Amateur Brain Surgery

The Nurse occasionally makes extra pocket money writing website copy. At the moment she’s writing about how to tone up weakened pelvic floor muscles. Which is all rather unpleasant and reminds her why she’s never wanted children! 

Just about everyone has kids but that doesn’t mean it’s de rigeur. It’s a choice. In the hope that lots of bouncy, fertile young females and hormone-tortured males’ll read this post, The Nurse feels duty bound to point out the top five benefits of remaining child-free. If you’re currently considering dropping a sprog make yourself a coffee, sit down and read on…

5. pelvic floor hell: your pelvic floor muscles will probably go to shite when you give birth. This means, in addition to the risk of pregancy-related piles, you’ll be farting like a sailor, leaking urine and wearing incontinence pants. So if you want to keep ‘em tight, say no to los bambinos.

4. loads of free time: It only takes one child to eat up all of your spare time.  Every second of it. In effect, you put everthing except the child on hold for at least eighteen years. Life’s very short and - The Nurse believes - it is extremely beautiful. To be truly healthy, your spirit needs time and space and peace in which to reflect. Uness you really want to spend a great chunk of life running yourself ragged without a second to stop and stare, reconsider becoming a parent.

3. Freedom of speech and action: The minute a child comes into the room, bang goes adult fun and stimulating conversation. Children, apparently, need to be protected from all sorts of things and once you’ve got one, you lose a whole load of adult rights and privileges. The right to smoke, swear, take the occasional toke, get mildly squiffy, mention sex, war or death… the list is depressingly long. If you love the freedom of being a grown up, stay child free.

2. money:  If you can bear the thought of working your backside raw for twenty years only to spend it all on a spectacularly ungrateful little Dwayne or Kylie, go ahead and procreate. But if you prefer to travel, buy lovely things, live and sleep well, look younger, have fewer or no worries and pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time, try the no-child route.

1. The best years of your life: “There are loads of things I wanted to do, but then the kids came along” is a familiar cry. As is, “I love them to bits and I wouldn’t be without them now. But if I’d known how hard it was, I’d have thought twice about having them”. It’s fine to use up the best, most active, fittest and productive years of your life looking after kids. As long as you realise what you’ll be sacrificing. You can park your life on the sideline until they leave home. But you might get run over by a bus tommorrow, mightn’t you? Then you’d be sorry.

If The Nurse has made even one lust-stricken teenaged couple or forty-something first timer think again about bringing yet another child into an overcrowded world, she’ll consider her job done.