Strength
I’ve had a headache for three days, which, probably if you looked it up, you’d discover is another normal symptom of pregnancy. Almost anything uncomfortable or annoying makes the list: congestion, constipation, dizziness, soreness, bloating, cramping, heartburn, nausea, fatigue, mood swings. Where once any of these symptoms would be something I might try to treat or at least puzzle over with a doctor, now all of it is swept together with a friendly smile and, “Feels like you’ve got a hangover all the time, right?” from the ultrasound technician. Whatever’s going on with your body is meant to be endured, not alleviated. Every over-the-counter medication comes with a warning that doctors advise against it unless “medically necessary.” Online medical advice is heavily judgmental — “Take it if you need it,” it seems to say, “But do you really want to put your baby at unnecessary risk?” It preys on your fears about your weakness during a time when you want, more than anything, to be strong.
Strength is a double-edged sword in pregnancy. As I begin to learn about “natural” childbirth versus the other kind (unnatural, presumably), female strength is invoked in such tantalizing, illustrious ways that you might confuse it with feminism, until you realize that much of the natural childbirth movement is just as prescriptive as the medical model it defines itself against. The image of the powerful woman who pushes out her child in a serene setting with candles and flowers instead of epidurals and IVs and who loves every second of it is certainly appealing, but denies women’s right to choose pain relief or the feeling of safety that a hospital could offer. The literature can make it sound like if your birth isn’t a blissful orgasmic experience then you’re missing out on something fundamental about motherhood. Conversely, the American medical model heavily objectifies you. Typically, you’re stuck with an IV when you arrive at the hospital — meaning you can’t move around during labor — medication and epidurals are urged on you despite your wishes, and you likely don’t know the doctor delivering you but are expected to trust them completely. The women I’ve talked to describe feeling helpless and being pressured into things over the signals of their own body. I can see how the discourse of strength could be built up into almost a religion in opposition to this status quo.
The movie Tully, written by Diablo Cody of Juno, is about the dark, exhausting, isolating experience of mothering a newborn. Even with maternity leave, even with a partner, the demands placed on the mother by her new baby and the expectations around raising her other two kids prove to be too much for her. She disintegrates quietly and painfully while keeping up a facade of strength to the people around her. The movie felt a little less realistic than allegorical to me, representative of how most mothers probably feel in a society where gender equality means that women do as much as men, plus a whole lot more, and individualism means that we have no care structures in place. The image of the strong mother is harmful in this case, as it inhibits her willingness to ask for help, or even believe that help is possible.
I feel weak when I contemplate leaving a job that I fought so hard to get and keep up with. Do I really need to? Can’t I tough it out? That’s the problem with idolizing strength. When we view it as an unshakable virtue, it supersedes more useful questions like, What is best for me? What is healthiest? What will make me happy? Those questions are sometimes more difficult to answer than the former. So we struggle on to prove something, uncertain whom we’re trying so hard to impress.
What is maternal strength, really? To me, it’s the pact I’ve made to my yet-to-be child that I will always be there for them. Strength looks like doing what has to be done for another person you’ve brought into the world. It doesn’t look like holding yourself to other people’s standards or making anything harder for yourself than it needs to be.
I know all this, and yet the pressure to always be good, always make the strongest decision, is a refrain that’s been echoing through every step of pregnancy. A headache for a few days is only a minor thing in the scheme of things. By the time I finished writing this newsletter, it had faded, no need for the treacheries ibuprofen. But it’s tiring to keep being strong.
What I’m reading
Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, by Angela Garbes
Rules offer us a semblance of control at a time when so much in our lives is chaotic. Rules also help us maintain the belief that, as mothers, we are responsible for the outcome of a pregnancy — if we make all the right choices, our baby will be perfect. Following rules helps us believe that we are eliminating as much risk as possible, which can be incredibly important, especially for people who have struggled to get pregnant or who have lost pregnancies.
But most of us also invite nuance into other areas of our lives — we make decisions based on what is best for ourselves and our families, balancing work and personal time, individual desires versus the needs of a group. We take the advice of our doctor or dentist and do our best to stick to it — flossing, if not every day, at least every few days, trying to eat less late-night pizza, and getting exercise when we can.
But when it comes to pregnancy, we can’t seem to tolerate it, in part because messages we receive over and over are free of nuance, free of discussion. The weight of the responsibility is intense. This is often the first time in our lives that our choices physically impact the well-being of another human being. This is sobering. It makes us crave simplicity in a state of being that is inherently complex. I don’t blame anyone for wanting certainty, but the truth is that there is little. Pregnancy is our first lesson in this surrender and submission. Eventually, our experiences — with pregnancy loss, labor, birth, and motherhood — will reinforce to us that there is little we actually control.