Heavy cycling and trying to get pregnant

[Duck on Wheels]

Well! What was her first clue? Or, I guess, what was her SECOND clue?!

Yup, I am a midwife. I talk to a couple of women a year who thought "it" was something else--flu, whatever. Even the baby's movements and increasing belly size aren't always perceived as "pregnancy".

I've lost count. Third clue maybe? Fourth? Fifth? (no periods, slow pace, weight gain, back pain, tender breasts ...) I think her sports doc suggested taking a test, but I don't really remember. This was years ago, decades.

BTW, regarding the midwife/nurse title thread ... In Norway all hospital birth clinics are staffed with midwives. Doctors come through on rounds or when a midwife calls them, but they are secondary. Most birthing women deal pretty much only with the midwives. All municipalities are also required to have a midwife service for prenatal care, and some also have private midwife practitioners who offer home birthing. In the Netherlands, midwife-attended home births are standard, unless the midwife triages you to a hospital. And our few male midwives have chosen to keep the title as it is, because of the established honor of it.

Also in Norway, the majority of doctors graduating from med schools is now women, although the majority in the profession as a whole is still men, who are also the "seniority", logically. But the public image lags behind. I'm not a medical anything, just a humble sociologist who studies how they work, but when I'm doing field work in a health setting EVERYBODY -- including doctors, nurses, patients, administrators, etc. of both genders -- asks if I'm a nurse. The answer is no, I'm a doctor -- of sociology.

Do all of us TE women think we're beyond all this cultural baggage? Or are we part and parcel of the cultures around us? Try taking an online test of your prejudices. There are tests on racial prejudice (whom do you associate more with weapons, "black" faces or "white" faces?), sexual orientation prejudice (do you associate positive terms more easily with hetero images than with homo images?), and gender prejudice (do you associate men more than women with science terms?). Results can surprise you as your body responses may not correspond to what you intellectually believe. I forget the URL, but I'll look it up and edit it in here later.