Let's Talk About: My Feminist Pregnancy

A feminist pregnancy starts with the acknowledgment that pregnancy is a choice. All female people have the right and responsibility to make the choice for themselves. And although it is one of the most unique and powerful things our sex can do, it can be devastating to the body and emotional well being of the would be mother. It is a choice that some females will choose not to participate in and that is a choice that must be respected. I want to share my experience with you all, because pregnancy is a time when females are extremely vulnerable. A word before we begin: Every pregnancy is different. Every pregnant person will have a different experience. This is just my experience.

I had planned to love being pregnant. I was going to be the embodiment of the earth mother and glowing with thick haired beauty. I was going to eat all my vegetables and do prenatal yoga every day and when it was “my time” I would birth my baby in a soothing environment filled with white candles and Enya playing.

This is only a slight over exaggeration of my intentions. It is also about as far from the reality of my pregnancy and my son’s birth as it’s possible to be.I had a long pregnancy that resulted in the birth of a happy, healthy, perfect baby boy. For that I am eternally grateful. But the whole experience left me feeling strangely disempowered.

When you become pregnant you suddenly are expected to accept less bodily autonomy, and less respect as an individual than you had before. People will notice you, intrude upon your life and privacy, and then expect you to thank them for it. The constant balancing of the things that should be done “for the good of the baby” with your own wants and desires; at times this balancing act can run up against biology.

Although my baby was healthy throughout my whole pregnancy, I was not. I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Which sounds like a Harry Potter spell, but sadly is not. For those who are fortunate not to know, it means that I threw up my whole pregnancy. Many pregnant people get morning sickness during their first trimester, some nausea that can come any time of the day, but usually ebbs away after some food or water and is over by the second trimester (13 weeks). Hyper G (for short) lasts the whole pregnancy and is characterized by intense nausea, vomiting, and dehydration. I lost 20 pounds my first trimester and was hospitalized twice for dehydration. Kate Middleton, the Princess and Duchess in England, also suffered from this condition during her pregnancies. Unfortunately as a result I had to leave my job, not many employers want to pay you for 8 hours of sitting in the ladies room holding onto the toilet. And because I was a part time retail employee I was unable to qualify for any sort of leave. It struck our delicate financial situation.

As my pregnancy progressed I got to the point where simple tasks became almost impossible. I was so exhausted that taking my dog for a walk was an almost herculean ordeal. I planned my meals based around what would be the least unpleasant to throw back up.

I sank into depression. I had wanted to become pregnant so badly, and when I got pregnant it was terrible. People, random strangers, wanted to touch me. Or talk to me. People thought it was their job to tell me how to parent before my child was even out of my body. Older women would approach me at the grocery store and cluck their tongues when they peered into my grocery cart, but how do you explain to a stranger that you’re not trying to starve your baby, you’re just trying to eat something that won’t make you vomit. People would offer advice. It got to the point where even the most benign statements like “You must be so happy” would send me into a spiral of anger and despair. “No” I’d want to reply “I’ve never been more miserable”.

Feelings of shame overwhelmed me. I felt like I was already a terrible mother and my child wasn’t even born. On top of that there was a weird feeling of stigma to my growing belly. As if physical proof of the fact that I’d had sex was somehow shameful. I had never felt shame about my sexual life before then, nor since. But while I was pregnant it felt like a great neon sign was flashing over my head that screamed I HAD SEX! And for some reason that was a bad thing.

At every prenatal appointment my doctor would check in. “The baby is doing great” he’d tell me. He’d ask me how I was doing “Fine, just still sick”. One appointment I lost it. I sobbed to him that I was so tired of being sick, I couldn’t eat anything healthy or take my prenatal vitamins. Very few foods would stay down and I knew I shouldn’t be eating them (Nachos and iced coffee). My doctor told me “Baby will get what the baby needs. You need to take care of yourself”. I cried because I was scared and hurting, tired and starving and nauseated, bored and overwhelmed. Finally he gave me permission. He told me that if I could keep down nachos to go ahead and eat nachos. If I could drink iced coffee then go for it. Anything that I could eat and keep down was fair game, and gave me permission to take care of myself. Messy house? Who cares! Baby won’t care if their clothes are neatly folded or if they’re still in the bags they came in. All that the baby wants is to be fed, snuggled, and changed when wet. Everything else is window dressing.

