This is the part where I get all TMI

Seriously, this is going to be a LOT of info about Lady Parts (mine in particular) that you might not want to know, so if you are one of my male readers (ok, my ONE male reader), OR anyone I'll ever actually see face-to-face again, OR anyone remotely discomfited by discussions of gynecological wonders, please stop reading now. For the three of you who are left (bye, Mom!), I am sorry to give you so many details, but some recent news alerted me to an issue affecting the Girly Bits of which I was heretofore unaware. I am shocked, scared and, let's face it, a little amused all at the same time.

So there I am, chillin' with Dr. L, my gyno-man, whom I am seeing this day so that he can remove the Wonder of All Wonders: the modern-day IUD—which, for me, it turns out? Not so wonderful. He's poking around down there, and I'm "just feeling a pinch" (in the same way, say, that Evil Knievel "just takes a leisurely bike ride") and he looks up, all concerned. That is not a good look for someone who a mere moment ago was gazing into one's vajayjay. I'm thinking, ok, the plastic "no, that is NOT a disposable flosser" thing is out, what's the prob?

And he says, "Wow, your uterus is really low." I ask him what that means, since he's not saying it in a "Way to go, team!" kind of way. He explains that having babies, poor muscle tone, and an inability to fight gravity are often a fine formula for uterine collapse and that—I shit you not—"some women actually feel their uteruses (uteri?) descend outside of their bodies." As in, one's waheena basically TURNS INSIDE OUT.

I am not excited about this, to say the least. I for one like the fact that the place in which I cooked a small human resides INSIDE this here body. I feel it's been a fair trade that I get indoor plumbing in exchange for having to be the one who, essentially, performed the equivalent of pooping out a Golden Retriever during that Magical Experience we call childbirth. And now we are changing the deal? No, thanks.

So, in a voice which I hope does not belie my barely-controlled state of hysteria, I ask what can be done to keep that mess of organs from starting their foray into the great outdoors. He asks if I've been doing my kegels, or what I lovingly call "crotch crunches." I hang my head and admit that no, I kind of just thought those were for the Labor and Delivery Aftermath (though "Fallout" now sounds more appropriate than "Aftermath," har, har). He sternly assigns me to do 50-100 of those suckers a day. This exercise sounds like cake to me, especially compared to What Might Happen if I Don't, which involves some kind of horrid Medieval-era surgery which he described as "lots of fun for me to do, but not much fun for you to have." YA THINK??

Then of course I have to go to my fickle mistress, the Internet, and research uterine prolapse (Prolapse! A new recovery drink for serious athletes!).

There, I discover the following rules of Making Sure Your Womb Does Not Try to Sneak Out Your Cha-cha:

• Do at least a million kegels a day. To do them properly, pretend you are peeing and then try to hold it. Don't do this while you're ACTUALLY peeing, though—that's cheating. Just hope against hope that you're doing it right.
  
• Half a million of the kegels should be of the catch-and-release variety—just a quick squeeze followed by an immediate collapse of sheer exhaustion.
  
• The other half a million should be held for 5 seconds before relaxing. This will make you sweat more than Power Yoga and, since it's largely an invisible process, does not look nearly as cool.
  
• Never pick up anything heavy, like, say, the 5-year-old whose arrival may have precipitated this entire enterprise.
  
• Do not cough. Ever.
  
• If you're obese, lose weight. Just don't try to strength-train at any point unless you want to carry around your ovaries in your shorts.
  

I know I'm being flip, but it's actually a little scary, thinking that any sneeze might result in my dropping a cervical load, so to speak. I am, quite frankly, ready to just scoop all that stuff out and be done with it. My friend is devastated that this all means I might not get to have another baby, but I am jeeeest fine with that, considering I already got such a good kid that there is NO WAY the Universe will be this kind again. Also, I was way too old when I had him, for Pete's sake, and that was 5 years ago.

So for now, I am rocking the kegels, praying, and trying to convince my trainer that really, lifting anything over 5 lbs is a recipe for disaster and that I would explain why were he not such a young, relatively emotionally unscarred person.