.authored by Something.of.Substance.
“No Child Left Behind” is resulting in many, many young adults remaining stranded on the side of the knowledge road. Cutesy analogies aside, the number of young adults- both male and female- who have no idea how reproduction works or what the true efficacy of condoms is amazes and appalls me. I simply cannot imagine how people are granted a high school diploma without understanding that condoms prevent STDs as well as pregnancy (and even then not all of the time) or that menstruation occurs when an egg fails to be fertilized.
Actually, when making this discovery I often even need to define “menstruation”.
As I’m telling some lost 20 year-old that her Period is the shedding of her uterine lining and having her stare blankly at me before stammering out: “But, WHY would my uterus want to leave me?”, I realize that Abstinence-Only education is failing to teach anyone either abstinence OR a safe way of life.
I’d like to fill in the gaps. I was going to make my first entry about the mechanism of birth control in a female body. However, to explain how birth control acts on the ovaries, I learned (after a test run) that I would first have to introduce what an ovary was. So, ladies and gentleman, meet the Female Reproductive Cycle.
Let’s examine this diagram for a moment. Before you have a flashback to 8th grade, flop your head down on a desk and begin to drool, give me a minute to make it interesting. And, really, you should be VERY interested: this is the information that could save your life or make a life.
“A” is pointing to an ovary. There are typically two and they are only in girls. Ovaries, at the time girls are born, contain all the eggs they will ever make. Ever. And, they are just holding on to them until girls reach maturity. The ovary is something of an incubator for unfertilized eggs; it’s the crockpot of the reproductive organs.
Once girls mature, an unfertilized egg “#1″ pops out of one of the ovaries once a month and begins its journey to meet some sperm. As the egg is sucked up into the tube next to the ovary (called the Fallopian tube), it tumbles along (#2-#9) towards the uterus “B”.
The uterus is like both an oven and a nanny. If the egg is fertilized, the egg implants in the uterine wall (#10) and the uterus feeds it and nourishes it as it grows into a baby. Of course, this is an oversimplified view as the baby embryo also subsists on an umbilical cord which provides nutrion directly from the mother- but that’s another kind story.
If the uterus isn’t being an oven, it’s being a nanny. Every month when the ovary kicks the egg out into the fallopian tube, the uterus prepares for a baby- whether the egg gets fertilized or not.
SIDEBAR: Let me take a moment to just explain, however, that when I say the egg is “fertilized” I mean that the egg has met its sperm, the sperm has moved in and they are living happily ever after implanted in the uterus as a new family. Fertilized eggs become baby embryos. If your egg is fertilized, you are pregnant.
So, every month, the uterus hustles and bustles and gets itself ready for that baby! But, if your egg remains single, the uterus doesn’t need to keep it. So, by the end of the monthly cycle, the uterus detaches its lining( “C”) and the old uterine baby bedding and the unused egg are discarded. The old uterine lining and unfertilized egg are what you refer to as your “Period”.
This happens once a month because after the eggs leave the Crockpot ovary, they can only last so long before going bad. If they don’t meet the sperm of their dreams by the end of the cycle, the ovary prepares a new egg and starts all over again.
Ok. That was intense. But, now that we know why exactly eggs are tumbling about and your uterus keeps regenerating like a lizard tail, we can talk about more advanced and interesting subject matter such as when egg and sperm have a one-night stand.
It's not an alien, it's your Uterus.
