This week I sneezed unexpectedly. You know, one of those sneezes that comes out of nowhere. There wasn’t any kind of dust, or invasive snot or twitchy oncoming cold passed on by my favourite germ ridden turdler. None of that, just a normal, out-of-the-blue, sneeze … and then it happened. A little bit of wee came out.
I am not a newcomer to a ‘little bit of wee’. I’ve laughed so hard, wee has come out. I’ve coughed so hard, wee has come out. I’ve been holding so long stuck in traffic, a little bit of wee has come out, I’ve had two litres of water and sat in the waiting room for an ultrasound, and a little bit of wee has come out, I’ve been so drunk, that more than a little bit of wee has come out. But I have not ever sneezed while standing at the kitchen bench, doing nothing, and a little bit of wee come out.
In that very first moment of wetness, my brain went from – ‘what’s that’, to ‘oh fuck, I weed’, to ‘fuck me, will I wee during every sneeze now?’, to ‘I’m going to need to buy more period undies’ all in less than a second. I knew about this phenomenon and was even aware that at some point this affliction would be one I would have to concern myself with but I was overwhelmed that it was right now, and eternally grateful I was in my kitchen and not in a staff meeting at work.
I am a woman from a family of mostly women. I have heard the women of my life, their friends, the old ladies at the bowling club when I was ten, all talk about just that little bit of wee. In recent years it’s become a topic amongst my friends. Noticing that the wait time is shorter, that post baby we can’t just pretend we don’t need to go anymore, “No, I can’t just hold it until the next level of the shopping centre,” even to the point that we now plan toilet visits and like the toddlers we talk to all day long, ask ourselves, ‘should I wee before I get in the car?’
It’s there, alive and well, in the discourse of my life with women at all angles of my life, but this moment, and this ‘little bit of wee’, was entirely different than any wee before. This was the wee of ageing. Like the grey hair that now breeds like randy rabbits before myxomatosis, this wee is the next thing in accepting my body’s dangerous slide into middle age.
I don’t even think it’s a slide anymore, I think I’ve landed, knee deep and in the bodily fluids of middle age. And like with all things to do with my body telling me I’m old, I fought the best way I knew how. With Google.
I was less interested in being lectured by Google about my lack of preparation for child birth by not doing my kegels before I had a baby and more interested in what I could do now that I haven’t done them. At first, all of the advice was the same. Do your bloody kegels. Hold and squeeze and count and work up to pace and rhythm and duration and maybe you’ll even have better orgasms.
Fuck off Google. If I’ve already had a little bit of unwelcome wee, the orgasms are not the motivation here. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with the ones I was having. What is wrong here, is the little bit of wee. Google showed me videos and diagrams of how to Kegel and still I wasn’t sold. I’ve tried those before. I will do them while I sit at red lights on my way to work and by the third set of lights I’ll be so distracted by the crime podcast on the radio that I’ll have forgotten about whatever it was I was supposed to suck, tuck and squeeze for three seconds at a time.
Nope, what I needed was something else.
In my frenzy of panic and google search during turdler nap time, I messaged a friend about my ‘little bit of a wee’. She’s a good friend and just had a baby. I assumed during all of that awake time she’s having lately that maybe the post partum algorithm on her phone had thrown her something useful.
It had. In the depths of early morning AM, while she shopped for mountains of shit she didn’t need to keep herself awake and her baby alive and attached to her chest, she had seen a ‘tool’ that worked with an app on your phone so that when you did suck, tuck and squeeze you would collect a gem or seven and climb yourself through levels of platform madness. “Like candy crush for you vag?” I asked.
“I guess.” She said.
So I googled. And read reviews and sent those reviews to my other friends. Like every other Gen X/Gen Y cusper, I fall victim to consumerism and nostalgia. Terrible mobile games that play on our nostalgia for Tetris and Mario and a time when the video games we played were simpler and you didn’t get vertigo from the spinning. And some very smart human, who understands the fear of wetting your pants as a middle aged woman in public, has joined the two. Fucking clever.
A measured silicone joystick that your kegels squeeze to make the little character on the screen move and jump. Apparently there are nine different games you can play with your joystick. NINE! Nine multi level games that I can only assume when you get to the end of them you can squat and pick your laundry basket without using your hands.
Fit kegels. It is something to aspire to and something I could boast about on my tinder profile. The gadget is on the higher end of the price market, and I am weighing up whether a lifetime of wee filled period undies would be less expensive or more than the investment, but I think my biggest problem would be the app.
In our house when you download an app, it appears on every device. I’m not sure I’m ready to have the conversation with my tiny human who broke my kegels, why she can’t play the game with the pretty birdie and the purple gems or if my already devastated sleep patterns can withstand a ‘I just have to finish this level’ before I finally turn out the light at 1am. Who am I kidding, I did a little wee in the kitchen, my poor little birdie is going to run out of puff long before I can get to the next level.
It’s an expensive silicone toy that looks a lot like the other expensive silicone toy I have but much smaller. It did make me wonder what else it does, but none of the reviews or the website claim that little added side benefit. I’m secretly glad that’s the case. How on earth can you concentrate on winning if that happens everytime you play? And it might make it slightly more awkward if you’ve decided that this week’s episode of Grey’s would be a great simultaneous activity and the mailman brings your shopping to the door all at the same time.
Nope, it’s to help you hold your wee in and in some people – might help you orgasm longer. I’d just be happy with the wee.
@perifit if you’re reading this… yes I would happily try it out for a review! #sendmeyourjoystick
life in big frilly knickers 