Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters

If you’ve been paying attention, we are sure you know that sex is how a baby is made, and we will definitely talk a lot more about sex stuff in this book. For now, let’s concentrate on getting this anatomy straight. It seems like a lot to learn, but it makes more sense when you understand how it all connects and works together. Let us take you on an amazing, swirly, twistyturny journey that will start with a sperm and end with a pregnancy happening in a female. Ready? Here we go.• Sperm are made in the testes. (You know that by now, right?)

• They travel into the epididymus (incubator), where they hang out for a few weeks until they grow and mature.

• With sexual excitement (we’ll get to that later), they are pushed through another tube called the vas deferens. In the vas deferens, they pass the seminal vesicles and prostate gland where they pick up their nutrients and fluids (snacks) and officially become semen.

• As the journey out continues, the sperm travel into the penis ,and with ejaculation, the semen squirts out of the penis through the urethra.

• If they come out during sexual intercourse, they find themselves in a woman’s vagina (hey, where are we? how’d we get here?). And they’re off, up the vagina, through the cervix, into the uterus, then into one of the fallopian tubes. Little do they know, there is usually only one egg. So that means about HALF of them will make a wrong turn down the empty fallopian tube (you know how men don’t like to ask for directions. . . .).

• Anyway . . . ahoy! After a long upstream swim, some (actually many many thousands) of the sperm finally reach the egg that has been floating peacefully down the fallopian tube since it ovulated. Eggs only live about 24 to 48 hours after ovulation, but sperm can live up to a week, so timing is important.

• They all surround the egg and start wiggling their way into it. Once one sperm gets through the egg’s wall, a special chemical is released that prevents any others from getting in. It’s like a lock down (or getting grounded!).

• The egg and sperm, now together, will share their genes (DNA or biological information that determines how a person looks, grows, etc.), and they begin to grow into a ball of cells that can eventually become a baby. The ball of cells (called an embryo) will then travel back into the uterus. It settles into the thick, lush, nutrient-rich endometrium (remember the “bed”?).

• Blood vessels from the mother begin to feed the pregnancy, and it continues to grow for the next nine months into a real, live baby! The birth of that baby is another story we don’t have space for in this book, but it is incredible!

It’s an amazing miracle!

8

S-E-X

When you hear the word sex, what do you think of? Your parents or grandparents may refer to sex as “the birds and the bees.” Whatever. Most people think of that penis-in-vagina thing, but there’s really a lot more to it. What about feeling attracted to someone? Holding hands? Kissing? Touching? Intercourse? Oral sex? All of these are part of sex. And the penis-in-vagina thing is usually near the end, not the beginning, of sex. See? There’s a lot to talk about when we say that very big little three-lettered word, S-E-X.

Sex: The Basics

Let’s start with the basics. From a scientific viewpoint, pregnancy is just a sperm and an egg coming together at just the right time to make a new living creature. For many animals, that’s about all there is to it. You might see frogs mating in your backyard (maybe you just thought they were playing piggyback). You probably have seen a dog trying to mate with another dog (or sometimes someone’s leg). But for humans, who have the unique ability to feel love, to communicate, to bond with other humans and to express feelings, sex is a much bigger deal! It should involve a lot of emotional closeness and intimacy, a lot of trust and comfort. It should be something that both people are ready for and agree to do.

Puberty is when your body becomes sexually mature. But to be mature enough for responsible sexual activity is another whole long and involved process that includes your emotions, your sense of self and your ability to be in a healthy relationship. Just because you have the parts and the plumbing doesn’t mean you’re ready to use them (more about this later).