Playing pregnancy

[Scarborough]

For those of you who have ever wanted to try playing a pregnancy, but didn't feel comfortable because you were a guy with a female character, or just don't know the week by week changes that occur to the body, I've collected a week-by-week list of what changes occur in a pregnant woman's body, and put that info into a (Excel) Zalanthan calendar, so you can plot out a pregnancy easily.  The calendar was made using information on the Arm webpages so no sensitive info is found in it.  

If you give me a rough conception date (in game date) I'd be happy to tweak the calendar for you and send it off.  Again, it's just gathering what information is already on the pages/web and slapping it into a more visual format, for us visual learners.

PM me if this is something you'd find helpful.  If a staff person wants to see it, I'll email it off to you.

~Scar~

[Sanvean]

I'd love to see a copy of it, particularly if it's okay to stick it up on the main website.

[Scarborough]

Sure.  I'll email it off to you shortly.  I need to tweak a few things.  It's an Excel spreadsheet however, so it has mouse-over comments.  Can you get an Excel file?  I can, as an alternative, make it a PDF but the mouse over things won't work.

[bloodfromstone]

Whoa, nice. I don't see it being useful to me personally in the near future, but it is a very nice tool to have out there. Thanks a lot, Scar.

[Cuusardo]

http://www.med.umich.edu/obgyn/smartmoms/pregnancy/monthbymonth/

I've always used this website as a guide for RPing pregnancy, and I think it would be great if it would be "Zalanthanized" and made into public documentation on this site.

[Scarborough]

Here is the link I used:
http://www.pregnancy-info.net/week1.html

This is WEEK-BY-WEEK which means, it gives you information that would make your roleplaying varied for each DAY you log on, basically.  That's a big help.  I was surprised to find all the little things that happen to the woman's body from one week to the next, not having had any kids of my own in real life (nor planning to).

[Adhira]

There's some great information in those sites, kudos for doing such indepth research, I think there are some great guidelines here.

One thing to keep in mind though, is that every pregnancy is different and the pregnancy sites usually contain stereotypical examples. The symptoms and stages will be different from woman to woman and often vary wildly with each child.

You could try mixing it up some, picking and choosing what symptoms to play up, changing when they occur, and how they affect your pc. All this makes for more varied pregnancy RP.

For instance, my first six months of pregnancy were fantastic, I lost 8 kilos and a dress size. My doctor accused me of not eating though I most assuredly was  :wink:

A note for the warrior women - I also participated in competitive sport up until seven months when my stomach was noticeable enough that others felt uncomfortable playing against me.  Another friend of mine didn't discover she was pregnant until two months before she gave birth, during that time she played full contact sport at a representative level. The body is an amazing thing.

[Scarborough]

I agree -- I haven't known very many woman who had "normal" pregnancies, among my friends.  There are things like this also mentioned on the website I posted, and it doesn't describe a perfect, stereotypical pregnancy.  In the week-by-week blows, it goes into details about a few of the things that can go wrong, so there are options of problems that can happen.  It also talks at length about having twins, how to feel more comfortable near the end, and a variety of other information.  There's even a discussion board where woman talk about their pregnancies, and probably not-so-typical experiences.  

I think another noteworthy thing to keep in mind, playing pregnancies in Arm, is that in general, many characters have TERRIBLE diets.  If a 'rinther woman is eating almost nothing but travel cakes and rotten fruit, that's going to have an effect on how the pregnancy comes along, and the birth weight/health of a child.  There's lots to consider, particularly when the world our characters live in isn't very hospitible, or advanced.

My mother had a terrible time carrying both my sister and I.  Here's another example of real and weird pregnancy in the other direction of Adhira's examples:  My mother got extremely ill at three months pregnant with my sister.  She was bleeding (not a good sign), extremely sick, throwing up constantly, headaches and generally feeling much sicker than she ought to be.  She was afraid she might be miscarrying her baby.  After a few weeks of this (she was stubborn), she finally went to the doctor who assured her the baby didn't seem stressed and had a strong heartbeat.   She continued to be very sick throughout the pregnancy and actually weighed less after giving birth, than she did pre-pregnancy -- NOT good.  When she finally gave birth, it was discovered that my sister had a twin, who had died that third month, and had been decomposing in his sac.  It was a miracle that my sister didn't catch an infection from the other baby and die, and also that my mother didn't die as well.