My inability to work or do much of anything left me with a lot of time to think. Between the reruns of Walker Texas Ranger and vacuuming the couch for the fiftieth time (the only piece of housekeeping I was able to motivate myself to do) I thought a lot about the end of my pregnancy. I educated myself, learned everything I could about “natural” birth. Learned how doctors will try to con you into having a Csection, read about episiotomies and sneakily stripping membranes. About the dangers of pitocin and a million other little ways that “Western Medicine” seeks to undermine the natural process of birth and the rights and autonomy of a birthing females. It all seemed to fit. Of course people don’t respect birthing women, people don’t respect women when they’re not pushing a human out of their vaginas, why would they respect us when we are? (For real, if you want to get pissed off look up the reasons why women birth on their backs in America, or the birthing practices of the I learned that doctors will play into pregnant mothers’ biggest insecurity and claim that any and all medical intervention are “for the good of the baby’. I was sure that I had the right of it. And after the wretched time that I had during my pregnancy, I was for damned sure going to have the birth I’d always envisioned.

Of course, that’s not how it went. I still believe in birth, and I believe in a woman’s right to make her own choices in regards to her health care and her labor. I also believe that we go to experts for a reason, and that if you don’t trust your doctor to be honest with you, you need to find a new doctor. I was fortunate to have a practice that I trusted, there were two doctors, one was the county’s leading OB surgeon, the other was a nurse midwife who went back to school for her MD after her kids were grown. She was the one who talked to me about a C Section. My stomach was enormous, walking was growing horribly difficult. People often stopped me to ask how many I “Had in there” as if I was expecting a litter of kittens rather than a human being. “Just one big one” I’d say, forcing a smile. My doctors understood my plans and intentions, but the baby was getting bigger by the day.

I had some friends who were due around the same time I was. All of us had agreed and talked about birth together, a lot. We all agreed that too many women are being forced into C Sections and we were all determined to have our unassisted births. A couple of them had really traumatic births. Long ordeals that ended in surgery despite doing literally everything right. Despite knowing so much and being so prepared. I remember the appointment when my doctor brought up the idea of a scheduled c-section. She told me not to make my decision right away, but to sleep on it and call in the next few days. This baby wasn’t coming any time soon. My biggest fear was that a C section would make it difficult to breastfeed. After all aren’t the hormones in your body from labor what allow you to lactate? Or something like that? What if I don’t bond with my baby? I remember that she laughed a little, not in a cruel way, but in a pleasant way of someone who had heard something truly delightful. “Honey” she said “You could give birth out of your nose and still be able to breastfeed” she later mentioned that the nasal cavity was not intended for birth and shouldn’t be thought of as an option. I concurred.

The risk was shoulder dystocia. Which is when a baby’s collar bones are too broad to fit through the mother’s pelvis and have to be broken on the way out. They then have to be set and immobilized for some time (I don’t remember how long). It sounded horrible.

I scheduled the C section for the morning of my due date. I told my doctor that if I went into labor on my own before then I would labor unassisted for as long as humanly possible. Everyone was supportive. Both of my doctors were happy to support me in my choices.

The morning of my due date we checked into the hospital like a hotel. I was the first, scheduled to begin surgery at 7am sharp. We got in early and had an IV started, all the usual paperwork and rigamarole. I remember the OR being cold and alien. The spinal block was slightly painful then felt like warm water being poured over my lower back and legs. I carried on a conversation about nothing in particular with the anesthesiologist. He was born at 7:11am. There was a sound like a sheep bleating and I looked at nurse, she said “That’s your baby!” Another nurse announced “Congratulations it’s a linebacker!”. They brought him to me to see, he looked like an angry potato wrapped up in a blue blanket. My husband held and bonded with him while I was finished up. My baby was big (9 lbs 13 oz) and healthy as he could be.

No part of me regrets my c-section. I’m glad I did it. I did have an unfortunate side effect from the spinal, vomiting a lot for that first day, but because I’d been vomiting a lot for 9 months it was familiar to me.

Pregnancy was not pleasant for me. It sucked. Many people have pregnancies that are worse, but it’s not a competition. Birth was not what I expected or anticipated or planned for. Parenting has been nothing like I anticipated either, but that’s a whole different story. What I hope everyone takes away from this article is that every pregnancy is different, and every pregnant person will have a different experience with it. Not everyone has a healthy pregnancy. For some females pregnancy is no big deal, for others it is devastating on any number of different levels. There is no one size fits all to anything when it comes to humans, and bringing more humans into the world is no different. People can get so caught up in their personal soap boxes that they forget that the people they’re influencing are real people with real bodies and real bodies are really complicated. I hope that everyone who becomes pregnant feels empowered by what their body is doing. Creating a new life is so amazing! I hope that everyone who becomes pregnant feels empowered to be an active participant in their health care decisions.

Up Next: I’ll be talking about a subject near and dear to my heart: Healthy Kink, what it is and what it isn’t!

With Love

Erin

Originally posted on Femislay.com