We started a game accidentally the other night. I'm not sure who's aware of this but we like to live in a small community of familiar people, a sort of extended family. To this end we have John's sort-of-brother and his fiancé living in the suite in our house. It's a wonderful arrangement that allows us to feel like we're following the principles of the Continuum Concept in a really relaxed and natural way.

Besides, we just like having them around. The game began when we started talking about which was worse, the pain of childbirth or the pain of getting kicked in the family jewels. After throwing around euphemisms we settled on the phrase 'getting sacked'. The guys described the instinctive actions that men go through when they get sacked, curling up in the fetal position and their whole body going into shock, and they argued that it had to be much worse. I felt like having a baby hurts more, especially if you tack on the 9 months of pregnancy. Three natural deliveries taught me how that feels, but then again, I've never been sacked.

I'm not sure that a consensus was reached but they did decide that if something was crushed rather than sacked it would be worse than pregnancy, but possibly pregnancy could hurt as much as a sacking. We pondered... is it worse to be sacked than to break your arm? Is it worse to be sacked than to have a period with cramps every month for most of your life?

The way it all started was a discussion about natural birth control methods. The more I read about these methods on the Internet (thanks to the advice of a much-loved person, you know who you are), the more glad I was that I didn't rely on them completely. Natural birth control is a nightmare of uncertainty. I have read with fascination about the Quiverfull movement, and I respect it from a distance but I don't think I could ever join their ranks because I know how fertile I may be. I have no desire to be Mrs. Duggar (the more power to her). I am not going to get into those things in this post, but it is an issue that comes up for us because I can't even go on the pill. At one time I did for three months, it made me incredibly sick and gave me a hemangioma on my liver. Basically a lump of blood that gave me incredible stomach pains but fortunately isn't doing that anymore and won't screw up my life.

But I still want to space out my children so we do what must be done and we don't rely on natural methods. We don't mind having more kids, but I need to time them for my health and sanity. At some point we will be done having children and John will have to take some permanent measures... at which point in the discussion the men said, "Do you know how bad sticking a needle there will hurt?!"

And I said, "You have the balls to compare that with childbirth?!"