled child, as she spent a lot of her childhood years caring for her sister. This is especially poignant, therefore, that this horrible disease that robbed me of by all accounts a loving aunt (I don't remember her) can be partially prevented by folic acid.
(Michael Jackson let out a range of soft toys in the late 80s. I have a very large llama in a natty yellow suit that Linda got me just after I was born. I am still ridiculously fond of it. Doesn't have a name, though. I never named toys. But that's really my only link to her.)
And, you know, I am generally in favour of prevention being better than the cure, and I'm vaguely in favour of flouride in the water, certainly in favour of jabs and stuff.
The way this report is phrased, though, makes me rather uneasy. I am of childbearing age. I have been since just before I was thirteen, technically, but I am now in prime fertility and have maybe another ten years of it, and I may well be capable of having children for the next twenty, even twenty-five years with advance in technology. This is what it's like being a woman. One day I may want children. I certainly don't want them now. Quite apart from the fact that I am not emotionally ready and that I am annoyed with the rigours of caring for a labrador, I'm in no logical position to have a child. I work twelve hours a week in a shop, I owe the government in the region of £18,000 and I live with my parents. But, you know, I think it's cool that I contain a tiny little baby-making factory and just need one little cell from someone else to make it happen. I am down with that.
But I am more than just a potential incubator. If I did become one, accidentally, well... I'd cross that bidge when I came to it, but it would be unlikely I would allow the situation to continue. I am not just a baby factory, and I don't want to be told that I should make myself ready on the off-chance that something might happen. I am more than what I might pass on to the next theoretical generation.
Which is why, if I am having a bash at concieving, I will take folic acid. But until then, I will not consider myself an incubator in waiting.
You see, I had an aunt with spina bifida. She was my mother's younger sister, and died about six months before my own sister was born. It results in my mother's mad and slightly insane belief that sisters chould get on at all costs, excluding her own terrible relationship with her older sister. My grandad is still so upset about the whole thing that he rarely talks about Linda. I know very little about Linda's case, other than that she died at a relatively young age and required a great deal of care, although wasn't at the 'worst' end of the spectrum. I do know that she is the reson my mother is quite open about the fact she feels she couldn't have coped with a disabled child, as she spent a lot of her childhood years caring for her sister. This is especially poignant, therefore, that this horrible disease that robbed me of by all accounts a loving aunt (I don't remember her) can be partially prevented by folic acid.
(Michael Jackson let out a range of soft toys in the late 80s. I have a very large llama in a natty yellow suit that Linda got me just after I was born. I am still ridiculously fond of it. Doesn't have a name, though. I never named toys. But that's really my only link to her.)
And, you know, I am generally in favour of prevention being better than the cure, and I'm vaguely in favour of flouride in the water, certainly in favour of jabs and stuff.
The way this report is phrased, though, makes me rather uneasy. I am of childbearing age. I have been since just before I was thirteen, technically, but I am now in prime fertility and have maybe another ten years of it, and I may well be capable of having children for the next twenty, even twenty-five years with advance in technology. This is what it's like being a woman. One day I may want children. I certainly don't want them now. Quite apart from the fact that I am not emotionally ready and that I am annoyed with the rigours of caring for a labrador, I'm in no logical position to have a child. I work twelve hours a week in a shop, I owe the government in the region of £18,000 and I live with my parents. But, you know, I think it's cool that I contain a tiny little baby-making factory and just need one little cell from someone else to make it happen. I am down with that.
But I am more than just a potential incubator. If I did become one, accidentally, well... I'd cross that bidge when I came to it, but it would be unlikely I would allow the situation to continue. I am not just a baby factory, and I don't want to be told that I should make myself ready on the off-chance that something might happen. I am more than what I might pass on to the next theoretical generation.
Which is why, if I am having a bash at concieving, I will take folic acid. But until then, I will not consider myself an incubator in waiting.
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Date: 2009-09-11 09:56 pm (UTC)The article does worry me a little, because yes, I am capable of conceiving, and I think that if I became accidentally preganant, much as it would terrify me, I would see it through. So perhaps I am the kind of person they are aiming it at... but I'm not happy with the idea of, essentially, preparing myself for pregnancy for years and years and years when it's very unlikely in any case that I will become pregnant. I'm not even sure that makes sense. Um.
I think it's cool that I contain a tiny little baby-making factory and just need one little cell from someone else to make it happen. I am down with that. - when you stop to think about it, that really is quite cool. Have you seen this xkcd?