Ovulation Quotes

With our beloved prairie voles the female has her ovulation induced by the smell of male urine. It’s a sure sign there’s a male nearby and so her body gets ready for mating. The exact opposite of a human female getting a whiff of urinals in a nightclub and her vagina falling off in disgust

You see I've been taking these tests to tell when I'm ovulating and when I'm mostfertile. And well...it's now." "Oh, so you came up here for a fuck?" Emma cringed. "Do you always have to be so crude?" He chuckled. "I'm sorry. Would you prefer I call it an afternoon delight?" he teased.

His cologne was practically hijacking my ovulation cycle and I had to fight the urge to let my face collapse onto his shirt and inhale.

I'm fairly sure I ovulate right then and there.

His presence made the air crackle with electricity, mostly because of all the spontaneous ovulating going on when he walked in.

OH!” KATE GRUNTED as she sat down behind her desk. “My side is killing me. I’m ovulating, I think. That sucker must be huge.” “Must we discuss?” Jon asked. “Man up, weenie boy,” Kate said. “You man up, Venus Williams,” Jon replied. “I’m a gay home-ec teacher. I never have to man up. I never will man up. As God is my witness, I’ll never man up again.

knock, knock. who's there? it's cancer. cancer who? cancer of the section right behind your belly button that you have been trying to pass off as the pinch of ovulation. but it's not. it's cancer. it's me.

Why is it so sexy when hot guys stare each other down like that? Why do I feel like licking the air? Am I ovulating?

We treat ejaculation as something that happens at random, that is unintentional, that is impossible to anticipate or predict. And we treat ovulation like it can be pinpointed well in advance and easily predicted. Somehow, we’ve confused the two.

The shape of women’s faces changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation.

Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.

Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound “animalistic”? It shouldn’t. The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more “human” than animal.

The daddy-at-home theory posits that concealed ovulation evolved to promote monogamy, to force the man to stay home, and thus to bolster his certainty about his paternity of his wife's children. The many-fathers theory instead posits that concealed ovulation evolved to give the women access to many sex partners and thus to leave many men uncertain as to whether they sired her children.

There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak. She hasn’t met a person like this in a long time, not since she met her husband, which was why it was so painful when she started to forget how to speak to her husband. When she looked at him, she was too often reminded of what not to say, what never to mention, like ovulation, or depression, or anything that might carry a hint of sadness. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t tell him that Harry died. She didn’t want to give him any more proof of her unlovability, of her failure. Perhaps that’s why she just put a blanket over Harry and ran away, too.

I was ovulated, fertilized, and born in the 20th century. I can’t wipe out my whole personal background, or the fact that almost everyone I talk to today is brain-damaged by our education. I think American education makes us hopeless symbol addicts. It’s designed to produce docile automatons. But it’s going to take years before you can urge young people to drop out of school without appearing to be an eccentric or a mad-man.

Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better. Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing. Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever. Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions. Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them. Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides. Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not. Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to. Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced. Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real. There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body. I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body. And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap. You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real. Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me

Why else evolve the fusiform? The shape of women’s faces changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation.

Maybe I’m ovulating today? Because I want him. Like... I totally, illogically, inappropriately want that asshole, Kellan Walsh,

Men will never ovulate, gestate, lactate, menstruate, or go through menopause. Women who identify as men might, but that thing is different.

As for female mink, if they do not experience physical trauma at the male's hands, they do not ovulate.

She had tricked Stephen by poking holes in his condom while she was ovulating, unbeknownst to him.

When women buy a box of plastic ovulation-predictor sticks, they are purchasing fertility-detection technology that a stallion’s nostrils can provide for free.

What does this research tell us? It tells us that fiscally concerned strippers should eschew contraception and double up their shifts just before ovulation.

The only thing mothers have in common with each other is the fact that they slept with a man while they were ovulating without the appropriate protection

Dancers who were on the birth control pill—which essentially eliminates estrus—made about $193 per shift, also far less than ovulating women.

when women are ovulating, their fusiform face areas respond more to faces, with the (“emotional”) vmPFCs responding more to men’s faces in particular.

I’ve been tracking your cycles. You should be ovulating.

Dreams may be conceived as the ovulation of fate when they hold the possibility of becoming more than a concept or idea.

Unlike her closest primate cousins, the standard human female doesn’t come equipped with private parts that swell up to double their normal size and turn bright red when she is about to ovulate. In

And if the best you can do is quote the Bible in defence of your prejudice, then have the humility to be consistent. The same book that exhorts against the abomination of one man lying with another also contains exhortations against the eating of pork and shell-fish and against menstruating women daring to come near holy places. It’s no good functionalistically claiming that kosher diet had its local, meteorological purposes now defunct, or that the prejudice against ovulation can be dispensed with as superstition, the Bible that you bash us with tells you that much of what you do is unclean: don’t pick and choose with a Revealed Text — or if you do, pick and choose the good bits, the bits that say things like ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, or ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.

How thoroughly the chimps and bonobos have erased the list of purported human distinctions!-self-awareness, language, ideas and their association, reason, trade, play, choice, courage, love and altruism, laughter, concealed ovulation, kissing, face-to-face sex, female orgasm, division of labor, cannibalism, art, music, politics, and featherless bipedalism, besides tool using, tool making, and much else. Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the apes casually knock them down--toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings of Earth. Instead, we are more like the nouveau riche, incompletely accommodated to our recent exalted state, insecure about who we are, and trying to put as much distance as possible between us and our humble origins. It's as if our nearest relatives, by their very existence, refute all our explanations and justifications. So as counterweights to human arrogance and pride, it is good for us that there are still apes on Earth.

I wanted to give him a laundry list of the symptoms I’d felt in my body that day: a cramp in my right side, tender breasts, and high irritability. I might be ovulating right this moment, and I didn’t have time for an argument. We didn’t.

And when he smiled and those dimples appeared? It triggered ovulation. You couldn’t convince me otherwise. Not after the way I stood there staring at him while my ovaries donned their warpaint and started metaphorically chucking eggs at the man.

All women are twins. All women are fundamentally two in one, our most essential structural feature being our bipolar nature entrained with the ceaseless rhythms of the 'inconstant Moon,' to quote Shakespeare's Juliet. Each one of us, for much of her adult life, moves monthly between the light and dark poles of hormonal and emotional fluctuation-from ovulation to menstruation. At one point expanded, then introverted; reaching out and going within; we descend to depths of unfathomable complexity and return to the world empowered and ready to begin again. Unlike the linear, one-pointed man, women (and the ancient religions of the Goddess) flow with the cyclic rhythms of the waxing and waning Moon, with its birth, death, and rebirth.

A woman’s preovulatory waking temps typically range from about 97.0 to 97.7 degrees Fahrenheit, with postovulatory temps rising to about 97.8 and higher. After ovulation, they will usually stay elevated until her next period, about 12 to 16 days later.

