Amelia Grace

I miss the days when men were afraid of childbirth; when they would take to the road in anxious desperation, trying to hide the grotesquely bloody scene behind them in a cloud of kicked-up dust. I almost miss the days when a woman on her period was considered unclean, because at least then she would be left alone while she coped with her female trials. It seems that nowadays men just can’t get their noses out of our business.

When you weigh the value of each gender’s contributions and sacrifices regarding conception and birth, and everything in-between, the scales appear to be quite lopsided.

On the male side, we have the one sperm that activates the dormant female egg. This sperm is a whopping 25 micrometres. Consisting of a head, mid-piece, and tail, its sole purpose is to reach the egg – a process in which the man who releases the little tyrant into the complex world of a woman’s reproductive organs, isn’t involved in. As soon as the deed is done his part in the miracle of life is complete.

Now let’s hear the female side of the story. The egg is a little bigger than the sperm; 85,000 times bigger to be exact, but we’ll let it slide because the weight doesn’t really bog us down that much. At the beginning that is. Once that lucky ...