Jiang Zhi went downstairs to get some air, and once she had calmed down a little, she dug out the post she had bookmarked yesterday and sent OP a private message.
【Sis! Ahhhhhhhh】
She didn’t expect the other person to reply, but after a while OP slowly sent over a 【?】
Jiang Zhi’s urge to share reached an unprecedented peak, her fingers fast enough to leave afterimages. 【Ahhh sis!!! It’s true, it’s true!! Men really can get pregnant!!!】
OP: 【My melon dropped.jpg】
【Your boyfriend too…??】
The corners of Jiang Zhi’s mouth were nearly splitting back to her ears. After she gave an affirmative reply, OP sent a comforting sticker.
Right after that she said, 【Sis, don’t worry. Although the hospital won’t allow an abortion, if you don’t want that child the government will help raise it. Not only that, they’ll hire specialists to look after the pregnant man and give an extra childbirth allowance. Having a baby won’t cost us a thing.】
There was such a good thing?
Along with the surprise, Jiang Zhi also felt it made sense.
Men getting pregnant went against common sense as things stood, and it would definitely cause no small amount of panic and unrest. The first thing the government had to do was calm the public and keep the people involved from being unable to take the shock and doing something extreme.
Jiang Zhi added OP as a WeChat friend, and after a couple of simple exchanges, OP pulled her straight into a group called “Who Gets It, Suddenly Happily a Mother.”
OP spoke in the group first. 【Let’s welcome the new mother~】
Jiang Zhi: “…” Granted, but this new identity had come very suddenly.
Squid Is Hesitating: 【Ya, welcome, welcome~ Another sis who happily became a mom!!!】
Flashing Girl ovo: 【Hahahahaha, one more pregnant man in the world, wonderful.】
Messages scrolled fast in the group, and in the blink of an eye there were more than ten welcome messages. Jiang Zhi glanced at the group info: 26 members in all, from all over the country.
Jiang Zhi marveled a little. More than twenty cases had appeared nationwide, and there wasn’t the slightest whisper online. Clearly the government’s confidentiality work really was thorough.
To find out more, Jiang Zhi quickly made herself a familiar face with the sisters in the group and got a lot of useful information out of the chat.
First, the country’s first case of a man getting pregnant appeared in a coastal region. This pregnant man was thirty-seven years old, currently five months pregnant, an advanced-age birthing father.
On the day the pregnancy was confirmed, he was immediately taken by the government to Jingshi People’s Hospital for observation and isolation. Although the medical staff cared for him with all their effort, this pregnant man’s physical condition was not good. He lost his temper and made suicide scenes every day, shouting that he wanted an abortion, his mental state quite violent.
Second, a man’s pregnancy came with physical warning signs.
A week after the sexual act there would be abdominal pain. According to the pregnant men’s descriptions, the pain felt similar to menstrual cramps, and this pain would last as long as a month.
After joint research by medical experts, the cause of the pain was finally found to be that a new organ was growing in the pelvic cavity. The native organs were being domineeringly squeezed, and the pelvic cavity was slowly stretched open and enlarged like a balloon being inflated.
The newly grown organ resembled a uterus in shape by as much as eighty percent. The only difference was that the male uterus was somewhat smaller.
When the uterus had grown to about the right size, the embryonic bud would break through the soil and start drawing nutrients to develop.
Last, and the most important of all—
Delivery!
Men had no vagina, so where were they supposed to deliver from?
There was no answer for now, because no pregnant man had delivered yet. The experts’ guesses fell into three kinds:
The first, from the excretory opening, commonly known as the chrysanthemum.
Applying the example of a woman’s natural birth, in a natural birth the child comes down through the vagina, so if a man with no vagina wanted a natural birth, in all likelihood it would come out of the only excretory opening. Besides, the sphincter is extremely elastic, so the safety factor is relatively higher.
The second, a bold guess: human potential is infinite. Since a uterus can grow, why couldn’t a birth canal grow as well?
The last method of delivery—cesarean section.
This was a method of delivery that could basically be confirmed. The pain of childbirth is recognized as level 12 pain, and the process is extremely long and agonizing. It could be foreseen that most men would not be suited to such pain and would choose a cesarean section.
