This is a post I saw in one of the many Facebook groups formed to support mothers.
If you found the Facebook post startling, perhaps this response from several mothers in the comments section might make your eyes dilate even more: “How has your baby been peeing for a whole year if you are just realizing now that she doesn’t have one?”
What’s hair raising about that response?
Is it the judgment by the fellow mum, who should instead be consoling the distressed mother, or advising her to visit a pediatrician?
Or is it the ignorance of the comment?
When I read that first comment, I thought she was alone in her ignorance, but as I scrolled down, it turned out there were a lot of clueless women. It turns out a lot of women do not know their anatomy.
As I said in the first article for this column – this is a no-judgment column where we discuss motherhood issues. Today, I felt it imperative to go back to the basics, because before you give birth, you have to make use of your reproductive system. However, it appears that there are several people – men and women – who don’t quite understand it.
Let me ask a question and I don’t mean to be blunt, but there’s no subtle way to ask it: ladies, how many ‘openings’ do you have down there?
I ask this question because the Facebook comments showed some are not aware of the fact that where pee comes from is different from where a baby comes from (if you deliver vaginally).
Don’t be embarrassed if this is you. Today, this article is purely educational.
A woman has three openings down there – the urethral opening (for peeing), the vaginal opening (it’s not even the vagina as it is often referred to by many. The vagina is inside, what’s seen on the outside is the opening); and then there’s the anus (where poop comes out from).
Whether it’s an African thing or is generally a situation where women have been encouraged to be prude, ‘self discovery’ is seen as taboo. In the olden days, it was said that many women ‘endured’ sex as an activity done for the sole purpose of procreation. So you could see how some women would not understand their anatomy. They just knew you do ‘bad manners’, get pregnant, go through painful labour and childbirth and have a baby.
However, it’s 2022 and while I’m not advocating for ‘self discovery’ in the lines of kinky episodes, it’s important to understand your body so that you can take care of it.
It’s time to get a mirror and check what’s going on down there aside from the diagrams you saw during biology lessons. If you let a gynecologist examine you every time you go for a check up as is encouraged for women of reproductive age, why are you not ‘examining’ yourself too?
A side note to those quick to post judgmental comments on Facebook yet they themselves are clueless, former US President Abraham Lincoln put it well: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”.
As always, mamas: Do the Johnnie Walker – keep walking this motherhood journey. BY CITIZEN DIGITAL