My Beautiful Cervix

No, no, that's not me bragging. It's some other woman. She's showing off her cervix in all its course-of-a-monthly-cycle glory on her blog My Beautiful Cervix.

I'm no judge when it comes to an internal organ's appearance, so I wouldn't know a beautiful cervix from an ugly one. (Right now, I'd settle for one stretched open 10 centimeters, but I'm 9 months pregnant. In terms of charting my fertility, thanks, I'm good.)

Still, her daily cervix update is interesting — she really put a lot into it (word choice, Madeline, word choice).

For 33 days, the 25-year-old doula and student midwife opened herself up (with a reusable plastic speculum) and had her head-lamp wearing boyfriend take pictures. She starts on the first day of her period and ends on the night before her next period begins.

Most notably, she includes pictures — lots and lots of pictures — of
her cervix, its changing shape and position, and a few visual samples
of her cervical mucus. If you work with people who would recognize (and
be horrified by) the business end of a pap smear, consider the blog
NSFW.

She also charts her basal body temperature, shows graphs of the whole ovulation cycle and describes how she's feeling each day (emotional, tired, tender heart-achy) to put all the pieces together. Apparently, such detailed documentation has never been done.

It's all pretty familiar-yet-fascinating and something lots of even really smart women really don't get. I mean, quiz your lady friends: do most/any know that the cervix changes positions depending on where a woman is at in her cycle? What about cervical fluid? Rising temperatures? It's all about those fertile days: can you say which days those are?

No shame if you can't because it's not that any of us learned this in health class, so focused on Day 1 to 6 as the teacher/nurse was. Teacher/nurse might not have known herself what goes on, and even if she did she'd probably get fired for telling young girls how to identify their fertile days — lest they use that info as contraception. I'll confess, I never really understood the details until a friend in grad school recounted the details of this book to anyone who would listen (female or male).

What do you think? Is the blog ridiculous? Informative? Or is she just being a show-off (perfectly round OS and all …)? And seriously, how'd she make it past Day 3, much less all the way to 33, with daily speculum insertion? That's dedication!