We’ve been sitting on a little news. We’re having a baby.” “Well, damn!” Paul said. He looked at Preacher and grinned. “You finally came through on ovulation day, huh, buddy?” He puffed up a little. “I did at that,” he said, throwing his chest out. “And

Or maybe he wasn’t grinning and winking at all, and it was just a facial tic brought on by having a slightly chubby man practically ovulating right in front of him. Take my fictitious eggs! I wanted to bellow at him. I will carry all your babies to full term!

Uncle Pete made it clear: to have a girl baby, a couple should “have sexual congress twenty-four hours prior to ovulation.” That way, the swift male sperm would rush in and die off. The female sperm, sluggish but more reliable, would arrive just as the egg dropped.

I’d known friends who went through this, the grim tracking of the ovulation cycle, the way making love becomes insemination, as romantic as a turkey baster. One of my college friends, in fact, had said she preferred the turkey baster. “I don’t have to pretend that way,

So, based on that, we’d say you’re seven weeks one day along.” I mentally pull up my calendar app in my head. “I’ve kept accurate records. I should be just shy of seven weeks.” “Our measurements might be off, but it’s also likely that you ovulated earlier than you thought you did.” I look at Chase. “The patrol car.” “Seriously?” He lowers his voice though the room is small enough the tech can probably hear him anyway. “Neighborhood Hot Cop knocked you up?” I giggle again at the name of the game we’d played that night. “Yep. Neighborhood Hot Cop knocked me up.

As one fertility doctor I spoke with said, “Tracking signs of fertility is really good if you’re trying to get pregnant, but because ovulation can skip or delay without giving you external signs to track, it’s not good at preventing pregnancy and is ABSOLUTELY not recommended to be used as birth control.

Female-female aggression (starving, abusing) causes spontaneous abortions. Hrdy notes that dominant, higher-ranking female primates overtly harass subordinate females. Such behaviors are “implicated in delays in maturation, inhibition of ovulation, or in extreme cases, spontaneous abortion by subordinates.

Doing some mental maths, Kat realised she wasn’t even ovulating, the time of month when hormones and instinct reminded her that she was at the end of a very long, evolutionary line of successful couplings on the savannah. At that time, even newsreaders could suddenly morph into enticing reproductive candidates.

Breastfeeding suppresses periods because it stimulates your pituitary gland to make a hormone called prolactin, which prevents ovulation. Your prolactin should drop within three months after you stop breastfeeding, but it can sometimes stay high. Prolactin can also be mildly elevated from thyroid disease and stress.

I found considerably more studies about women’s scent preferences than men’s. I don’t know if that’s because male scientists are particularly curious about What Women Want. Among studies on men, there’s the now-famous bit about men tipping strippers more if they’re ovulating—they do, the effects are reproducible, and they go away if the woman is on birth control—but that may or may not be scent related. (It’s hard to say what you’re smelling, exactly, in a strip club.) Men also prefer the smelly T-shirts of ovulating women, don’t like the pit smells of menstruating women and women who are less immuno-compatible as much, and almost universally dislike the smell of a woman’s tears, regardless of her reproductive status.

So it's important to know where you are in your cycle?" "What?" She had no idea what the man was asking. "The poltergeist!" Xander stated, then seeing her confusion carried on. "Are you ovulating?" As the plane levelled out and the engine noise dropped abruptly stunned silence blanketed the jet, until Nate's voice sounded from the back of the plane. "Dude, one head injury wasn't enough for you this week?

The mannequins are not fitted with full simulation mechanics, so you will have to imagine the next part. Apparently it is a necessary procedure in proper courtship ritual. The man will kiss her ear, lick it, and promise his everlasting love. Traditionally, this causes the woman to go into heat.” He looked sternly at the boy. “Do you understand this so far?” Gilbertus nodded. Somewhat to Erasmus’s consternation, the boy displayed a detached curiosity with no uneasiness whatsoever, and no apparent urges of his own. “Next, the man will kiss her on the mouth. At this point both will begin to salivate heavily,” Erasmus said in a professorial tone. “Salivation is a key element in procreation. Apparently kissing serves to make the female more fertile.” The boy nodded, and half smiled. Erasmus took this to mean that he understood. Good! The robot began to rub the faces of the mannequins together, briskly. “Now this is very important,” Erasmus said. “Salivation and ovulation. Remember those two concepts and you will have a basic grasp of the human reproductive process. After the kissing, intercourse begins immediately.” He began to speak more rapidly. “That is all you need to know about human copulation. Do you have any questions, Gilbertus?

Don't you know This is precisely what I seek, mad myself To envelope every last drupe and pearl shaped ovule, Every nip and cry and needle-fine boring, every drooping, Spore-rich tassle of oak flower, all the whistling, Wing-beating, heavy-tipped matings of an entire prairie Of grasses, every wafted, moaning seed hook You can possibly manage to bring to me, That is exactly what I contrive to take you into my arms With you, again and again.

Even on the road, we continued our efforts to conceive. Part of our boy-baby effort was the need to try right at the time of ovulation. I packed an ovulation kit with me everywhere. When the strip turned blue, it meant we had a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window to get busy. At first I had Steve convinced that women ovulated twenty or thirty times a month. But I couldn’t trick him forever. At some point he realized that that was impossible.

The study also spoke directly about what this means when women use apps to try and track fertility: Apps to track fertility are increasingly being used among women who are seeking to conceive, and many purport to predict ovulation based on cycle length characteristics alone, which can have extremely low predictive accuracy. These apps also assume each woman’s fertile window is the same length, disregarding evidence that the length of the fertile window differs among women.

The story was however told that when Hephaestus was instructed to create Pandora, he had misunderstood Zeus` intentions.Pandora should have been given wings so that the abilities of men could at least equal those of the beasts.But instead, Hephaestus gave women the burdens of ovulation,pregnancy,catamenia,birth pangs & of suckling their offspring, the abilities that enabled the beasts to reproduce themselves:burdens from which Goddesses & Nymphs were spared & happy to be without.

Many things can impair ovulation and promote excess androgens. They include: Thyroid disease, because hypothyroidism impedes ovulation and worsens insulin resistance. [212] Vitamin D deficiency, because your ovaries need vitamin D. Zinc deficiency, because your ovaries need zinc. Iodine deficiency, because your ovaries need iodine. Elevated prolactin, because it increases DHEA. Too little food or too few carbs, because you need carbs to ovulate. If you’re undereating, then you’ve slipped into HA.

A woman’s mate value even varies over the monthly ovulation cycle. Subtle changes in women’s attractiveness reflect the ovulatory phase. Their skin glows a bit more, their waist-to-hip ratio becomes slightly lower, and their voices rise a bit, all qualities found to enhance perceptions of female beauty. The fact that women become more exacting in their mate preferences at precisely this time in their cycle might reflect an adaptation to monitor their own mate value and adjust their standards accordingly.