[EvilRoeSlade]

A note for the warrior women - I also participated in competitive sport up until seven months when my stomach was noticeable enough that others felt uncomfortable playing against me.  Another friend of mine didn't discover she was pregnant until two months before she gave birth, during that time she played full contact sport at a representative level. The body is an amazing thing.

Though fighting raptors and getting whapped in the stomach with a sparring club is probably a bad idea nonetheless.  I'm only mentioning this because I've seen people do some rather funny things while their characters were supposedly pregnant.

[Cenghiz]

Archive?

[LauraMars]

Seconded.

[Bestatte]

I wrote a pregnancy doc, which was modified and added to the RP guides. It was written before the time changes in the game and needs to be adjusted for that, but here's the link:

http://www.armageddon.org/general/pregnancy.html

The original title was:

So you wanna be a Zalanthan breed mare?

and was ripe with sarcasm because I have always been profoundly against pregnancy roleplay and the roleplay around giving birth and caring for infants. This was also back when players could request newborn NPCs, and I would often see people bringing newborns into bars a day or two after giving birth, or leaving their newborn NPCs in military barracks while mommy went a-hunting.

A basic summary of my opinion, which I carry over to - and modify to fit the genre of other games:

Players of women PCs, who are thinking about getting their PC pregnant should remember the following:

Zalanthan women don't have easy cheap access to fresh milk. Newborns need to be fed on demand, and they demand it often. If you can't afford a wet-nurse, then you'll be stuck breastfeeding every couple of game-hours. This means you won't be going hunting, or to sparring practice, or serving wine for your noble/templar employer for 4-hour dinner parties until that kid is weaned off the breast. That's gonna be at least a couple of RL months. If you -can- afford a wet-nurse, then accept that your body will not return to its prior svelte, slender, lovely, f-me perfect state for a very long time. Breastfeeding helps the abdominal muscles heal and snap back to their previous shape.

There are no episiotomies in Zalanthas. That means your character will run the risk of some pretty nasty tears down there during childbirth. For those who aren't quite sure what that is, it's a rip in the skin and flesh beneath it, that runs from the vaginal opening back to the anus. We're talking major hemorrhoids here, that last a good couple of RL months. And without a sterile environment, this also means a high risk of infection. Spicing up is probably a good way to subdue pain, but if you're in Nak, you'd better hope you have a solid connection, sids to pay for it, and that your character actually -would- break the law for it.

My advice: Assume your character is sterile, or doesn't ever have sex, or injects mul-mix juice directly into the veins every day, or is otherwise incapable of getting pregnant.

[Tamarin]

Interesting viewpoint Bessie.


However...

Prehistoric humans living in Africa would have had much worse conditions than Zalanthan humans, and yet somehow we managed to have 6 billion people on our little planet.  Which means that even though pregnancy is dangerous, it probably wasn't -that- dangerous.  I've also always assumed that Zalanthan humans have some very sturdy differences from earth humans, physiologically speaking.  Not the least of which is an increased hardiness when giving birth.  That's not to say that babies need a lot of care once they're born (because they do) but I imagine that our rugged zalanthan females aren't so susceptible to horrendous vaginal tearing.

[Puppet]

I'm not sure Bestatte was saying that it was so incredibly dangerous that Zalanthan women shouldn't be having babies. I think what she was saying is that RP'd pregnancies probably look over some of the very lovely side-effects of it. That is a luxury some players enjoy that those prehistoric humans living in Africa didn't have. Sure, they managed to survive and reproduce, but no one said it was pretty.

[Cuusardo]

Zalanthas still has midwives and healers, and for those who are willing to take the risk, Vivaduans.

[Bestatte]

Interesting viewpoint Bessie.


However...

