HerFamily.ie contributor, Sharyn Hayden has written a book. You know, along with being a stand-up comedian, presenter, actress, mother to two kids and a dog and creating and running the brilliant website RaisingIreland.com, she's written a book.
We're feeling impressed and exhausted in equal measure. Sharyn lives in Dublin with her husband, Alan (AKA 'Ass Monkey') and children. Her weakness is Meanies crisps combined with grated cheddar in a white roll with butter for lunch. Fact.
All week we will have exclusive extracts from Sharyn's hilarious literary tour de force,
I Forgot To Take My Pill! – An honest Diary of a First-time Mum. Chapters with intriguing titles like "
Daisy trumps willy" and "
Snatch to the wind" will be winging their way to you all week.
First up:
Prologue - Vaginal Trickery
A friend of mine once drunkenly confessed that she had deliberately gotten pregnant. As in, she got pregnant on purpose without the express consent of the, you know, owner of the sperm. Their relationship had been wavering between being on, off, and on again for a few years and she elected to take matters into her own hands. Or in this case - into her own vagina.
I clearly remember all of the details she relayed to me that night: they went to Spain on their holidays
(where else would an Irish person go?), and on their very last night, she broke out the Irresistible Ride Me Now Dress. She made sure to get both of them completely pickled drunk and then shagged him senseless on an otherwise unoccupied pool table while an English drag queen called bingo numbers in the pub next door.
It was that kind of steamy, protection-free sex that makes babies, she said. And whadda you know, a few weeks later she was knocked up and by the time of this confession, they had a one-year-old.
‘Er, really?’ says I. ‘And what did you tell him at the time? Like, how did you explain it?’
I was, frankly, a bit unsure as to whether or not I should really be hearing this at all. I mean, isn’t that one of the worst clichés in the world about women – ‘She Got Pregnant To Trap A Man’? (a nearby cousin, in the cringe factor, to ‘She Got Her Boobs Done To Keep Her Fella Happy’).
And here I was, sharing a plate of nachos and a few glasses of wine, with at least one woman who was living proof that the weird urban legend exists?
‘I told him I was pregnant of course,’ my friend slurred as she poured the last of the bottle of wine into our glasses - most of it into hers and some of it right there onto the bar table.
‘But what did you tell him about how you got pregnant?’ I pushed.
‘Oh that.’ She waved her hand dismissively as if this part of the story wasn’t exactly the most important bit. ‘I just told him I forgot to take my pill, is all. D’ya have any smokes?’
My friend doesn’t smoke. But then, I hadn’t taken her for a vaginal man-trapper either. I might note that said one-year-old baby hadn’t slept for the year since his arrival and her ‘Zero-To-Drunkenness-ometer’ was way low, an unfortunate side effect to sleep deprivation.
The mere whiff of a night out on the tiles can make the most orderly of individuals conduct themselves in a manner that can only result in complete mortification (And from what I hear, often times with the neighbours. Nothing like telling the person that you have to live next door to forever, that you would be totally open to the concept of Swinging. ‘Juss say the worddddd,’ you slur at them, thinking you’re winking when in fact your eyes have been closed for the last ten minutes).
Conscious as I was of my friend’s fragile and wine-soaked state on that Night of Unsolicited
Confessions, I was still dismayed by her. I mean, whatever happened to ‘The Rules’ or ‘Men are from Mars...’ and all of that shite. Don’t call him first; when he does leaves a message, wait X amount of time before calling back, never be too available etc.
Nowhere in those handbooks does it suggest, ‘As a last straw, use your uterus as leverage, fill it with a baby, and force said man to co-parent that baby with you for the rest of your lives. That’ll learn him.’
I hope it’s obvious that I’m not endorsing her approach in any way, but I have to tell you that my friend did end up marrying this guy and they actually really do love each other. That is, I assume, because her husband is not, and never will be, privy to this act of vaginal trickery.
But here’s a little tip, just a smidgeon of moral advice that I would glean from this story and pass on to you: the next time you find yourself in a relationship that isn’t going so great, don’t go getting all pregnant on the situation. Take a little breather and crack one off to a Johnny Depp movie of your choice at home. Like a normal person.
Sharyn Hayden's book
I Forgot to Take my Pill is available to order on
Amazon.