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, hereafter shortened to the standard narrative. It goes something like this: 1. Boy Meets girl, 2. Boy and girl assess one and others mate value, from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities. He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources. She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children, known as "male parental investment". 3. Boy gets girl. Assuming they meet one and others criteria, they mate, forming a long term pair bond, "the fundamental condition of the human species" as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed, she will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving, vigilant towards signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection while keeping an eye out (around ovulation especially) for a quick fling with a man genetically superior to her husband. He will be sensitive to signs of her sexual infidelities which would reduce his all important paternity certainty while taking advantage of short term sexual opportunities with other women as his sperm are easily produced and plentiful. Researchers claim to have confirmed these basic patterns in studies conducted around the world over several decades. Their results seem to support the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, which appears to make a lot of sense, but they don't, and it doesn't.

EFFERVESCE AND OBSESSION   Under the influence of this sensational climax I am reminded of the inundated calm before the storm as I find my mind to see through those same eyes that I have before. The curving slippage of her dynamic vehemence hums over me in a refreshing fixation that imbues this inseparable bond of the eternities. Her single touch sends shock waves down my entire vessel sending our bodies into a confluence of luscious allure. Her hips begin weaving in and out gently oscillating against me in a balmy nubile urge of effervesce and obsession. Again I occlude her recumbent orifice with the soft clasp of my wet lips, satiating my guest with an all-stimulating and interplanetary escape. In a largo samba-like motion I simultaneously absorb and alleviate the tension lingering beneath her plum fuselage as an overflowing ovulation of seismic and fulminating convulsage travels through the apex of her feminous core, following the crevice between her legs like the gentle waters that flow through the shaded gorge. As she levitates into a liberating reflex of celestial zest her panting grip begins to measure the odometer of our obsession.

Moreover, puberty is not just about the onslaught of gonadal hormones. It’s about how they come online.9 The defining feature of ovarian endocrine function is the cyclicity of hormone release—“It’s that time of the month.” In adolescent females puberty does not arrive full flower, so to speak, with one’s first period. Instead, for the first few years only about half of cycles actually involve ovulation and surges of estrogen and progesterone. Thus, not only are young adolescents experiencing these first ovulatory cycles, but there are also higher-order fluctuations in whether the ovulatory fluctuation occurs. Meanwhile, while adolescent males don’t have equivalent hormonal gyrations, it can’t help that their frontal cortex keeps getting hypoxic from the priapic blood flow to the crotch.

When I open my wallet to show my papers pay money or check the time of a train I look at your face. The flower's pollen is older than the mountains Aravis is young as mountains go. The flower's ovules will be seeding still when Aravis then aged is no more than a hill. The flower in the heart's wallet, the force of what lives us outliving the mountain. And our faces, my heart, brief as photos.

Years ago, when she'd studied the constructions of stem, blade, stamen, ovule, she loved the infinite possibilities of the plant kingdom- but she had been interested in color, scent, presentation: the beautiful names- cloth-of-gold crocus; ash-leaved trumpet, star-of-Bethlehem; meadow saffron- the loveliness of a blown field of asters or irises, a ring of roses to bed a wedding cake, the careful depiction of a peony in cross section on the page, a gentian constructed in icing. She knew all about beauty and almost nothing of utility.

Imbolc celebration may be understood to be a Moment for dedication to Original relationship with Place of Being, this Universe/Cosmos, one’s original nature, the pre-informed, the wild: one’s Gaian indigeneity. We – as a species and as individuals - are in fact, in “the belly of the Mother,” always have been, and always as new beings, and even yet to understand ourselves. Each particular being is a seamless continuation and expression of the Original Ovulation. At Imbolc/Early Spring, the continued birthing – the rushing away from Origins, the continued rippling forth of Creation - may be celebrated with the understanding of the difficulties, the resistances that even Gaia-Universe has encountered, and how this has served the unfolding of the story as we know it. Imbolc may celebrate Gaia’s rush to diversity, differentiation; we commit ourselves to this, beginning with ourselves. The ceremonial process of “purification and strengthening” may be understood as a feeling for where it is in us that the Universe is acting now – where each one feels the excitement of Creativity calling to them in their lives.

While there was still water in the middle of the pools, animals attempted to reach it through the silt but would get bogged. We spent day after day checking dams, finding about eight to ten animals hopelessly mired in the silt at each and every dam, primarily kangaroos and wallabies. We had to get to the dams early in the morning. Some of the kangaroos had been struggling all night. Steve engineered planks and straps to rescue the animals. The silt would suck us down just as fast, so we had to be careful going out to rescue the roos. Because of the lactic acid buildup in their tissues (a product of their all-night exertions to free themselves), some of the kangaroos were too far gone and couldn’t recover. But we saved quite a few. At one point, Bob came out to lend a hand. I was at the homestead, and the ovulation strip turned bright blue. I hustled over to the creek bed where Steve and his dad were working. I motioned to Steve. “The strip is blue,” I said. He looked around nervously. “I’m out here working with me dad,” he said. “What do you want me to do?” “Just come on,” I whispered impatiently. “But my dad’s right here!” I smiled and took his hand. We headed up the dry creek bed and spent some quality time with the biting ants and the prickles. It was after this trip to our conservation property in the Brigalow Belt that I discovered I was pregnant. I tried to let Steve know by sitting down at the table and tucking into a bowl of ice cream and pickles. “What are you doing?” asked a totally confused Steve. I explained, and we were both totally overjoyed, keeping our fingers crossed for a boy to go along with our darling daughter.

