Back in August, I asked the moms of Dragon’s due date group if they had any super early warning signs that they were pregnant. I’m talking about before a missed period and before an hCG test would show a positive.
It seemed like an appropriate time to ask, as many of the moms were announcing second (or third) pregnancies.
I got an excellent response. Many of the moms had unusual early pregnancy symptoms, as the only symptom mentioned pre-week 4 in any of the research I did was mild cramping/spotting.
mild cramping and spotting can happen as early as 1 week after the last menstrual period (LMP)
Uncommon (according to my informal research done on the subject)
tired
ovaries hurt when sneezing or coughing
breasts hurt/get hard/sore
pimples
abdomen hard/cramping/pulling feeling
bloating
heartburn
nausea
couldn’t drink/taste coffee (taste sensitivities)
extreme lower back pain
tasting blood (copper taste in mouth)
vivid dreams
sensitive skin
sensitive to smells
there are tons more
Lots of these “uncommon” symptoms show up later in pregnancy-related research. So why is there only one symptom listed pre-week 4?
There are a couple reasons for this, one being that it is hard to study people who don’t know they’re pregnant yet. Another, in my opinion, is that every pregnancy is so different, even in the same family, so the results are varied that it’s hard to publish because there’s no consistency.
Or you could be like me, and have no symptoms at all until I see a positive on the pregnancy test. Does that mean my symptoms are psychosomatic? Perhaps. And that is pretty hard to prove.
Porn sites are no exception. You don’t even have to be logged into an account, and your selections, pauses, fast forwards, and screenshots are saved and put into a data mining engine.
If you do have an account, they use this data to give you better options that suit your tastes.
Fortunately for the privacy of its clients, the data collected is not sold to third parties, at least not from MindGeek, the primary company that owns most of the porn (and other sites) on the internet.
You can read more about how the data is collected and what they do with it here.
The other day, I was at my first physio appointment in a very long time, and the first for my hips. (Did you know that hips are two separate charges? Bah) I was SO not prepared.
They let me borrow a pair of shorts, and as I was sitting on the bench getting my upper thigh massaged, I looked down at my legs in the harsh lighting of the physio office and shrieked internally.
Now, I am not particularly vain. I am not offended (or any other negative word) if I or others choose not to shave. However, I was not expecting to see hair on myself, so I was rather shocked. I pushed it out of my mind until the next day, when I decided to do something about it.
And I thought I’d write a blog post about how I have to shave my legs. Because it’s funny and light, and why not?
I sit on the edge of the tub and use shaving cream, water, and a razor. This is relatively low stress, more thorough, and incidentally, how I shaved my legs on the morning I finally went into labour with Dragon.
The second way:
In the shower. I don’t use shaving cream. I prop my foot up on the edge of the tub under the shower spray and blindly (because I’m legally blind without my glasses on) feel with one hand while the other uses the razor. I use this way most often because it’s faster. However, it leads to missing patches. I can then catch these after I get out, and do a quick shave of those spots.
Or, you know, I can catch them at the next physio appointment.
You know, I was really looking forward to winter so I wouldn’t have to care about shaving. Oh well. At least it feels satiny on my bed sheets.
If you live in Ontario, the Ministry of Education’s online survey on education reform is available ONLY until December 15th!
Image from the completely random www.pae-eu.eu. I just liked the picture.
I mean, you can fill it out even if you don’t live in Ontario. But it asks for your postal code, so your answers might not be counted.
You also don’t have to be a parent of a school-aged child (or any child). But it does ask you how many you have and in what school. I’m hoping that they still count our answers, even if we don’t have a child in school.
In any case, please complete the registration (emails could take up to 48 hours to arrive in your inbox) and then complete the 15 minute survey. Everyone in Ontario is affected by this, whether you have children or not, because the children being taught right now will go out into the world and will interact with us.
Let’s make sure that they’re taught respect, consent, and open-mindedness.
Because let’s face it; not every parent is going to buy Blush and play it with their children. 😛
Right now, the Trump-Pence administration is trying to pass a proposal that would remove LGBTQIA2S+ people from federal civil rights protections and stop enforcement of the non-discrimination laws. Within this proposal, there is the definition of “sex” as biological traits only identified at birth “according to science”.
