Amnesia

Dear everyone. I haven’t forgotten you. It just seems that recently I have not been finding much exciting to write to you all about.

Simone’s belly is getting bigger, and consequently she is getting quite a bit more tired on average. The paradoxical flip side to the current stage of pregnancy is that despite reporting being regularly exhausted, she has started nesting with a passion, and has gone a fair way to re-organising the whole house. I suppose I can’t entirely comment however, having taken two trips to Bunnings in the last week, and having another one planned for this weekend.

The bump (or the parasite, depending on how generous we are feeling in out referring to it) continues to grow, to kick, to stretch, and occasionally to amuse us by doing unexpected things like hiccuping. Other than that it is, as far as we (and our obstetrician) can tell, doing all the normal things it should be doing.

I am quite enjoying my new job as an orthopaedic registrar, however I am finding it to be quite hard work. The hours are a bit longer than what I’ve done previously, and I’m having to spend most of my free time doing work related things, like presentations, study for exams and courses, and trying to fill the many and varied holes in my knowledge as it relates to the treatment and long term management of orthopaedic problems. Basically I am (in fitting with the old adage about all work and no play) becoming quite a dull boy. Hopefully it will ease up a bit after the current round of courses, but I still have to get some research and an application to the training program sorted, both of which are relatively large tasks.

So anyway. I will try and find things of interest to write about, and share a bit more of what I’m up to (although I will try not to talk too much about work, as I’m sure you all find it rather dull).

Good news ladies, bad news ladies

First the good news (possibly). Boffins (to use the appropriate official top gear nomenclature) have figured out how to create sperm from female bone marrow cells. Now, in theory at least, women can reproduce without the aid of men, although as the page points out, we’re still useful to keep around for mowing the lawn and fixing cars. The technique sounds pretty high risk (from the stand point of the proportion of the sperm that have cellular structural (and thus presumably chromosomal or genetic) defects, but as with all science once the concept has been proven the wrinkles usually get ironed out pretty quickly).

The bad news is that even if they can reproduce sans men, they are still going to get forgetful when it happens. Ozzie scientists have proven that so called pregnancy brain is a real phenomenon, although they have not tried to speculate on what the actual cause is. This is all quite funny because I’ve been listening to Simone complain for a few months now about how she keeps on forgetting things and feels generally somewhat more wooley brained than usual. One of her old bosses said that she didn’t realise how bad it was until after she had had her baby and her memory came back. Perhaps it is supposed to serve an evolutionary purpose, helping women forget just how unpleasant pregnancy can be so that they can do it multiple times and advance the species…