Ma Xiaohua: 【My family actually already has two daughters, but my parents-in-law and my husband have always wanted a son, and they look down on my daughters as money-losing goods. Now that my husband is pregnant, I comforted him that he would definitely have a boy, and he cried from happiness. Too bad my parents-in-law still don’t know their son is carrying a third child, otherwise they’d definitely be even happier than my husband.】
Flashing Girl ovo: 【It’s fine, sis. Wait until your husband has given birth and then tell your parents-in-law, give them a surprise! Hahahaha~】
Ma Xiaohua: 【Yes, my husband is thirty-seven and still striving for a boy, it really isn’t easy for him. I definitely have to treat him well. After he gives birth, I’ll stew more milk-boosting soup so he doesn’t have to worry about not having milk to feed his son!】
This round of irony won hard.
Jiang Zhi couldn’t help thinking of the several big grandsons Old Woman Jiang was so proud of. Now it was great, boys could give birth to boys too, they could bear her lots and lots of boys, wouldn’t she roll around with joy!
In the early stage these pregnant men, like pregnant women, would have morning sickness, poor appetite or easy hunger, sleepiness, sore swollen breasts, and so on, and some of the reactions were even stronger than a pregnant woman’s.
Jiang Zhi silently noted down these possible reactions, while also thinking that Duan Heyu ran and lifted iron and worked out every day, his body as sturdy as a calf’s, so he should be fine.
When she went back, Jiang Zhi was carrying a bag of barbecue and a few bottles of drinks.
Duan Heyu was staying in a luxury single room, as fully equipped as a hotel, perfect for lying on the sofa watching TV while eating a late-night snack.
When she came in, Duan Heyu happened to be holding his phone. He put it down the moment he saw her, his expression not quite natural. “You’re back pretty fast.”
Jiang Zhi glanced at her own phone screen lighting up and going dark again, and curved her lips. “Mm, want something to eat?”
As she said this, she walked straight to the low table, took out disposable bowls and chopsticks and set them out, and skillfully arranged the barbecue neatly on a plate.
“I specially bought the grilled chicken wings and grilled oysters you like.”
There was no movement behind her. Jiang Zhi turned around suspiciously and saw Duan Heyu with one hand on the bed rail, bent over with his mouth covered, both eyebrows knotted together, his face pale.
She hurried over and grabbed the trash can. “Duan Heyu, don’t hold it in. If you want to throw up then throw up, stop holding it back.”
But Duan Heyu raised a hand to block her, turned to the side, and stubbornly swallowed it back down with a gulp right in front of her.
Jiang Zhi: “…”
Duan Heyu propped his feet up as if nothing had happened. “Come, present all the good food to this young master.”
It hardened. Her fist hardened.
Jiang Zhi took a deep breath and silently repeated three times, he’s a pregnant man, he’s a pregnant man, he’s a pregnant man. Looking at Duan Heyu suffering alive for the sake of his face, she was utterly helpless.
“Roll down here and eat it yourself.”
Duan Heyu lay straight down and pulled the quilt over his head. “This young master isn’t hungry anymore.”
Jiang Zhi really couldn’t hold back and slapped him on the backside. Never mind that it was through the quilt, she had also held back her strength, but that kid Duan Heyu still let out exaggerated howls. He was about to say something when he suddenly froze.
Jiang Zhi reacted fast. In a flash of lightning and flint [1]In a flash of lightning and flint (dianguang huoshi, 电光火石) Idiom, in a split second jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3234063_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3234063_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); she flung the quilt open and shoved the trash can up to his face, ordering, “Throw up!”
Duan Heyu opened his mouth and threw up in one wa like a waterfall.
Afterward Duan Heyu was like a body with its soul drained out, lying stiff and straight on the bed, staring blankly with a pair of dead-fish eyes.
Jiang Zhi came back from taking the trash out and was a bit speechless at the sight of him. She went over and poked him. “Come on, is it that serious? What haven’t I seen of you? Have you burped and farted in front of me so rarely?”
How could that be the same?
Duan Heyu retorted inwardly. However casual he had been before, what he showed then was a real man’s nature. But this thing of his wasn’t a real man’s nature.
It was called morning. Sickness!
He couldn’t accept showing an unmanly side of himself in front of Jiang Zhi. It was too humiliating.
“You don’t understand.”
