I'd like to trade please...

(Warning: this post is entirely about female genitalia. Male readers, i.e., my father, you have been warned.)

"I am tired of having a vagina. How' bout you take it for the next twenty years?" This is a direct quote from a conversation Hubby and I had before he left for work. After surviving the world's worst and longest lasting chest cold/infection, I am now being rewarded with an antibiotics-induced yeast infection. "Come on", I told him, "I've done the hard time with all the baby-birthing and everything. You'll just need to coast to menopause." His response, other than looking at me like I was a lunatic, "Hells no."

Well who can blame him? Having a vagina, even under normal circumstances, is like having a classic, old car - it leaks, it requires a lot of upkeep and can be slow to warm up at times. Having a penis, it seems would be like having a brand new sports car - requiring little to no upkeep and can go from zero to sixty in thirty seconds.

I would like to experience peeing in the woods, on a cold day without freezing to death or soaking the back of my pants, or feet, with urine. I would like H, just once, to take over the two days a month I am crippled by cramps, but am expected to swallow handfuls of Advil so I can function normally. Seriously, if this were the normal course of events each month for men, "period days" would be worked into the vacation/sick day scenario in the workplace.

Even the list of things that can go wrong with lady bits, from the trivial to life-threatening, is about ten times longer than the one for the twig and berries. And half of the list is from having sex with men! And look at reproductive cancers, the female versions can be dangerous, deadly and insidious. You can live with prostate cancer for years! Never mind the fact that ovarian cancer, unlike prostate cancer, can't reliably be detected with a blood test. Imagine if that situation were flipped, and men were required to have someone sticks their hands inside them once a year (I seem to be dwelling a lot on this lately, huh?)? "We've spent enough on the war! Throw some money at the NIH and get this thing fixed!!!"

Notice pregnancy and childbirth's marked absence from my shit list. While, yes, pregnancy can be a pain in the ass, and childbirth hurts like a motherfucker, that is the one part of the vagina experience that wouldn't trade for the all the world. I often felt bad for H, during my pregnancies, that he never got to experience what it felt like to carry a child. Then I had to get up and pee for the tenth time in half an hour and that feeling passed.

So I am stuck with the stuff God gave me, and, there are times I hate it. I haven't even hit menopause yet - can't wait to see what a twisted hormonal roller-coaster ride that will be (buckle up, H). But thinking about it, I will admit, there are two advantages we do have over men. I never had to fear wearing sweatpants during puberty, for fear a wayward erection would humiliate me and no one was able to end a schoolyard fight with me by kicking me in the balls.

*And I guarantee when my OB/GYM returns my call to discuss treatment options, it will be, on my cell, right in the middle of school dismissal, where it is so convenient to be using the words "vaginal discharge".