Prehistoric humans living in Africa would have had much worse conditions than Zalanthan humans, and yet somehow we managed to have 6 billion people on our little planet.  Which means that even though pregnancy is dangerous, it probably wasn't -that- dangerous.  I've also always assumed that Zalanthan humans have some very sturdy differences from earth humans, physiologically speaking.  Not the least of which is an increased hardiness when giving birth.  That's not to say that babies need a lot of care once they're born (because they do) but I imagine that our rugged zalanthan females aren't so susceptible to horrendous vaginal tearing.

Prehistoric humans didn't number in the billions. That didn't happen til the last couple of centuries, after the advent of allopathic medicine, antibiotics, anasthaesia, and sterile medical environments. The mortality rate for infants was horrendous prior to that, and it wasn't uncommon at all for a pregnant woman to die during childbirth. None of those conditions exist in Zalanthas, which would probably explain why there aren't "billions" of people living on this fantasy planet.

As for midwives and healers and vivaduans, absolutely Cuusardo. But none of them have access to sterile medical conditions, and none have access to antibiotics, or anasthaesia apart from spice. Spice is illegal and prohibitively expensive in Allanak, and vivaduans are illegal in Tuluk. So all you really have world-wide is midwives and physicians, and you still would have to be able to afford their services, and you'd still have to provide for breastmilk for the newborn IF your character plans on leaving the baby's side for longer than a couple of hours.

[Scarborough]

I'm kind of thinking that should tearing and things happen, that out would come a needle and thread from a midwives pocket, or the nearest seamstress would be hustled in.  With healers, midwives, physicians, people sewing and crafting textiles with needle and thread, and tools being created out of almost everything, the average pregnant Zalanthan would be better off than a prehistoric African.  If a baby needed more room, I think a midwife would get out their obsidian blade, slice a little extra room "down there" and maybe cauterize with a glowing coal.  I think some of our modern procedures could easily be adapted, and logically would have been done.  I'll see if I can find anythink online about midwivery in medieval times, tudor times, or something in between.

And, don't forget the point of this thread to begin with:  I can mail you a calendar with weekly prompts of symptoms and problems, if you want to or are playing a pregnant person.

[Delirium]

If a baby needed more room, I think a midwife would get out their obsidian blade, slice a little extra room "down there" and maybe cauterize with a glowing coal.

..... *CRINGE*


Nice torturing technique, though.  Hmmmmmm...

[Nao]

If a baby needed more room, I think a midwife would get out their obsidian blade, slice a little extra room "down there" and maybe cauterize with a glowing coal.

..... *CRINGE*

That's done today, minus the coal. WITHOUT anesthetics, even. Doc just cuts through a specific muscle with a pair of scissors when he thinks there will be certain problems durning childbirth.

wounds like that heal surprisingly quick, the human body has adapted to fixing itself up after childbirth...

[Scarborough]

Here are a few links to pages that detail the "History of Childbirth".  They all talk about early practices, things that would probably be applicable to the game world in some cases.  

http://www.thehistoryof.net/history-of-childbirth.html
http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/manitoba_womens_health/hist1.htm
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/timeline.asp
http://www.geocities.com/titus2birthing/birthhistory.html
http://www.elenagreene.com/childbirth.html

On reading further, the episiotomy was invented in the last two [EDIT:  I -meant- to type twenty-five years, but the phone rang and "two" is what came out *chuckles*  How silly]  years or so, is more often used in America, and there are alternatives to it.  However, I still think that while it's barbaric and painful, in a crisis situation a midwife of Zalathas wouldn't hesitate to pick up her knife.  Hope the links are useful and helpful.  I'm going to rework my calendar again and include some of the information on these pages, when I have more time to read thoroughly.

[joyofdiscord]

Well, I learned about the episiotomy in high school health class, and I've been out of high school for six years now, so it's at least six years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episiotomy  Wikipedia also mentions episiotomies having been declining in popularity since the sixties.  Still, 40 years is a far cry from the Stone/bone/obsidian age.  I don't think it's unreasonable to say a Zalanthan midwife could figure out how to do a home episiotomy, though.

[Cuusardo]

Okay, so conditions on Zalanthas aren't sterile, and yes, a lot of people die from childbirth complications.  Anybody has the right to bring this kind of fate upon their PC if they see fit.  

However, they also have the right to roleplay their PC being one of the ones who are blessed with good recovery instead.