When it comes to getting and staying healthy, knowledge is power.

What’s there to know about your body systems? Guts are guts, right?

Not so fast.

The body is comprised of groups of organs that perform specific biological functions but work together like the most complex of ecosystems.

Like an ecosystem, when one component doesn’t do what it is supposed to, it affects the health of all of the other systems that depend on it, like so many butterflies flapping their wings in your Lady Garden. To keep your human ecosystem functioning right, it’s important to understand how your body systems work and what you can do to treat them right.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

I wanted to keep my pregnancy and our daughter’s birth as natural as possible. “Safety first, simplicity second,” my husband and I told anyone who asked. I was comfortable with my ob/gyn, a knowledgable, no-bullshit woman with whom I’d been through an earlier miscarriage. My hope was to avoid a C-section, skip labor-induction drugs like Pitocin, skip the epidural and any other narcotics, but if my safety or the baby’s was at risk we would adapt our plans.

Because of our doctor’s understanding, I never bothered to write up a birth plan, though I’ve heard of some, pages long, that sound more like diva’s concert riders. Mine would have read something like, “Please keep this simple. Try not to cut me open and help us avoid drugs. If I’m out of control, ask John. He knows what I want.”

Coping With Vaginismus

“The first time I tried to have sex, I thought, “oh, it might hurt a little—not that it’d be impossible”, says Audrey, a 23-year-old Chicago woman. “You know how you brace yourself for when a dentist is coming at you? It felt like I was bracing myself for something I wasn’t allowing to happen.”

Though Audrey didn’t know it at the time, she was suffering from a condition called vaginismus. Its name gives little hint to what actually was happening to Audrey—the muscles around the vagina contract, making it painful, if not impossible, for penetration to occur. While it doesn’t mean that other forms of sex aren’t fun, vaginal intercourse is definitely off the table until the problem gets resolved. As Audrey put it, “Your instincts have the power to push the brakes, whether you want to or not.”