Sex Ed 101: How does someone get pregnant? Featuring original artwork by Rabble
Okay, so the above is an amazing artist’s representation of a uterus. The green bits are the ovaries, the purple are the fallopian tubes, and that thing in the blue? That’s the cervix.
People who have ovaries do not continually produce eggs during their lifetime. They are basically born with all the eggs they ever release already hanging out in those sexy ass ovaries. The ovaries hold the eggs until maturity. When one is ready to be released, that asshole travels into the fallopian tubes like so:
THIS IS WHAT OVULATION IS.
(It is important to note, however that eggs can be released when they aren’t supposed to so even if you aren’t ovulating you should use a condom or some other type of contraceptive while having sex unless you are trying to get pregnant.)
So while the egg is travelling down the fallopian tubes those asshole ovaries start producing chemicals which help thicken the uterine lining. The egg, should it be fertilized, really likes it when they do that because it makes a nice comfy couch for that fertilized egg to chill out on:
If a person does not have sex while they are ovulating and the egg is not fertilized it travels down and is either shed with the lining (this is what causes a period) or reabsorbed by the body. The egg and the ovaries are assholes because they cause periods like so:
When a person DOES have sex while they’re ovulating…well…we need introduce something first. THIS is a penis:
The purple part is the actual penis, the orange bit there is the testicle (one is shown, but there are usually two), which is held in the scrotum. That yellow blob is the bladder and the blue tubing going on is called different things depending on where you’re pointing but it delivers urine and sperm, so it’s the urethra once you get into the penis. There are some other parts in this whole mechanism but they’re unimportant to this process.
The testicles produce the sperm. Unlike people with ovaries, people with penises are constantly creating sperm, whereas people with ovaries start out with their lifetime supply of eggs.
Sperm determine the sex of the fetus because they carry different types of chromosomes. The little dudes up there are an artist’s representation of what happy sperm would look like while they are chilling out in the testicles.
Now that we’ve covered that, what happens when people are having baby-making sex?
Well the penis ejaculates sperm onto/at the cervix during orgasm (it’s surprising how many people think the penis actually enters the cervix, it does not and it would be HORRIBLY PAINFUL if it did).
Meanwhile that little cervix up there is about to be affected by a vaginal orgasm. When the vagina orgasms, the cervix sort of dips and pulls sperm into the reproductive tract like so:
Obviously, not every sex act ends with a vaginal orgasm so the sperm are going to get all up past the cervix whether the vagina orgasms or not, the vaginal orgasm just helps them move along. Then the fun part begins:
Okay…so this artist rendition isn’t entirely accurate. The sperm aren’t technically fighting each other, they are fighting time, the acidity of the vagina, the cervical mucus, and not getting lost in their search for the egg all while trying to swim faster than their sperm siblings.
When a sperm reaches the egg (along with others) it has to fight to get through it faster than any others. THIS IS NOT FERTILIZATION.
When the first sperm penetrates the egg’s outer layer, it changes immediately and no other sperm are able to get inside it. They eventually die.
The DNA of the sperm combines with the DNA of the egg. THIS IS FERTILIZATION.
Once the DNA swap has occurred (fertilization) the fertilized egg starts dividing quickly.
It is now an EMBRYO. The cell division with the new DNA code (indicated by the purple dots) is taking place inside what was once the fertilized egg while the embryo travels down the uterus in order to implant on the uterine wall. This does not always happen and the embryo is expunged from the uterus. If it does happen, it is now a pregnancy (see picture below, the green embryo should be a bit higher but I was too lazy to redraw it). An embryo can implant on other things inside the vulva and when this happens, like in a fallopian tube, for example, the embryo needs to be removed either through medication or surgery because those nasty buggers like to irreparably damage one’s reproductive organs or, you know, kill your ass.
Then the embryo develops some more and blah, blah, blah….10 months (YES, 10 months) later, you get an infant passing through the vagina bits (or being ripped out of the uterus via c-section) and forever changing your body.
Are we all clear on how babies are made now? Mississippi, I’m looking at you.Love,
Rabble
It looks like I need to post this again because I’m seeing a post with all sorts of erroneous facts in it about what a pregnancy is (and is not).
Love,
Rabble
