There’s something that I haven’t talked about much on this website because it’s kind of personal and we all know how private I am about personal things. This particular thing is, however, really private, and when I use italics instead of caps you know I mean business. Can I go a single post without using an all caps sentence? I DIDN’T THINK SO.

I’ve done a lot of research on this private thing and talked to a lot of Real Living People as opposed to talking about it here because I didn’t know if anyone else out there in the World Wide Web had ever been through something similar to this private thing. But the one thing I’ve learned while keeping this site is that, huh, I am not alone. And perhaps in sharing my little private thing I might make someone else who has been through something similar not feel so alone.

Last week a certain procedure reconvened in the Armstrong household. This procedure is actually the type of procedure that got us into the situation that made reconvening this procedure so difficult, if you know what I’m saying. If you don’t know what I’m saying then I’ll break this down for you into specifics: When Leta came out of my body she ripped me apart, and the mess that she left – a mess that I felt every stitch of because the epidural had worn off by that point – didn’t heal for a very long, long time. So long, in fact, that both my best friend and my sister said to me in the subsequent months, “What? You mean you haven’t done the procedure yet? Are you serious?”

I AM SERIOUS. And I couldn’t find a blogger ANYWHERE to back me up. WHERE ARE YOU, PROCEDURE-LESS BLOGGER?

Some books said that it might take a few weeks (HA!) or months before the procedure could be reconvened, and if you’re one of those women who after only six weeks of shoving her boobs down a bottomless opossum could reconvene the procedure with a smile or maybe even an “ooh, yes” then I heartily salute your robotic, adjustable vagina. I bet yours is the type of vagina that can hum show tunes or fold sheets all by itself.

In the middle of all my depression and anxiety and daydreaming about life ending so that the pain might just go away, I honestly thought that I might not ever reconvene the procedure again. By having this baby I had destroyed the procedure part of my life. My doctor assured me that everything had healed the way it should have healed, but that maybe my scar tissue was just tender and that I needed to give it more time.

HOW MUCH TIME IS ENOUGH TIME? I hope this story SCARES THE LIVING SHIT out of some guy out there whose wife is in her third trimester. Ask yourself, buddy, just how long can YOU go without the procedure?

For some women I talked to, three months was the magic number. Others waited four or five months, and I only heard of one other story where they had to wait SIX WHOLE MONTHS to reconvene the procedure. Well, Internet, here is my story: my vagina can’t fold sheets. In fact, my vagina is so retarded that we had to wait to reconvene the procedure until after I had started my period for the first time, after I could stretch it out with A FUCKING TAMPON to get it stabilized for the procedure. YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

Jon already has a Thank You letter to Tampax written up, and after the procedure had been reconvened I was so giddy and elated that I wanted to run up and down our street naked shouting to the neighbors, “THE PROCEDURE! IT’S BEEN RECONVENED! WAKE UP EVERYBODY! RECONVENE YOUR PROCEDURE!”

On top of everything that my body has been through with the pregnancy and birth and aftermath, I was unable to reconvene the procedure for seven months and 12 days. And on each and every one of those days I had the thought that I might not ever be able to reconvene the procedure. I have friends with children Leta’s age, friends who are already pregnant again, three and four and five months pregnant, meaning their procedures reconvened in a timely, penis-friendly fashion. Where did these people get their vaginas? Did they trade in their brains?

I want to end this story with just one other tiny detail, the part about how I got a urinary tract infection from reconvening the procedure. I woke up a few days after reconvening the procedure peeing FIRE and BLOOD into the toilet, unable to veer more than a few feet from the bathroom the entire day. I want to laugh about this, because this is ridiculous, and THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT THIS STUFF when you take your baby home from the hospital, that in seven months when your vagina finally heals and you’re able to reconvene your procedure, there will be one day when your baby will spend her entire day in the high chair next to the toilet.