Once people believed her careful documentation, there was an easy answer—since babies are cute and inhibit aggression, something pathological must be happening. Maybe the Abu langur population density was too high and everyone was starving, or male aggression was overflowing, or infanticidal males were zombies. Something certifiably abnormal. Hrdy eliminated these explanations and showed a telling pattern to the infanticide. Female langurs live in groups with a single resident breeding male. Elsewhere are all-male groups that intermittently drive out the resident male; after infighting, one male then drives out the rest. Here’s his new domain, consisting of females with the babies of the previous male. And crucially, the average tenure of a breeding male (about twenty-seven months) is shorter than the average interbirth interval. No females are ovulating, because they’re nursing infants; thus this new stud will be booted out himself before any females wean their kids and resume ovulating. All for nothing, none of his genes passed on. What, logically, should he do? Kill the infants. This decreases the reproductive success of the previous male and, thanks to the females ceasing to nurse, they start ovulating. That’s the male perspective. What about the females? They’re also into maximizing copies of genes passed on. They fight the new male, protecting their infants. Females have also evolved the strategy of going into “pseudoestrus”—falsely appearing to be in heat. They mate with the male. And since males know squat about female langur biology, they fall for it—“Hey, I mated with her this morning and now she’s got an infant; I am one major stud.” They’ll often cease their infanticidal attacks. Despite initial skepticism, competitive infanticide has been documented in similar circumstances in 119 species, including lions, hippos, and chimps. A variant occurs in hamsters; because males are nomadic, any infant a male encounters is unlikely to be his, and thus he attempts to kill it (remember that rule about never putting a pet male hamster in a cage with babies?). Another version occurs among wild horses and gelada baboons; a new male harasses pregnant females into miscarrying. Or suppose you’re a pregnant mouse and a new, infanticidal male has arrived. Once you give birth, your infants will be killed, wasting all the energy of pregnancy. Logical response? Cut your losses with the “Bruce effect,” where pregnant females miscarry if they smell a new male. Thus competitive infanticide occurs in numerous species (including among female chimps, who sometimes kill infants of unrelated females). None of this makes sense outside of gene-based individual selection. Individual selection is shown with heartbreaking clarity by mountain gorillas, my favorite primate. They’re highly endangered, hanging on in pockets of high-altitude rain forest on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are only about a thousand gorillas left, because of habitat degradation, disease caught from nearby humans, poaching, and spasms of warfare rolling across those borders. And also because mountain gorillas practice competitive infanticide. Logical for an individual intent on maximizing the copies of his genes in the next generation, but simultaneously pushing these wondrous animals toward extinction. This isn’t behaving for the good of the species.

When an ovulating woman offers herself to you, she's the choicest morsel on the planet. Her nipples are already sharp, her labia already swollen, her spine already undulating. Her skin is damp and she pants. If you touch the center of her forehead with your thumb she isn't thinking about her head—she isn't thinking at all, she's imagining, believing, willing your hand to lift and turn and curve, cup the back of her head. She's living in a reality where the hand will have no choice but to slide down that soft, flexing muscle valley of the spine to the flare of strong hips, where the other hand joins the first to hold both hip bones, immobilize them against the side of the counter, so that you can touch the base of her throat gently with your lips and she will whimper and writhe and let the muscles in her legs go, but she won't fall, because you have her. She'll be feeling this as though it's already happening, knowing absolutely that it will, because every cell is alive and crying out, Fill me, love me, cherish me, be tender, but, oh God, be sure. She wants you to want her. And when her pupils expand like that, as though you have dropped black ink into a saucer of cool blue water, and her head tips just a little, as though she's gone blind or has had a terrible shock or maybe just too much to drink, to her she is crying in a great voice, Fuck me, right here, right now against the kitchen counter, because I want you wrist-deep inside me. I hunger, I burn, I need. It doesn't matter if you are tired, or unsure, if your stomach is hard with dread at not being forgiven. If you allow yourself one moment's distraction—a microsecond's break in eye contact, a slight shift in weight—she knows, and that knowledge is a punch in the gut. She will back up a step and search your face, and she'll feel embarrassed—a fool or a whore—at offering so blatantly what you're not interested in, and her fine sense of being queen of the world will shiver and break like a glass shield hit by a mace, and fall around her in dust. Oh, it will still sparkle, because sex is magic, but she will be standing there naked, and you will be a monster, and the next time she feels her womb quiver and clench she'll hesitate, which will confuse you, even on a day when there is no dread, no uncertainty, and that singing sureness between you will dissolve and very slowly begin to sicken and die. The body knows. I listened to the deep message—but carefully, because at some point the deep message also must be a conscious message. Active, not just passive, agreement. I took her hand and guided the wok back down to the gas burner. Yes, her body still said, yes. I turned off the gas, but slowly, and now she reached for me.

It started with population. Not having a fixed breeding season was among the reasons why mankind achieved dominance; it kept our numbers topped up at an explosive rate. Past certain stage restrictive process set in: male libido is reduced or diverted into nonfertile channels, female ovulation is irregularized and sometimes fails completely. But long before we reach that point we find the company of our fellow creatures so unbearable we resort to war, or a tribal match. Kill one another or ourselves. ​

I HATE your family!” The audience started laughing. “I HATE your daddy for thinking she looked good that night! I HATE your momma for knowing what he likes. I HATE your daddy for blowing his top. I HATE your momma for ovulating that month. I HATE that the timing of their love was so perfect that night that nine months later you were born into this world. I HATE your father for not sticking it out, and being the first man to break your heart and dooming the rest of his kind. I HATE your momma for not teaching you what a GOOD man looks like. How to LOVE him, how to KEEP him, HOW TO BE FAITHFUL! I HATE your family! I have to HATE them because its hard to HATE you! I LOVED you and wanted our love to last forever and ever. But who could succeed when the odds were stacked so high against us. They say young love never last, but I didn’t want to believe that! I knew we would last, I knew we would soar! Shot down in our prime our love is now a statistic. I gotta blame someone and I know it wasn’t me. So I blame your family!

Now now, boys. All in all, it was a pretty successful date night,' Maggie says, slipping into Jackson's arms. 'Thanks for not getting hauled off to jail, babe. I think I'm ovulating.

At one point, Bob came out to lend a hand. I was at the homestead, and the ovulation strip turned bright blue. I hustled over to the creek bed where Steve and his dad were working. I motioned to Steve. “The strip is blue,” I said. He looked around nervously. “I’m out here working with me dad,” he said. “What do you want me to do?” “Just come on,” I whispered impatiently. “But my dad’s right here!” I smiled and took his hand. We headed up the dry creek bed and spent some quality time with the biting ants and the prickles.

she will be best of both you and me. she will have your strength, your thirst of knowledge your love of sports your giving nature your loving heart your tenderness your ability to dream your creativity your values and mine too She will be the best of both you and me Tireless cycles of ovulation tracking month after month the yogas and the chinese herbs the quigong and the accupuncture the IUIs and the IVFs the hormones and the bloating the mood swing and the heart break when I see the read dot of my period she would have had the best of both you and me the baby we never had ​But I know in my heart She would have had the best of both you and me​

Continuous sexual receptivity and concealed ovulation gave our female ancestors an unprecedented opportunity for testing males as sexual partners, while running a lower risk per copulation of unwanted pregnancy than any other primate did. Sex during menstruation, pregnancy, and breast-feeding would also have given ample opportunity for judging potential long-term lovers by their copulatory skills.

So think about eating plenty of red foods to support healthy Akkermansia (sorry girls, I’m not talking about red wine here): cherries, raspberries, strawberries, pomegranate seeds, red grapes, red apples, and red peppers. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, and artichokes contain compounds that help detoxify estrogen. Prebiotics and probiotic-rich foods are bacterial darlings. Gut bacteria love to munch on prebiotic foods like garlic, onion, asparagus, and bananas. Probiotic foods such as kefir, kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut, and other fermented foods bring beneficial bacterial strains, like lactobacillus, to the gut.