Jiang Zhi kept poking him. “How would I understand if you don’t say it? There are plenty more sides of you that you won’t want me to see from now on. Are you going to keep hiding from me? That works too. Someone’s looking after you anyway, and I can go do my own things.”
Duan Heyu was instantly unwilling. He grabbed her hand and said, “Nice dream! You stay with me and you’re not allowed to go anywhere.”
He hadn’t told his family about the pregnancy. The nurse’s aides were all hired by the hospital, professional and attentive in their care, no worse than the housekeeper at home. But he just wanted Jiang Zhi at his side, even if she couldn’t do anything.
Jiang Zhi: “All right, all right, I’ll stay with you. Nurture the pregnancy with an easy mind.”
The barbecue she had bought that evening couldn’t be eaten, so it all went as a bargain to Duan Xiao.
Duan Heyu had morning-sickness reactions to all greasy and spicy food and couldn’t stand even a whiff of it. He blamed her for not finding out the situation beforehand, which left him in the end throwing up nothing but sour water.
Jiang Zhi opened all the windows in the room to air it out. The night wind poured in, a bit cold.
She sat on the sofa rubbing her arms, and once the smell had mostly cleared, she closed the windows and went to the water dispenser to pour a cup of hot water.
“Get up, drink some hot water and your stomach will feel better.”
She hauled Duan Heyu up and stuffed the cup into his hands.
Duan Heyu frowned and drank it down bit by bit.
But only a moment later he threw up all the water he had just drunk, leaning against the head of the bed listless and extremely weak.
Jiang Zhi had never seen Duan Heyu looking this close to death. Her heart lurched, and she quickly pressed the bedside bell to call Duan Xiao over.
Duan Xiao specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and was one of the few young, handsome doctors in the Haishi hospital with excellent medical skill. He also happened to be family to Duan Heyu, so he naturally became his attending physician.
“Morning sickness is a normal physical reaction in early pregnancy, there’s no need to be too nervous. Keep to a light diet as usual, exercise in moderation, and when you feel nauseous you can hold a slice or two of ginger in your mouth to ease the symptoms, or a cup of fresh ginger milk works too.”
“Usually the morning sickness symptoms slowly disappear at around three months. Just get through this stretch and it will be fine.”
Duan Heyu was two months pregnant now, which meant he had to endure another month.
In that instant countless resentful thoughts surged up in him, and he demanded frantically, “So why did I get pregnant? Why do men get pregnant?”
Damn it, this was absurd beyond absurd. His life was so bitter!
Duan Xiao shrugged to show he didn’t know.
To this day it was a mystery. Ever since cases of men getting pregnant began appearing one after another all over the country half a year ago, the top authorities of the medical world, researchers in biology, and scientists in other fields had all failed to research out a clue.
Looking at it from a metaphysical direction, it was as if Nüwa had on a whim played a swapping game with men and women, letting men grow a uterus and conceive life while women took over the role men had held before.
Unbelievable, yet nothing could be done about it.
Duan Xiao looked at his cousin raging in impotence with pity and comforted him, “Take it easier. At least Miss Jiang hasn’t abandoned you, she didn’t haul a locomotive off in the night and run.”
Duan Heyu: “…”
Duan Xiao: “Tsk, what’s with that look? I’m not trying to scare you, but the other halves of several pregnant men have been scared off. They’re in the hospital right now nurturing their pregnancies while picking their feet and crying. Do you think everyone is as blessed as you?”
Want this blessing for yourself?
Duan Heyu wasn’t comforted in the slightest. Instead the gloating in Duan Xiao’s smile made his liver ache with anger.
After Duan Xiao left, Duan Heyu lay in bed alone sulking, while Jiang Zhi happily played games with her best friend. The BGM coming out of her phone was so cheerful that it made him look all the more bleak and miserable.
Of course Jiang Zhi hadn’t failed to notice his mood, but so what if she knew? No amount of comfort would be as good as him working it out and accepting it himself.
Besides, she actually harbored a bit of a revenge mindset. A chauvinist dog of a man like Duan Heyu deserved to be dealt with!
She still remembered how lightly he had once asked her not to show her face outside after they married, to be a relaxed full-time wife at home, just have children and raise children.
Heh heh heh.
Now wasn’t this quite good, step by step realizing his happy life of relaxedly having children and raising children.
References[+]