Harder than childbirth? Sure! Comparable? Nope

Warning: this is a scienceless, opinionated post.  I recently described childbearing as an adventure so singular that going on a research mission to Antarctica, while a good adventure for a man, doesn't hold a candle to pregnancy and birth.  A reader respectfully contributed the following feedback: "It can be the most difficult thing you do, physically. But there are physically harder things and physically more painful things too. You don't have to be a female to experience them."

A parallel experience to childbirth? Uh, if you loved it.

I agree -- there are definitely experiences both more physically challenging and more painful that remain available to the roughly 65% of humans who can't or don't want to give birth to a baby [please let me know if you can find facts on that percentage; I can't].  Getting driven through the bush in Ghana by a crazy man with a machete, that was scarier.  Sitting on bags of what felt like cement in the exposed back of a cargo truck with no shade for two days traveling to Tomboctou on rutted sandy roads, that approximated the discomfort of the last two or three weeks of pregnancy.  I've never climbed Everest or sawed my arm off in a canyon with a pocketknife but I suspect those stack up rather well to squeezing an infant out your hoohaa.

My point is not that women win the hard/painful contest, and it certainly is not that we should be pitied for our sacrifice -- that's the perspective of the Belly Laughs book that pisses me off so much.  We don't deserve to be pitied: we do deserve to be envied.

Let's entirely disregard all fodder for martyrdom, all suffering and exertion inherent in the process of pregnancy and birth.  While other experiences may be more challenging, the experience of creating and sustaining something alive inside you is weird, trippy, disconcerting -- and heady, hypnotic, absolutely mystic when you feel movement begin, when you sense excitement in response to Daddy's voice (or Natural Language Processing as with Amelie).  Sparking life inside you and becoming a conduit of consciousness is enviable because it's empowering, exhilarating, and really, really strange -- plus once the baby's out it's deeply gratifying to amplify your influence in the world.

Please do pardon my unscientific digressions.  As with being a graduate student, being a mother doesn't get the positive press it deserves (they're both a lot more fun than they seem).  We'll be back to opinionless facts next post I promise.  For now, happy parenting.  Be proud.