They make these jokes because Andreano has found in his neuroimaging studies that during the mid-luteal phase (the second half of the menstrual cycle after ovulation), we have higher levels of emotional arousal and more connectivity between emotion and memory. This finding is far more complicated than just “Bitches be PMSing!” This connectivity means that if we are unlucky enough to be abused during this time period, those abuses can lodge more deeply in our memories and become encoded in our brains. These memories are also more likely to encourage a negative memory bias, a tendency to return to these negative memories more than positive ones. Bottom line: We are more vulnerable to developing PTSD or depression if we experience trauma during a certain point in our cycles.

No doctor ever determined any official diagnosis for my failure to ovulate regularly (so I named it myself: Deviled Eggs).

Even though women differ from apes in that they lack body signals of fertility, they make up for this through the clothes they wear. American university students were photographed at different points in their menstrual cycle as determined by self-report and urine tests. Judges of both genders were then asked to pick out the photos in which these young women seemed to “try to look more attractive.” It turned out that efforts to enhance their appeal changed with the cycle. Around their ovulation peak, the pictured women wore fancier, more fashionable clothing and revealed more skin. An Austrian study found a similar tendency. Investigators concluded that fertility unconsciously pushes women to boost their appearance and ornamentation.22

I’d never worn a man’s coat before, and this one had just been covering Wes’s body a few minutes ago. I wondered silently if I was suddenly ovulating.

Men produce hundreds of millions of spermatozoa per day whereas women ovulate at most 400 times between the onset of menarche and the start of menopause. Hence, an ovum is astoundingly more precious than sperm. This inequality in the importance of the male and female gametes drives the differential behaviors of the two sexes. From the perspective of reproductive fitness, a male benefits from engaging in numerous mating dalliances (can impregnate many women with easily reproduced gametes) whereas in light of the dearth of ova women must be extremely judicious in their mating choices. Furthermore, whereas men’s contribution to parenting could be as small as a brief sexual encounter, women bear the costs of gestation and lactation, face the dangers of childbearing (associated with high mortality in the ancestral environment), and are exposed to increased environmental threats associated with reduced mobility when pregnant.

Gut health is so vital to our health because the microbiome has many functions: •​Makes and regulates hormones and neurotransmitters •​Absorbs nutrients •​Supports immune function •​Regulates estrogen levels in the body •​Fends off pathogens and parasites, and keeps healthy bacterial balance in check Estrogen

What happens to the gut during menopause? With estrogen decline, there is… •​Increased gut permeability •​Bloating, constipation, reflux •​Less bile production to help us break down fats and detoxify estrogen •​IBS symptoms •​Thinning of the mucosal lining of the gut due to estrogen decline •​Decreased calcium absorption (rapid bone loss)

What happens to the gut during menopause? With estrogen decline, there is… •​Increased gut permeability •​Bloating, constipation, reflux •​Less bile production to help us break down fats and detoxify estrogen •​IBS symptoms •​Thinning of the mucosal lining of the gut due to estrogen decline •​Decreased calcium absorption (rapid bone loss) •​Increased levels of cortisol due to a decline in estrogen, which can often lead to anxiety and a cortisol belly •​A slowdown in digestion of food due to high cortisol, which leads to digestive and gut imbalances and constipation •​Brain fog, anxiety and depression, poor energy, and insomnia

In February 2020 in the journal Circulation, a large report indicated that women still represented less than 40% of the research participants in some of the most important areas of female health and mortality.

It is still a bit controversial to point out the differences between male and female metabolism. But think about it. Men have one major sex steroid; testosterone. Women have two; estrogen and progesterone. Male hormones stay static throughout the month. In women, the hormones change day to day and week to week. Men go through two hormone transitions in life; puberty and andropause. Women go through four to five (puberty, pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause).

So yes, women can train and eat just like men, and many will do wonderfully with that approach. However, many more and perhaps most, will not.

radiant health is our birthright.

The healthier your gut function going into menopause, the better your experience will be throughout menopause.

Gut health is so vital to our health because the microbiome has many functions: •​Makes and regulates hormones and neurotransmitters •​Absorbs nutrients •​Supports immune function •​Regulates estrogen levels in the body •​Fends off pathogens and parasites, and keeps healthy bacterial balance in check Estrogen and progesterone fuel the good bacteria in our guts. Without adequate levels, we can develop dysbiosis and its wide range of digestive disturbance symptoms, including diarrhea, cramping, constipation, bloating, and indigestion. When the gut microbiome is healthy, the estrobolome produces optimal levels of an enzyme called beta glucuronidase. As the liver metabolizes estrogen, it delivers this conjugated estrogen to the bile for excretion into the gut. A healthy estrobolome minimizes reabsorption of estrogen from the gut, and instead helps you poop it out. However, if you’re constipated and not pooping daily, or have an excess of bacteria producing beta glucuronidase, you can keep recycling estrogen in the gut and become estrogen dominant.

(You don’t have to succumb to your genetics, by the way...genetics may be the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger!) Your lifestyle will have a much greater effect on how your genes express themselves.

Dart initially echoed Darwin’s theory that bipedalism freed the hands of early hominins to make and use hunting tools, which in turn selected for big brains, hence better hunting abilities. Then, in a famous 1953 paper, clearly influenced by his war experiences, Dart proposed that the first humans were not just hunters but also murderous predators.18 Dart’s words are so astonishing, you have to read them: The loathsome cruelty of mankind to man forms one of his inescapable characteristics and differentiative features; and it is explicable only in terms of his carnivorous, and cannibalistic origin. The blood-bespattered, slaughter-gutted archives of human history from the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian records to the most recent atrocities of the Second World War accord with early universal cannibalism, with animal and human sacrificial practices of their substitutes in formalized religions and with the world-wide scalping, head-hunting, body-mutilating and necrophilic practices of mankind in proclaiming this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit, this mark of Cain that separates man dietetically from his anthropoidal relatives and allies him rather with the deadliest of Carnivora. Dart’s killer-ape hypothesis, as it came to be known, was popularized by the journalist Robert Ardrey in a best-selling book, African Genesis, that found a ready audience in a generation disillusioned by two world wars, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, political assassinations, and widespread political unrest.19 The killer-ape hypothesis left an indelible stamp on popular culture including movies like Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. But the Rousseauians weren’t dead yet. Reanalyses of bones in the limestone pits from which fossils like the Taung Baby came showed they were killed by leopards, not early humans.20 Further studies revealed these early hominins were mostly vegetarians. And as a reaction to decades of bellicosity, many scientists in the 1970s embraced evidence for humans’ nicer side, especially gathering, food sharing, and women’s roles. The most widely discussed and audacious hypothesis, proposed by Owen Lovejoy, was that the first hominins were selected to become bipeds to be more cooperative and less aggressive.21 According to Lovejoy, early hominin females favored males who were better at walking upright and thus better able to carry food with which to provision them. To entice these tottering males to keep coming back with food, females encouraged exclusive long-term monogamous relationships by concealing their menstrual cycles and having permanently large breasts (female chimps advertise when they ovulate with eye-catching swellings, and their breasts shrink when they are not nursing). Put crudely, females selected for cooperative males by exchanging sex for food. If so, then selection against reactive aggression and frequent fighting is as old as the hominin lineage.22

