Pregnancy is harmful (was some meaningless digest number or other)

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:23:12 -0000


Simon Bray:

> Being active during pregnacy is definetly the norm in the world,

Yep, it's that or die. Well, in some parts of the world.

> I think that Jane needs to look beyond medieval belief systems.

No idea what you're on about here. AFAIK the women in our office have nothing to do with medieval belief systems. Self-inflicted injury yes, whinging yes, expecting special treatment yes, medieval belief systems no.

> However just to keep
> things on a roleplaying line, here are some examples of
> warrior women who fought while pregnant, from Earth's history.

And all fascinating stuff - but all this shows is that it is possible to fight despite being pregnant. It's also possible to fight with quite severe injuries, I gather. Humans can be amazingly tough and heroic if they have to. It doesn't suggest that pregnancy has no bad effects on one's ability to fight, or to do anything else, only that the effects can be ignored if you've got enough incentive.

And the Dark Age world knew this.

Try having a look at the story of Emain Macha. It seems that some idiot Irishman or other (name varies) boasted that his wife could outrun all the king's horses and chariots. The king, getting a bit miffed at this, said "prove it, or die". Idiot Irishman had overlooked the fact that his wife (Macha) was currently heavily pregnant, and was not best pleased to be asked. She pleaded to be allowed to postpone the race till after her pregnancy was over, the various men involved refused. So she augmented with her "Loves husband" (or possibly her "you're not going to kill him, I will"), won the race, then collapsed at the end, gave birth to twins ("Emain Macha" means "Macha's twins"), and cursed all Ulstermen to suffer the pain of childbirth for five days whenever the kingdom was in danger, for the next nine generations. Which, later, led to CuChulainn defending the place alone.

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