"Do you know how?"

[Reika]

Probably unrelated, but I once had a kitty who would curl up on my tummy and purr whenever I had cramps.  Mom said she would have understood had it been a female kitty, but how a male kitty knew to put the heat right where and when I needed it...    

I miss that cat soooo much...

Even male cats know how to make their humans feel better.

[VorFemme]

Probably unrelated, but I once had a kitty who would curl up on my tummy and purr whenever I had cramps.  Mom said she would have understood had it been a female kitty, but how a male kitty knew to put the heat right where and when I needed it...    

I miss that cat soooo much...

Maybe he just knew that you'd sit there and let him curl up next to you (and stay still) if he did it at the right time.  Cats learn quickly when & where they get their loving!  Our cats have always curled up next to me.  VorGuy, on the other hand, kicks covers off his feet if he gets too warm.  No cat curls up by his feet more than twice........

[Ambrosia Hino]

Going all the way back to the OP, my MIL was like that for awhile (still is towards SIL's hubby).

DH was on the phone with his mom one night, and out of nowhere "Is she pregnant yet? Don't you know how to do that?"
Cue his reply of "We're still practicing"

She kept that up for over 2 years, and several months after she finally stopped, we announced that we were expecting. SIL's hubby is still getting harassed about it, but not as often, I think due to (A) she does have a grandbaby on the way and (B) SIL is having some major health issues that would make being pregnant a very bad idea for now.

For more recent topics...a few weeks ago I had a pregnant (stray) cat crawl into my pregnant lap for cuddles when she went into labor. She did decide to eventually move off of me & my front porch before any of the kittens arrived though.

I seem to attract cats that want to cuddle when I have cramps. My Princess-kitty always did, and several months after she passed, we got an older male cat, that prefers my stomach for a bed. Granted, after we got him, I only had my 'time' once, we'd had him for 6 weeks when I turned up pregnant. So now he cuddles next to me, and looks offended when he gets kicked by my tummy

[Kimblee]

Going all the way back to the OP, my MIL was like that for awhile (still is towards SIL's hubby).

DH was on the phone with his mom one night, and out of nowhere "Is she pregnant yet? Don't you know how to do that?"
Cue his reply of "We're still practicing"

She kept that up for over 2 years, and several months after she finally stopped, we announced that we were expecting. SIL's hubby is still getting harassed about it, but not as often, I think due to (A) she does have a grandbaby on the way and (B) SIL is having some major health issues that would make being pregnant a very bad idea for now.

For more recent topics...a few weeks ago I had a pregnant (stray) cat crawl into my pregnant lap for cuddles when she went into labor. She did decide to eventually move off of me & my front porch before any of the kittens arrived though.

I seem to attract cats that want to cuddle when I have cramps. My Princess-kitty always did, and several months after she passed, we got an older male cat, that prefers my stomach for a bed. Granted, after we got him, I only had my 'time' once, we'd had him for 6 weeks when I turned up pregnant. So now he cuddles next to me, and looks offended when he gets kicked by my tummy

My cat Alphonse liked to lay in my lap while she had kittens. She wanted a human doula apparently.

[Ambrosia Hino]

Going all the way back to the OP, my MIL was like that for awhile (still is towards SIL's hubby).

DH was on the phone with his mom one night, and out of nowhere "Is she pregnant yet? Don't you know how to do that?"
Cue his reply of "We're still practicing"

She kept that up for over 2 years, and several months after she finally stopped, we announced that we were expecting. SIL's hubby is still getting harassed about it, but not as often, I think due to (A) she does have a grandbaby on the way and (B) SIL is having some major health issues that would make being pregnant a very bad idea for now.

For more recent topics...a few weeks ago I had a pregnant (stray) cat crawl into my pregnant lap for cuddles when she went into labor. She did decide to eventually move off of me & my front porch before any of the kittens arrived though.

I seem to attract cats that want to cuddle when I have cramps. My Princess-kitty always did, and several months after she passed, we got an older male cat, that prefers my stomach for a bed. Granted, after we got him, I only had my 'time' once, we'd had him for 6 weeks when I turned up pregnant. So now he cuddles next to me, and looks offended when he gets kicked by my tummy

My cat Alphonse liked to lay in my lap while she had kittens. She wanted a human doula apparently.

If she'd been my cat, I wouldn't have been as shocked. Considering that she's a stray, that a year ago wouldn't let anyone come within 10 feet of her (she relaxed, watching the entire street "oooh and ahhh" over her one surviving kitten...now she'll receive pets if I'm there, but she's still nervy around anyone else), I felt very honored, if not a bit grossed out to be covered in kitty blood. She did decide to move onto my front porch and out of my lap, once her year-old daughter arrived to see to her, and they moved elsewhere before things progressed further (so maybe the first hour or so was right in front of me)

[wolfie]

Probably unrelated, but I once had a kitty who would curl up on my tummy and purr whenever I had cramps.  Mom said she would have understood had it been a female kitty, but how a male kitty knew to put the heat right where and when I needed it...    

I miss that cat soooo much...

A cat's purr is at a frequency that encourages healing - that is why you sometimes see injured cats purring to themselves. I have heard many stories of sick people that had cats come to the area that was hurt, lie on it, and purr. So maybe they just know.

[Fud]

Care to expand at what frequency that is?

[wolfie]

Care to expand at what frequency that is?

Yes:

"It seems that the measurable Hertz of a cat's purr lies between 25 and 150. Coincidentally (or not) it has been found that sound frequency in this range can stimilate bone growth and healing. ¹ A newer theory is that purring releases endorphins - natural analgesics that reduce pain while healing proceeds"

http://cats.about.com/cs/catmanagement101/a/why_cats_purr.htm

[Jan74]

I just changed jobs after working in a toxoplasmosis lab for 5 years. An infected cat will only shed ONCE in it's life for 3-4 days, and as long as all feces are disposed of in 24 hours or less, the oocysts will not sporulate and become infective to people...

