Thinking of skiing yesterday got me musing further. I wrote in one of my early blogs about how I felt I was finally 'getting my life back': feeling fitter, feeling that the children needed me less - etc. Then of course I found out I was pregnant.....
I remember being pregnant with Son, then the one which miscarried, then with Daughter: all in quick succession with a 6-month gap between the first two of those pregnancies and a 6-week gap between the miscarriage and becoming pregnant with Daughter. I remember feeling that I had been almost permanently pregnant for years: yesterday I thought that whilst this current pregnancy seems to have passed quickly, I shall be back at the stage of feeling tired and with limited time (I think) for exercise and for myself.
But reading A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England made me think again. Thank goodness for contraception, and for good health which means that a woman no longer needs to be primarily a child-bearing machine year in and year out. Just imagine if I had been as fertile then as I appear to be now, and had started having children at, say, age 18 (assuming I had not died in childbirth of course): then I really would have felt permanently pregnant and then there really was 'no life' beyond children - not until you passed your child-bearing years, at least. No wonder sexism was so rife: women didn't get a chance, on the whole, to have 'careers' and their own interests outside the home. That's not to say there weren't exceptions, but they were few and far between.
Talking of outside interests, I've just had my Grade 7 Singing results - I got 128, which is a Merit - and only 2 marks off a distinction. So not bad, and my University 'singing ghost' is finally at rest: especially considering the complimentary comments that the examiner made about my voice.
Thank goodness for living in the 21st Century!
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