The pubertal surge of sex hormones plays a major role in the onset of eating symptoms in females, as shown by the fact that the heritability of Eating Disorders increases sharply at mid-puberty in girls, but not in boys. In particular, binge eating is strongly modulated by the interaction of estrogens and progesterone acrosss the menstrual cycle, consistent with the role played by these hormones in the regulation of hunger and feeding. Both the frequency of bingeing and its heritability peak after ovulation, in tandem with rising progesterone levels.

A recent evolutionary sophisticated perspective by Günter Wagner and Mihaela Pavličev suggests that orgasm had its origins in the mechanism in many species that induces ovulation after mating, and that female orgasm in humans is a vestige of that system.42,43,44 They also note that the clitoral equivalent in other species is inside the vagina and its displacement outside is a product of natural selection. Their conclusions seem sensible.

Does all this frivolous sex make our species sound “animalistic”? It shouldn’t. The animal world is full of species that have sex only during widely spaced intervals when the female is ovulating. Only two species can do it week in and week out for nonreproductive reasons: one human, the other very humanlike. Sex for pleasure with various partners is therefore more “human” than animal. Strictly reproductive, once-in-a-blue-moon sex is more “animal” than human. In other words, an excessively horny monkey is acting “human,” while a man or woman uninterested in sex more than once or twice a year would be, strictly speaking, “acting like an animal.

The attrition continues, though at a more sedate pace, throughout a woman’s youth and early middle age. At most, 450 of her eggs will be solicited for ovulation, and far fewer than that if she spends a lot of time being pregnant and thus not ovulating.

관찰한다)나 자궁내막 조직 검사를 받아 보아도 좋을 것이다. 자궁을 통해 나팔관 안으로 직접 내시경을 집어넣어 관찰하는 최신 검사법도 있다. 이 방법을 통해 의사들은 나팔관 내부의 상처 (예를 들자면 이전에 골반염을 앓았다든지 하는 이유로 생긴)관찰하고 나팔관 수술의 필요성 여부를 판단한다. 또한 이방법으로 나팔관 입구가 패쇄되어 있는지의 여부도 (40p 패쇄까지는) 확인할 수 있다. 뇌 속의 시상하토토총판모집부에서는 뇌하수체를 자극하여 다른 호르몬들을 분비하도록 하기 위해 네 시간마다 한 번씩 규칙적으로 황체화 호르몬 분비호르몬(LHRH)이라는 호르몬을 분비한다. 이 호르몬의 영향으로 뇌하수체는 난포자극 호르몬과 황체화호르몬-이 두 가지를 합쳐 나도트로핀(생식선 자극 호르몬)이라 부르기도 한다-을 방출한다. 난포자극호르몬이 난소를 자극하면 난소는 난포를 생성시키기 시작한다. 이와 같은 과정이 제대로 일어나는지를 알아보려면, 여성의 체내에 LHRH를 주입하고 이후 한 시간동안 혈중 호르몬치를 측정해 보면 된다. 한편 난자를 뚫고 들어가는데 필요한 효소가 정자에 결핍되었는지를 알아보려면 특수 검사를 받아야 한다. 그러나 아직 이 검사법은 그리 보편화되어 있지 않다. 41. 불임 환자가 임신을 원할 경우 어떤 방법이 있는가? 불임의 원인에 따라 해결책도 달라진다. 수정란을 자궁내에 이식하는 시험관 아기의 경우, 그 성공률은 모체의 연령에 따라 다르다. 28세 여성의 임토토총판모집신 성공률은 22p이고 32세의 경우는 15p이다. 이 수치는 40세가 되면 9.5p로 떨어진다. 모체의 연령이 높을수록 유산률도 증가한다. 임신약을 이용하여 배란에 필요한 호르몬의 분비를 자극하는 방법을 쓸수도 있지만, 이때는 '과배란(super-ovulation, 여러 개의 난자가 한꺼번에 배출됨)'이나 다태의 위험이 높다. 임신약인 클로미펜을 사용한 건강한 여성의 75p가 배란이 되고, 그중 35p는 임신을 하는 것으로 알려져 있다. 그러나 쌍둥이를 임신할 위험이 5p에 이른다(정상적인 임신에서 쌍둥이를 임신할 확률은 1.25p이다). 사람폐경 성선자극호르몬(HMG: 폐경 여성의 소변에서 추출된다)에는 난포 생성에 필요한 난포자극 호르몬과 배출된 난자를 성숙시키는 황체화호르몬이 포함되어 있다. 이 HMG 요법을 받은 여성의 75-90p에게서 배란이 일어나고 그중 35p가 임신하는 것으로 보고되고 있다. 그러나 다태(6-7쌍둥이의 가능성도 높다)의 위험이 무려 35p에 달한다. 토토총판모집설사 그 태아 대부분이 살아남는다 하더라도 분만 과정에서 어려움(조산, 호흡곤란, 뇌성마비, 성장장애)를 겪을 수 있다. 펌프를 이용하여 LHRH를 피하지방에 주사함으로써 뇌가 정상적으로 호르몬을 분비할 수 있도록 돕는 방법도 있다. 처치 대상자의 90p가 배란이 되었으며 6개월 후 90p가 임신을 하였다. 이밖에도 여러가지 최신 치료법들이 개발되고 있다. GIFT(Gamete Intra Fallopian Transfer, 생식세포난관내 이식 :인공수정 시킨 수정란을 나팔관 안으로 주입한다)는 21p의 성공률을 보였으며 (다태의 위험은 21p), DIPI(Direct Intra Peritoineal Insemina-tion, 직접 복강내 수정)는 10p, PO토토총판모집ST(Peritioneal Oocyte Sperm Transfer, 복강내 난자 및 정자 주입 )는 25p의 성공률을 보였다. 이외에도 여러 첨단 치료법들이 개발되고 있는데, 불임 때문에 고민하고 있는 부부들에게 희소식이 되리라 믿는다. 기타 첨단 불임 치료법들 GIFT: 생식세포 난관내 이식 DIPI: 직접 복강내 수정 POST: 복강내 난자 및 정자 주입 SUZI(Subzonal Sperm Insertion): 투명대하 정자 주입 TUFT(Trans-Uterine Fallopian Transfer): 자궁을 통한 난관내 이식 TET(Tubal Embryo Transfer): 난관내 배아 이식 PROST(ProNuclear S토토총판모집tage Tubal Transfer): 전핵 이식 ZIFT(Zygote Intra-Fallopian Tube Transfer): 접합자 난관내 이식 임신 5개월 된 태아(여아의 경우)는 대략 700만 개의 난자를 갖고 있다. 그러다가 출생 무렵이 되면 그 숫자는 200만 개쯤으로 줄어들고 다시 사춘기에 접어들면 50만개 정도로 된다. 그 나머지는 모두 퇴화해 체내에 흡수된다. 출생 이후에는 난자가 새로 생겨나지 않는데, 우리가 흔히 난자의 '생성'이라고 말하는 것은 이미 난소에 존재하던 난자(난포)들이 성숙하는 것을 두고 하는 말이다. 대개 한 번의 생리 주기 동안에 단 한 개의 난자만이 완전히 성숙한다. 몇개의 난포들이 함께 성숙하지만 그중에서 가장 빨리, 그리고 가장 건강하게 성숙한 난자만이 배출된다. 그 나머지는 다윈의 '적자생존'토토총판모집의 원리에 따라 자연도태되는 것이다. 일단 배란이 일어나고 나면 껍데기만 남은 난포가 황체라는 노란색의 낭포로 변한다. 이 황체가 에스트로젠과 프로제스테론을 분비하여 뇌의 시상하부에서 더 이상 난포자극호르몬과 황체화호르몬이 생산되지 않도록 한다. 만약 임신이 되었다면 황체는 에스트로젠과 프로제스테론 두 호르몬을 계속 분비하여 월경이 일어나지 않게 함으로써 초기 임신 상태를 유지시켜준다. 임신 3개월이 지나면 태반이 그 역할을 받아 하게 되고 황체는 점점 퇴화한다. 반대로 임신이 이루어지지 않았다면 열흘 후에는 황체가 퇴화하게 된다. 그리고 다음 생리가 시작되는 것이다. 이론적으로는 오직 한 개의 정자만 있으면 난자와의 수정이 가능하다 그러나 실제로는 한 번 사정이 있을때마다 평균 2-3억개라는 '넉넉한' 숫자의 정자가 여서의 생식기 내부로 들어가게 된다. 하지만 그중에서 난자가 있는 곳-주로 나팔관의 상반부-까지 도달하토토총판모집는 정자의 숫자는 50-150개 정도에 불과하다. 남성의 정액이 1ml당 2천만 개 내외의 정자를 포함할 절도로 정자가 응집되어 있다면 임신할 확률은 엄청나게 높아진다. 갓 배출된 정액은 젤 상태로 굳어 있다가 20-30분이 지나면 효소에 의해 분해되어 붉은 액체로 변하면서 정자의 대이동을 시작한다. 인공수정시 관찰해 본 결과 아주 활발한 정자 몇개는 질 입구로 들어선지 불과 5분도 채 안되어 나팔관에 도달했다고 한다. 그런가 하면 몇 일 동안이나 자궁경관 점액 속에서 자궁 안이나 나팔관으로 올라가려고 헤엄치는 정자도 있다. 일단 정자가 난자의 껍질을 뚫고 들어가면 일종의 화학적인 반응이 일어나 다른 정자의 접근을 막는다. 그리고 염색체를 23개 갖고 있는 정자와 역시 23개의 염색체를 갖고 있는 난자가 합쳐져서 46개의 염색체를 가진 하나의 세포(수정란)를 형성한다. 수정란은 나팔관을 따라 내려가면서 연쇄적으로 세포분열을 일으켜 상실배를 형성한다. 이 상실배 속에 액체가 들어차면서 가운데는 텅 비고 가장자리로만 세포들이 늘어서 있는 주머니 모양의 포배를 형성하는데, 이것이 자궁내막에 착상하는 것이다. 이때가 수정 후 약 5일이 지난 때이다.