I had to explain this to the SOHES (Safety and Occupational Health Something Something) lady when she found out I had a positive antibody titer to Toxo and was tearful explaining how I could never have children. Erm... no... infact now I will pass on the antibodies to my child if and when I have one...

There is no reason to get rid of a cat if the woman is pregnant, just learn how to take care of it

/steps off of soapbox

Also, according to my vet, "if you are ever pregnant, just wear disposable gloves when you clean the litter". Even in that situation, you need to actually touch the feces.

[Minmom3]

I just changed jobs after working in a toxoplasmosis lab for 5 years. An infected cat will only shed ONCE in it's life for 3-4 days, and as long as all feces are disposed of in 24 hours or less, the oocysts will not sporulate and become infective to people...

I had to explain this to the SOHES (Safety and Occupational Health Something Something) lady when she found out I had a positive antibody titer to Toxo and was tearful explaining how I could never have children. Erm... no... infact now I will pass on the antibodies to my child if and when I have one...

There is no reason to get rid of a cat if the woman is pregnant, just learn how to take care of it

/steps off of soapbox

Also, according to my vet, "if you are ever pregnant, just wear disposable gloves when you clean the litter". Even in that situation, you need to actually touch the feces.

AND leave it in the box for over 24 hours.  If picked up within hours of being deposited, toxoplasmosis will not have sporulated, which is the oh-so-contagious stage of it.   Given that nobody wants to leave feces in the box any longer than they have to, it's awfully easy to stay safe.

[Bluenomi]

My cats never tried to get in the crib with any of my babies, but they'd get in my lap when I was holding one....

I'm currently pregnant, and my cat insists on sitting on my lap every chance she gets. I'm just waiting for her to get kicked through my stomach. I can't wait to see the reaction!

DD and the cat had fights when DD was still on the inside. DD would kick, the cat would poke back, DD would kick again, so the cat poked again. It went on until the cat got cranky and moved 

[Hushabye]

My cats never tried to get in the crib with any of my babies, but they'd get in my lap when I was holding one....

I'm currently pregnant, and my cat insists on sitting on my lap every chance she gets. I'm just waiting for her to get kicked through my stomach. I can't wait to see the reaction!

DD and the cat had fights when DD was still on the inside. DD would kick, the cat would poke back, DD would kick again, so the cat poked again. It went on until the cat got cranky and moved 

I'm still waiting for that to happen with the Munchkin.  I know you can feel him kick, but I've been mostly keeping the cats off my bump.  So he has fights with the laptop instead.  It's a bit one-sided but hilarious. 

[Julep]

My cat likes sleeping on my belly (since I got pregnant, never before) so much that she has taken to crawling under the covers at night to drape herself across my belly and just purrrrrr. Before five months ago, she never went under the covers and would FREAK if I tried to cover her up.

The way I see it, if I have a fussy baby, instead of singing, I'll just get the cat to purr at it. Maybe even record the purring and play it in a loop. At this point, it's got to be the most familiar sound in there, maybe moreso than my own voice or heartbeat.

[NotCinderell]

My co-worker snorted when I read that to her.  (We are bad about swapping funny stories at work.)  She said, "Honey, I was married in 1957, no one had ever talked to me about sex, no one had ever talked to my husband about sex.  But you know, it doesn't take a whole lot of education to figure that one out!

Marie Stopes became a sex educator because her first marriage was such a disaster. She was a high honours SCIENCE graduate of Munich University, yet she didn't know when she got married that sex even existed! She went to the doctor a few years after marriage to find out why she hadn't had a child, and he told her she had to have sex. She had never heard of it. Her husband was impotent.

Found this on an urban legend site.
http://snopes.com/pregnant/nosex.asp

Marie Stopes's story is directly out of her autobiography.

A friend of mine has a friend who works with infertile couples in Israel.  She told my friend that she has had couples come in who believed that they were infertile and were actually not completing the sex act correctly.  I don't know any details as to why or how, but that's what my friend told me.

[VorFemme]

In college, I heard about an early (before the 1960s - I don't remember if the instructor mentioned a decade - I'm counting back because he said one of HIS professors mentioned working for the doctor doing the infertility counseling some years later, so I assumed that the events had to have happened at least thirty to forty years earlier - so, sometime between the 1920s and the 1960s - I was in class with a forty year old professor in the mid 1980s) infertility counselling session.........

Even then, it was easier to get a sperm sample & run it under a microscope to check for motility and number of sperm - so they did that first.  The male was deemed to be fertile.........

The female was undressed..........and asked if she shaved her body hair.  Normal "female" externally - but, she'd never had any body hair.  A short examination later and a quick check to see if she had Barr Bodies in her cells.  Nope, but there was a quick explanation of why she wasn't menstruating "on a regular basis" and such...........

Male pseudo hermaphrodite given a female name, raised as a girl, and married now (to a doctor, no less) and they wanted children.  They were told that they would have to adopt - I assume (he didn't say) that the condescended testes were removed to minimize the risk of cancer from them at a later date...........

It boggled HIS mind (and ours) that a doctor wouldn't notice that his wife had no body hair and never had a period - but the condition is "rare" enough (or at least diagnosed so rarely at the time) that it probably never occurred to him.  I understand that there are more cases diagnosed in the 21st century - but that might be relating to hormones in the ground water, better diagnostic tools, and the ability to run computer searches on "symptoms" to narrow down possibilities even if you aren't seeing "Doctor Gregory House, the diagnostic whiz".