Four months ago, I peed on a plastic stick, and as the two thin lines slowly materialized, life as I knew it changed forever.
That was just a few days after I wrote my last post about the Three Rivers Arts Festival. I was actually pregnant when we went to that festival, I just didn’t know it.
For awhile I didn’t want to talk about it, for all the usual fears. And then after I was talking about it, I didn’t know what to say.
I don’t want this to define me, and yet, I have no doubt this is a defining time in my life. I can’t act like this is the culmination of a months- or years-long journey and say to you “Yay, I’m pregnant! It finally happened!” because I didn’t have that lead-up anticipation. I want to tell you that I’m happy and ecstatic and overjoyed, because I am, but I have felt so much more than those expected emotions.
So much of what I have felt and what I’ve wanted to say has felt like it’s in total opposition of what our cultural and societal norms are. Women are expected to be thrilled by pregnancy, to jump for joy at the thought of tiny booties and pink bonnets and baby-blue swaddles.
But I want to tell you that so much of my experience feels taboo to say out loud. I have felt, most of the time, that my experience has been different. I immediately felt repulsed by our society’s expectations of what I should feel or how I should act or what I should do. I felt the strong desire to eschew traditions surrounding pregnancy and babies, and I still can’t fully explain why.
All I know is that I feel compelled to tell you my experience, because maybe there is someone else who feels this way too. And maybe if I write these things down, someone will find them and society will start to change.
Almost immediately after telling people I was pregnant, I felt the expectations put upon me. Some judgement (not as much as I anticipated though), but mostly people’s pre-conceived notions of what I would do or how I would behave. The assumption that I wouldn’t drink coffee or that I would stop or cut back on exercise. The assumption that I wouldn’t eat deli meat. The assumption that I would have morning sickness, that I wouldn’t be feeling well. The assumption that I couldn’t lift things or that I would be tired. Or that suddenly I might fall if I stood on a chair to get something off a shelf. People expected me to be fragile.
Some women do have morning sickness. Some people won’t eat the deli meat and will quit coffee cold-turkey. Some women will feel exhausted and bloated and sore. Some women will be extra careful in everything they do. And they have every right to experience those things, because every woman and every pregnancy is different.
Somehow, we do hear over and over that “every pregnancy is different” or “every baby is different” and yet we hear the stereotypes at the exact same time, both sides so loud, it’s not clear which one wins. We are starting to recognize that women have different experiences and yet we keep getting asked how we’re dealing with morning sickness. We recognize that there are choices to make and yet we get disapproving looks when we order a cup of coffee.
Here’s my truth: I never had morning sickness. I was just more averse than usual to particularly bad smells (like garbage and farts and bad breath). The first trimester was my favorite so far because I still felt and looked like myself – I did a triathlon when I was 11 weeks pregnant. I swam and lifted and biked and hiked and worked out all summer. I’m still swimming and biking and working out. I have a cup of coffee every day. I forget which meats or cheeses I’m not “supposed” to eat because I just eat them all. And I consciously made that decision after doing a ton of research. I had a ton of pain in my tailbone for 15 weeks, making some movements including walking and running painful. My emotions ran the gamut from elated to terrified to anxious to hopeful to depressed to angry to sad to relieved to happy to grateful to everything in between, in the span of ten minutes. My erratic emotional state scared me. My changing body still scares me.
I am so happy to be having this baby. But it was a bit of a surprise that I was able to get pregnant so quickly and easily. It took me a bit to navigate my feelings around that.
I’ve also read a lot and done a lot of research about how women’s lives are affected by motherhood. I had this visceral reaction that I didn’t want to be one of those women. I don’t want to be put in society’s little box of mommyhood. I want to make my own decisions and be allowed to experience pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood in my own way, without commentary and without judgement. Of course I don’t think that will actually happen. I can’t stop every stranger’s unwanted comments, but I can tell my story, write my thoughts and educate people when possible.
I have a lot of thoughts about pregnancy. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, opinions. Mine won’t all be the same as yours. We may make very different choices. We just have to learn how to accept that. We can each tell our stories, and we are each entitled to experience this miracle of life in our own way. What other way is there?