This is scary, people. If the US succeeds at passing this, not only are transgender people going to lose legal protections and ability to legally change even just their name, but anyone who identifies under LGBTQIA2S+ are no longer going to be protected.
And if the US succeeds, what’s going to stop conservative governments in other countries from trying to follow suit? I’m sure Trump-lite in Ontario would love to try the same thing.
Sex and gender are much more complex than what the US is trying to propose. I read an awesome Twitter thread about it the other day. But here is a much more detailed article. Although the world insists on defining sex as a binary, it’s much more like a spectrum than we realized. And by we, I include scientists, who are only recently using a non-binary approach to their studies.
So please, US, stop trying to fit everyone into a two-box binary that is decided by observation of their genitals at birth. Everyone is a human and deserve legal protections and rights.
Protest sign from a rally in Toronto July 19, 2018. Image from toronto.ctvnews.ca
Were you aware that Ontario has started their consultation of parents? I wasn’t. The first part (the open consultation) closes on December 15, 2018. Here is information from their website:
We’re consulting with parents across the province to address concerns and get feedback in several areas of the education system.
Feedback from these consultations will help shape decisions in the following areas:
Ensuring students graduate with important life skills, including financial literacy
Managing the use of technology in classrooms, such as cell phones
Building a new age-appropriate Health and Physical Education curriculum that includes subjects like mental health, sexual health education and the legalization of cannabis
The online survey will be “coming soon”. I’ll be sure to write another post about that when it happens.
The third part is the telephone town hall. Dates and registration details TBA.
As my daughter is not yet school-age, I’m worried that they won’t take my feedback seriously. I don’t like that they asked the question about the age of the child at all. The sex ed curriculum affects us all.
We’re relying on you, parents of school-age children. Help shape our future!
Ontario scrapped the Health curriculum. I’m sure you’ve heard about that. In the interim of coming up with a “better” version, they’ve reverted to the 1998 curriculum in Elementary schools, eliminating talk about consent, LGBTQIA2S+, cyberbullying, and more from the curriculum. Secondary school curriculum hasn’t changed as much, fortunately, but I’m still concerned about what they might change it to.
Fortunately, there are people who have the province’s children’s best interests at heart, and Nadine Thornhill, Ed.D, is one of those.
She is a sex educator, and while her website has workshops for parents and teachers, her YouTube channel has videos for free. #savesexed are her videos specifically for students in primary, intermediate, and secondary schools, although the rest of her videos are great as well.
#savesexed is Nadine Thornhill’s YouTube series geared towards students in the Ontario school board. Image from www.youtube.com.
Ontario’s government might be stuck in the past, but together, we can work together for our future.
Yes, we should have more published works by diverse authors. I am not arguing against that.
But I definitely feel that character diversity within a book will only improve it, if it is done properly.
One of my favourite book series growing up was The Bobbsey Twins. This was written in the early 1900’s, to give you context if you’re unfamiliar with the books. The main characters were two sets of twins that solved mysteries. They had servants, named Sam and Dinah, who spoke with an accent and were…well, what a white person thought a black person was like.
The books have been re-written since the original. I have both versions, and the differences aren’t really visible, at least where Sam and Dinah are concerned. A sensitivity editor would change how these characters are portrayed, fix the language chosen to describe the characters and how they speak, and remove the tropes and stereotypes.
The old saying of “write what you know” is limiting, and frankly, boring. If my husband, Eric Desmarais, only wrote what he knew, the three books that he has published wouldn’t have female protagonists. (They also wouldn’t be set in fantasy…)
Sensitivity editors let authors expand their worlds without misrepresentation. Take Cait Gordon, for example. By her own words, she is allo cis-het (allosexual, cis-gender, heterosexual), but she writes fantastic stories about aliens, who are as diverse as can be. My favourite characters of hers are two gay lizard-like aliens that are amazing, and will have their own story soon in The Stealth Lovers. You can bet that she had a sensitivity editor; Talia C Johnson.
