D., New York, United States
I’m having difficulty feeling excitement about my pregnancy. Mostly, it feels like an overwhelming burden on my mind, body, and career. Everyone says things will change once the baby is in my arms, and I’m sure it will, but the cost is so much for women. Maybe life should be this costly?
D.
JNK:
The pressure to feel excitement about anything, ever, just about automatically drags along with it a competing imperative to dread everything, always, without hesitation. Pregnancy for most people comes with significant impacts on a whole host of things over which you have absolutely no control – not to mention the very real biological work that goes on nonstop for both mother and baby (or babies) before (as well as during and after) birth. Have you looked into La Leche League networks in your area for support? For me, during all six of the pregnancies I had during four years of my late 20s and early 30s, I was fortunate to benefit from a strong public health push to resource women in Alaska with lactation consultants immediately postpartum, but completely unfortunate in not having professional stability, housing security, financial means, or a well-established practice as a writer. Stop listening to everyone. Everyone is always wrong. Start listening to the people who will best understand how to support and celebrate you and the baby you will welcome, who will not dismiss the magnitude of changes that are coming your way. I can’t wrap my head around the “cost” metaphor – there’s nothing sensibly transactional about having a baby, about pregnancy. Trust your instincts. Put up boundaries between unhelpful people and situations and that which you love and need. Birthworkers can help you resource yourself and support you and your baby in the times ahead. Remote therapy could make it more accessible for you to talk through the complex and very real cognitions one might have at all hours of the day and night now and in the months and years ahead. And while FMLA [Family and Medical Leave] can diminish career impacts for women who are not exempt, these provisions don’t extend to many mothers in the many jobs we often work during our pregnancies and after a child’s birth. I hope this is not the case for you, and that the hyflex modes of working that have emerged in recent years make it possible for you to weigh your career against the work that no one else but you can do: that of being a mom. Prioritize your well-being and the rest will either follow, or, you will be more well-equipped to make the best choices you can.
The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, June Jordan, Jean Valentine, o, the long list – or, Aracelis Girmay:
“inside the vastness of the galaxy, how improbable it is that this iteration / of you or you or me might come to be at all — Body of fear, / Body of laughing — & even last a second. This fact should make us fall all // to our knees with awe, / the beauty of it against these odds, / the stacks & stacks of near misses / & slimmest chances that birthed one ancestor into the next & next. // Profound, unspeakable cruelty who counters this, who does not see. / & so to tenderness I add my action.”
