I am 8 weeks pregnant today. My second ultrasound with Dr. Special is on Monday, and if that goes well, I get transferred to the midwives (and coordination with the Dr. Riskys at Maternal Fetal Medicine since I'm over 35). Yesterday I felt really nauseated--I've been feeling it especially in bed. Today I felt fine, but it might be because I've been too busy with work to notice my body. Now I'm exhausted. I did my annual employee health assessment today for our health plan, and I had to tell the nurse I am pregnant. She says it's so easy to take blood from a pregnant woman, she loves it, since we gain 20% of our blood volume. And indeed it took a bit for my finger prick to stop bleeding, I guess we pregnant women are just bursting with it. She didn't say anything about my BMI either, likely thanks to the pregnancy. It has skyrocketed since last year. I have definitely already gained weight with this pregnancy--I can tell by the way my clothes don't fit--but I know it was climbing before this. Taking progesterone causes weight gain, and being unsuccessfully pregnant for half of 2014 sure as hell wasn't kind on my body. I've been meaning to post about miscarriage/infertility and body image. As if going through this doesn't already create a really difficult relationship with my body, then on top of that I have to be a woman in a world that prizes only one type of body--one which is very much not resembling a fertility goddess (runway models seem to all be chosen to look like prepubescent girls, so not reproductive figures at all). Such competing demands--look thin and nearly boyish, but you have to be a mother to be a fully realized woman--and motherhood is about hips and bellies and breasts and curves and stretch marks and nausea and fatigue that makes it impossible to devote the amount of energy women are expected to devote to meticulous dieting and exercising. Well competing demands make sense when the goal is oppression.
So I'll have to come to a different relationship with my body through this. One hopefully of gratitude. I'm glad I'm alive and healthy, and I'm so glad I'm pregnant. None of that was really in my control; I can only help or hinder. I do want to raise my child with a good relationship to their body, and to food and exercise; with an ability to resist pressures to live up to some sort of external standard. I have to start by being that way myself. My clothes don't fit? Buy new ones. Eat for health, don't give in to excesses of either self-denial or eating to soothe anxiety. Exercise because it feels good. It's hard though; especially as I've aged the pounds layer on; and then with the progesterone and the miscarriages; sometimes I wondered if I should be more hands-on about my weight. A friend and I joke, it's always hard to tell: science or patriarchy? Like, is this science or patriarchy telling me to do this? Sadly the two are often intertwined. Well it doesn't matter now! Fuck it, I'm giving my body over to pregnancy. If I need to rest, I'm resting. If I feel like eating or not, I will or won't. Obviously I'll eat as safely and healthfully as I can, but I will hopefully not be thinking much about appearance until after I have a baby. And even then--my body will likely always reflect the life I've lived, up to and including motherhood. Man I hope so, certainly.
The baby whose birth was betted on was born, healthy and the mom is healthy too. This is their fourth. I used to think family size was about choice, and in many ways it is, or can be. But now all I see is, what luck! To have four healthy children! What amazing luck! And to get pregnant right after a miscarriage, twice, and go on to actually have the child. I suppose doing all of this younger helps increase your luck. I just think of the women I know who have lost children to stillbirth. I think of myself, two miscarriages in a row--this pregnancy could have easily been my second; I could have had a nearly nine-month old by now. I think of the women I know suffering cruelly from infertility. MFP doesn't really get my envy of women who've had several healthy kids. He says, "but you don't want their life! You have a great life!" It's true, I want my life. My choices. But I'm envious too of the ability to count on the arrival of a healthy baby as more likely than not. And maybe I'm hopeful too. So hopeful that my baby will keep growing from its tiny tiny size and actually become a squirming, healthy miracle. I wish this journey had been easy for me, but I'll take it however it comes.
No comments:
Post a Comment