So please, write about anything you want. But if it’s outside your personal experiences, get a sensitivity editor. They are worth their weight in gold.
The other day, as I was scrolling through Tumblr, I came across a question about squirting; whether it was a real thing and what it actually was.
The person said it was a real thing, gave a couple references with the disclaimer that they were all gender-insensitive, and said that when you squirt, it’s urine.
Which made me pause.
Because I was pretty sure that I remembered my University professor talking about squirting, and saying that it was NOT urine.
So I figured, if I’m going to research this anyways, I might as well write a post about it.
First of all, I have got to agree with that Tumblr user: gendered language is rampant when you try to find resources on this topic. So please, be warned if you click the links in the blog post.
Secondly, WOW was it hard to find references from good sources! Because squirting is considered a “fad” right now, there are a lot of magazines and random reddit pages dedicated to it. None of these have actual sources, just personal experiences.
Not to discount personal experience. That is super important. It tells us that squirting is a thing that happens, to more people than “a few”. It is normal and nothing to be ashamed of.
However, unless those people have a degree in Biochemistry or at the very least, know how to test the contents of the fluid that is emitted, those personal experiences do not tell us anything about what the fluid is composed of.
The first place I looked was on Dr Lindsey Doe’s Sexplanations channel. She had done a video on squirting, and that was helpful in a way. Taking a look at the transcript, here is the key moment:
I hear about the Skene’s Gland, that there’s an identified organ from which the fluid exits the body. It’s considered a para-urethral tissue, meaning it’s around the urethra, which is why fluid content is two percent urine: proximity. Ejaculation is also comprised of – oh we don’t know exactly – why is that.
Great! I feel a surge (pun intended) of validation. However, she doesn’t include her sources in the video.
So I dove back into the research pool.
The first article I found was…not very helpful. It essentially said that the ejaculate was urine.
Okay…
I clicked on the link within that article, and it is to Wiley Online Library, a textbook resource. Great, I think. This will be a valid source.
This particular source is a study done with ultrasounds before, during, and after sexual stimulation. It showed that the bladder was empty before, filled during, and was empty after the emission.
I’m starting to doubt my memory of the professor’s lecture.
I change tactics. I now research the Skene’s gland. Hopefully that won’t draw in the articles that are all about the “fad” of squirting.
I get a definition, firstly. (Modified to eliminate gendered language)
The Skene’s (paraurethral) gland is the histologic homologue to the […] prostate. […] This gland is formed by tubuloalveolar adenomers surrounded by connective tissue and smooth muscle fibers.
Okay. That doesn’t help with much, other than it exists.
Next I read a really interesting study that explains how the Skene’s gland morphs – the more you use it, the easier it is to use it and the more openings there are, essentially.
Great. But that doesn’t explain why that study found the the bladder appeared to be full when they did a pelvic ultrasound.
So I decided that I wanted to see a picture of the Skene’s gland. Where was it EXACTLY? And more importantly, could it swell with fluid to make it seem like the bladder was full?
Do you know how many diagrams of the genital system don’t even bother to label the Skene’s gland?
A lot.
I found a couple that were properly labelled. Click for images of the vulva and interior shots.
The Skene’s gland is found around the urethra, between it and the vaginal wall. Colloquially, you might know it as the G-Spot.
So now I know exactly where it is. But I still have no idea if it can swell with fluid or if it mimic a full bladder. And I’m out of resources.
Unfortunately, not a lot of research has been done on this, as it has only recently been discovered. I can tell you a couple things, though:
With the proximity of the Skene’s gland openings to the urethra, leftover urine would most definitely be in any samples collected from the Skene’s emissions.
The fluid emitted from the Skene’s gland contains PSA – prostate-specific antigen – the same biochemical component found in prostates.
Not all people with vulvas have this gland, and even if they do, they might not have many openings for the emissions.
More research is desperately needed for this. The lack of valid sources on this topic was discouraging.
So I’m going to have to leave this topic here. I can’t say with absolute certainty why that study showed a full bladder with a pelvic ultrasound, but I have a hypothesis that it was the Skene’s gland masquerading as a bladder. Anyone want to prove me wrong?