Wasn’t it the belief, after all, that women looked more beautiful during ovulation—or more gorgeous, if you would? At least there was an upside.

The point is not that women necessarily fetishize these parts of men’s bodies, but that these parts can be measured easily and are good markers of overall symmetry. Men with symmetrical bodies also do well in their own sexual marketplace. They tend to have sex a few years earlier than other men. They also have sex earlier when courting a specific woman, and have two or three times as many partners than less symmetrical men. Their partners even experience them as better in bed! It turns out that a man’s physical symmetry can predict the likelihood of his female lover having an orgasm better than his earnings, investment in the relationship, or frequency of love-making [31]. Heterosexual men also prefer symmetrical women. This preference is evident in laboratory experiments as well as from behavioral observations. Physically symmetrical women have more sexual partners than less symmetrical women. It turns out that women with large and symmetrical breasts are more fertile than women with less symmetrical breasts. Women also become more symmetrical during ovulation. Symmetry in soft tissue as measured in women’s ears and third, fourth, and fifth fingers can increase up to 30 percent during ovulation [32]. We saw that sexual dimorphic features can drive attractiveness in male and female faces. Sexual dimorphic features also influence how animals and people

I need him to step back. His cologne was practically hijacking my ovulation cycle and I had to fight the urge to let my face collapse onto his shirt and inhale.

Și iată infernul: trupuri goale de bărbați și femei, îmbinându-se unul cu altul în gemete și convulsii, ieșind unul din altul la nesfârșit, sfârtecându-și uterele și vaginele, umplându-și corpii erectili cu lubrifianți și cu sânge, îmbătrânind, fleșcăindu-se, putrezind, dar eliberând din ele ovule și spermii, capsule ucigașe iluminând asemenea fotonilor gura senzuală a altor femei, pulpele păroase ale altor bărbați, părinți și copii și părinți și copii lăsând în urmă putreziciunea organelor disipate, a oaselor topindu-se-ncet în sicrie din același cuarț orbitor. Burți cuprinzând burți în care sunt burți, de parcă toate mamele și fiicele ar fi-nchise una într-alta, într-un șir nesfârșit de gravide, alternanță eternă de pereți uterini și de fetuși gravizi cu alți fetuși, utere-n utere-n utere-n utere...

