If They Taught This in High School Health Class...

Warning: If you're thinking about having a baby in the near future, I'd recommend skipping this posting.  If you know someone who is currently pregnant or taking care of a baby, stop reading this and go do something nice for her.

And now, to address the title of my blog. It comes from my continual thought that "If they taught this in high school health class, there'd be a lot less pregnant teenagers."  I'm thoroughly convinced that they teach all of the wrong things in high school health.  As I recall, the message went something like, "If you have sex, you will get pregnant, catch a disease, and possibly die."

A compelling argument, and one that worked on me, but it lacks immediacy for a lot of teens (especially since the advent of penicillin).  To fix this problem, schools used to have kids carry around a 5 pound sack of flour wrapped in a diaper to simulate parenthood (old school, yes - effective, no).  These days they have fancy babies that cry and move, and still completely fail to give teens the real parenthood experience.  So if I was in charge of high school health class, the curriculum would go something like this:

• Week 1: Feel nauseous, throw up a lot, and eat nothing but mac and cheese or pizza for all of your meals.  Cry when your favorite cereal runs out.  Get motion sickness, throw up in the car, and brush your teeth at Walmart.  Cry when the store doesn't have the item you want to buy.  Throw up every time you try to brush your teeth.  Cry when someone looks at you funny.
• Week 2: Try to go out for the evening.  Discover that none of your pants button.  Realize that you don't yet look pregnant, just fat.  Inform your husband you're never leaving the house again.
• Week 3: Gain 30 pounds.  Discover even your maternity clothes no longer fit.  Ask for help every time you want to get up from the sofa.  Run to the bathroom every 30 minutes day and night.
• Week 4: Attend a child birth class.  Discover all the incredibly disgusting things your body will do the weeks immediately after giving birth (I'll spare you the details here).
• Week 5: I'd suggest simulating the pain of childbirth, but that would be torture even by the Bush administration's standards.  Instead, stay up all night doing intense cardio.  Get handed a small baby simulator (BS) that doesn't care how tired you are.  Discover that your pre-maternity clothes still don't fit.
• Week 6: Wake up every 2 hours at night for a 1/2 hour feeding of baby simulator.  Have BS cry every 2 hours during the day.  Change diapers, feed BS, rock BS, give BS pacifier.  BS continues to cry.
• Week 7: Buy the wrong brand of diapers.  Wash poop out of 2 outfits each day.  Get thrown up on so many times you run out of clean shirts.  Do laundry, clean house, and cook meals during nap time.
• Week 8: Have BS throw up in store.  Wake up every 4 hours at night to feed BS.  Get peed on by BS while changing diapers.  Realize you don't care who sees your breasts in public, as long as BS stops crying and people in the grocery store stop staring at you like you're torturing her.
• Week 9: Turn in your baby simulator.  If you and baby have both survived, receive an "A".  If you look well rested, your makeup's done, and your hair is styled, receive an "F".  You obviously did not attend to your BS.

Republican presidents and the Pope, you can thank me later for solving the teen pregnancy problem.