Being pregnant is like getting high. There, I said it.

My youth wasn't misspent. I achieved a lot at uni, work wise, friends, relationship etc. Doesn't mean I didn't indulge, like an increasing proportion of young Australians, in a little illegal fun now and then. Are our society's legal drugs really any different from our illegal ones? Apart from production standards (which are a concern) I'd suggest that on some levels, they're not. But that's a different debate.

So I went to parties and took ecstasy. I got into the 'scene' when it was still cool to get messy and spend the evening curled in the ecstatic embrace of friends and strangers, talking about our childhoods. I got loved up having my arm stroked; I listened with passionate intent as someone described how it felt to know they were gay; I told my deepest yearnings to friends and strangers alike, and had them listen with sincere and non-judgmental interest; I entangled my limbs with friends and held them firmly and lovingly as we grinned stupidly at each other, cigarette in shaking hand, gum churning between our teeth.

And in the immortal words of Bill Hicks - I had a damn good time. Anyway, maturity and the need to be functional on Sundays slowly led me away from all that, which is probably good for my long term mental health.

Since I've become pregnant, I've been having lots of flash backs to those times. I find myself stroking the inside of my arm and blissing out on the feelings. I find myself with almost uncontrollable needs to rub my skin against Mr T's, just cos it feels so amazing. I find myself intensely interested in the inner workings of people's hearts, and at the same time particularly disinterested in goepolitics (something that has always interested me). I sometimes feel...well...gacked out - so loved up it kinda hurts.

I was reading in a pregnancy book that oxytocin levels rise during pregnancy, and I think this could explain a lot of it. I'm starting to feel very earth mothery, the sunshine is just so damn beautiful, and I want to talk about feelings. And I don't feel like these things are coming from an existential part of myself. I'm not feeling like this because I know, intellectually, that I'm pregnant and that is what I think pregnant woman should feel like. It feels like these feelings are intuitive, quite aside from what my conscious brain is thinking.

So while its lovely for me to bliss out on these feelings, and heck there's gotta be some benefits to the nausea and exhaustion I've been experiencing, I think it raises interesting challenges to my understanding of the world...

I've always railed against people (not mentioning Tony Abbott's name) who believe that women and men are intrinsically different. When this opinion comes from the patriarchy it seems to imply that women are weaker in many ways than men, and only stronger in ways that don't matter in our society. Yet right now my body chemistry seems to be wiring up for me to be particularly nurturing, and intuitively skilled at responding to the needs of others. And this is due specifically to the fact that I'm a women who is pregnant.

Anyway, this was just a thought I had, that I thought was interesting. I wonder if its kind of perverse to draw a parallel between getting high and being pregnant...