At about ten Paige swam through the smoke and tapped Preacher on the shoulder. He folded his hand, having nothing anyway, and said, “Be right back.” “God, it’s weird, seeing Preach act like the little husband,” Stephens said. “Little husband?” “You know what I’m saying. All Paige has to do is lift her pinkie finger and he’s on his knees.” “How are your eyes, man? She can lift that little finger my way and I’d get on my knees,” Joe said. “The little husband might pound you into sand,” Jack said. “I meant if she weren’t married. You old farts are starting to act real whipped.” “That’s because we are,” Jack said. “And it’s good. It’s very, very good.” Preacher came back, lifted his cigar and took a pull. “I’m not hunting tomorrow,” he said. “I’m going to have to stay here.” “Why?” “It’s ovulation day,” he said with a straight face. “It’s what?” three men asked in unison. “It’s frickin’ ovulation day, jag-off. We’re trying to make a baby and if I miss ovulation day, who knows how long I’ll have to wait. I don’t feel like waiting. I’ve been waiting.” His explanation was met with completely nonplussed silence—no one at the table knew about this quest, including Jack. And after a moment of stunned silence, laughter erupted that was so loud and wild, the men were nearly falling off their chairs. When the group got a little under control, Preacher asked, “Is there something funny about ovulation day? Because I don’t think it’s funny.” “Nah, it’s not funny, Preach,” Joe said. “It’s cute, that’s what it is.” “But really, Preach, you should hunt and leave me home—I’d probably make a better-looking baby than you, anyway,” Zeke said. “You’ve made enough frickin’ babies, jag-off,” Preacher said. “Your wife sent you up here to hunt so she can catch a break. Whose deal is it anyway?” While

Come on, Melinda. You can’t avoid it forever. We both know you’re pregnant.” “Ugh,” she said, accepting the cool, wet cloth. She pressed it to her face, her brow, her neck. She didn’t have any more to say. But Jack knew. There had been tears, exhaustion, nausea. She turned watering eyes up to him. He shrugged and said, “You eased up on the breast-feeding, popped an egg and I nailed it.” Her eyes narrowed as if to say she did not appreciate the explanation. He held out a hand to bring her to her feet. “You have to wean David,” he said. “Your body can’t completely nourish two children. You’ll get weak. You’re already exhausted.” “I don’t want to be pregnant right now,” she said. “I’m barely over being pregnant.” “I understand.” “No, you don’t. Because you haven’t ever been pregnant.” He thought this would probably be a bad time to tell her that he did so understand, since he had lived with a pregnant person and listened very attentively to every complaint. “We should go see John right away, so you can find out how pregnant.” “How long have you suspected?” she asked him. “I don’t know. A few weeks. It was a little tougher this time….” “Oh, yeah?” “Well, yeah. Since you haven’t had a period since the first time I laid a hand on you. God, for a supposedly sterile woman, you certainly are fertile.” Then he grinned, fully aware it would have got him smacked if he hadn’t been holding the baby. She whirled away from him and went to sit on their bed. She put her face in her hands and began to cry. Well, he’d been expecting exactly this. There’d been a lot of crying lately and he knew she was going to be mighty pissed off. He sat down beside her, put an arm around her and pulled her close. David patted her head. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m not delivering this one. I want that understood.” “Try not to be cute,” she said through her tears. “I think my back already hurts.” “Can I get you something? Soda? Crackers? Arsenic?” “Very funny.” She turned her head to look at him. “Are you upset?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry it happened so soon. Sorry for you. I know there are times you get damned uncomfortable and I wanted you to get a break.” “I should never have gone away with you.” “Nah. You were already pregnant. Wanna bet?” “You knew before that?” “I wondered why you were so emotional, and that was a possible reason. I never bought your whole sterile thing. But I don’t have a problem with it. I wanted more kids. I like the idea of a larger family than the three of us. I come from a big family.” “There will not be five, I can guarantee you that,” she said. Then she bored a hole through him with her eyes. “Snip, snip.” “You’re not going to blame this on me, Mel. I suggested birth control. A couple of times, as a matter of fact. You were the one said it could never happen twice. And then explained that whole business about not ovulating while you’re nursing. How’s that working for you so far? Hmm?” “Screw you,” she said, not sweetly. “Well, obviously…” “I’d like you to understand I wasn’t relying on that breast-feeding thing. I’m a midwife—I know that’s not foolproof. I really didn’t think it possible that… Shit,” she said. She sighed deeply. “I just barely got back into my jeans….” “Yeah, those jeans. Whoa, damn. Those jeans really do it to me. No one wears a pair of jeans like you do.” “Aren’t you getting a little sick of having a fat wife?” “You’re not fat. You’re perfect. I love your body, pregnant and unpregnant. I know you’re trying to get me all worked up, but I’m not going there. You can try to pick a fight with me all day and I just won’t play. It wouldn’t be a fair fight—you’re out to get me and we both know it. Do you have appointments this morning?” “Why?” “Because I want to go to Grace Valley for an ultrasound. I want to know when I have to have the house done.” *

Hey, Preach,” Mel said. “Where’s Jack?” “Eureka.” “How about Mike?” “It’s not my day to watch him,” he said gruffly, going back to the kitchen. “Jeez,” Mel said. She looked at Paige and met twinkling eyes. “Something funny?” “John appears to be a little tense. Amazing he got through so many years without sex every day.” “Every day?” Mel asked. “Well, holy shit, his count must be down to nothing!” She looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. “How’s he handling the drought?” “He’s a little testy,” Paige said, amused. “I keep telling him this is entirely up to him. If it’s too much, we can make a few adjustments. But he wants to do it right.” “Hope he doesn’t explode,” Mel said absently. “He asked if we can close the bar on ovulation day.” Mel’s eyes widened in surprise and they both melted into laughter. *

Oh, really. This saving-up business—I guess you think you’re the only one who missed it. Huh?” “Well… You got a little pissy there for a while….” “Well, John, you told everyone it was ovulation day! You’re going to have to learn to be a little more discreet in the future.” “Anything

We’ve been sitting on a little news. We’re having a baby.” “Well, damn!” Paul said. He looked at Preacher and grinned. “You finally came through on ovulation day, huh, buddy?” He puffed up a little. “I did at that,” he said, throwing his chest out. “And John promises that in the future when we have personal business, like we’re going to have sex all day and I’m going to stand on my head between rounds, he’s not going to tell the town. Or the one-ninety-second.” “Aw, I think we took it pretty much in stride,” Paul said, but he couldn’t help grinning. “That’s awful good news, Paige. I’m really happy for you.” “You know, it’s not that easy,” Preacher said. “Being married to someone like Paige and waiting for ovulation day. I think I did pretty good there. I should get a little more credit.” “I imagine it’s pretty tough.” Paul laughed. “You know, I needed that. Some great news, a good laugh. Congratulations to you both.” He lifted his glass. “This last year has been awful tough. The past month has been pure shit. Let’s toast a new year, with new stuff, good stuff. Here’s to the new baby.” “I’ll drink to that,” Preacher said. “And

I must have nodded off. How was Christmas for Paige and Preacher?” “Good,” Paul said. “They have some big news. Paige is expecting.” “Ah, he did it,” the general said with a chuckle. “He showed up for ovulation day.” Paul laughed. “He’s in a lot of hot water for telling too many people about that.” “Yeah, I suppose. But it’s so like him, don’t you think? He’s so damn transparent.