Weird body politics

There's been a bit of a feminist fuss about women posting pictures of their children as their facebook profile pictures. The claim, according to the feminists, is that it suggests that being a mother is their entire identity.

Many of these women work. Many of them are in book clubs. Many of them are involved in causes. But this is how they choose to represent themselves. The choice may seem trivial, but the whole idea behind Facebook is to create a social persona, an image of who you are projected into hundreds of bedrooms and cafes and offices across the country. Why would that image be of someone else, however closely bound they are to your life, genetically and otherwise?

And maybe this is a good point. But what I personally find more disturbing are the avatars on pregnancy and birth forums. This one is indicative;


What is in those sparkles? There are others too: cartoon avatars, all in pink and purple, show wide-eyed Manga-style girls, surrounded by rainbows or small fluffy genetic mutants. Still others allow you to fill in an automatically created by-line to go at the end of your post; women have their names, followed by a list of their babies' birthdates, weights and favourite poo colour. The most sadly disturbing ones are the miscarriages; where women refer to their children as "One in heaven (date) one on earth (date) and one in my arms". Sometimes there's just not enough sparkles to go around.

I guess my point is that if someone in gender studies is lining up a thesis on mother's Facebook pictures, they might want to first peer into the disturbing (but sparkley!) world of forum avatars. The transaction is clear: baby for brain - it's a simple swap.

I'd post more pictures, but if I look at any more pregnancy and birth forums my baby will simply get out and walk. Like many pregnant women, though, I've read my fair share of tales of woe and horror on the internet. What struck me most recently though, has been the tendency, almost always on American forums, to talk about the baby's head coming out of the vagina like some kind of elaborate Japanese horror film.

Many women complain that their midwives tell them to reach down and gently pull their babies from their vaginas. They shriek: Isn't this what you are paying the midwife for? Because, God forbid, I might want to acknowledge that my baby is coming out of my beautiful sparkley hoo-hoo! They are seriously traumatised by pullingl the baby out of their bellies. Where do they think it's been all this time?

It was about this point that I realised I might be approaching these stories on a slightly different footing. If there's horror it's because it hurts like fuck, not because the baby is "dangling half out of your vagina" (actually a verbatim quote from a forum-poster). I find the idea of hooking the baby out of a slit in your belly slightly more unsettling than out of your vagina, but elective c sections are considered completely unremarkable by many women.

It's odd, but we're becoming increasingly distanced from our bodies, as we battle our nether regions with scented toilet paper (ours is shit-scented), applicator tampons and floral douches ("My hoo-hoo smells as fresh as a veteran's casket, thanks to FemFresh!").

How did we get to the point where surgery seems natural and pushing a baby out of your vagina is trauma-inducing bizarro?

Whaaaa?

I remember declaring, not long ago and with some confidence, that baby-brain was bollocks. Basically, pregnant women function like what they are; very very tired people. And I still think this is the case, because my current wooly-ness isn't any different in substance to the days when I used to gaily sail into the operating theatre and saw into people's skulls on two hour's sleep and a fistful of roofies. I'm kidding. Whisky is way cheaper than roofies.

Paying attention is hard. I try, but it's hard. It's not that I don't hear things, it's that information is passed into a sort of antechamber in the front of my brain, waiting for processing. By the time the messages get halfway down the hallway, the information has a few holes. And then my brain starts running its 'echo memory' of what I thought it sounded like I heard.

Most of the time it goes well, something like; "The uncle's hot-rod furball is at once running a market in semi-recessed raisins that will GO (!!) to the highest bladder"

Which is self-explanatory, really, when you think about it.

Recently though, things have taken a baffling turn for the worse. Yesterday, I wandered into the bathroom, picked up my red toothbrush and proceeded to brush my teeth. Only my toothbrush is the yellow one. Dammit.

This is what a feminist looks like

The thing no-one says, no-one wants to talk about, but everyone realises as soon as they spend any period of time pregnant, is that it's suddenly no mystery why women were once so easily treated as the weaker sex. Before contraception, women spent a lot more time pregnant. And for many women, I'd say most, you're not at your best. It's a humbling experience.

Women have only truly been freed from unplanned pregnancy since the introduction of reliable contraceptives, a relatively short period of time ago. Contraception has contributed massively to women's ability to participate more fully and equally in the workforce and civil society. In fact, given how long we were 'slaves' to our fecundity, it's a testament to the impressive powers of feminism that so much equality has been attained in so little time. Women, when not constantly chained to a toilet, are actually pretty bloody impressive creatures.

The trouble is, much of feminism's gain has been at the cost of the truth about what it means to be pregnant. There's an unspoken expectation that women will perform equally with men, in all areas, especially work, even when they are pregnant. To do otherwise is to seem unreliable, or flakey, or feeble. Miscarriage too is secret women's business with women commonly encouraged to keep their pregnancies secret until 12 weeks. It's often really hard to be pregnant.

Feminism is about equality but it must recognise that women are not the same as men. In the interests of equality, I'll happily say that I will perform as well as any pregnant man.

Given that the only pregnant man I've seen lately didn't just sit around getting larger and watching Oprah, he actually went ON Oprah, I think I'm looking pretty sweet.

Woah

At least once in their lives, every Australian must make a pilgramage to walk around this monolith seven times.

It's been almost a month since I last posted on this thing. Shit! A month! I've been writing another blog for five years or so, and I post on that all the time. It's easy to write about vaccine technology or architecture, but for some reason, when it comes to this pregnancy malarchy, I fall a bit mute.

I realise, after reading the last couple of posts, that nothing has really changed in the last month. I'm still frequently to be found dashed up against the couch surrounded by my own wreckage. The main difference now is that I am Hungry. And not just sort of delicate, feminine 'Oh thank you, I don't mind if I do have another...' hungry. I am seriously Hungry. Inhume-the flesh-off-beasts-of-burden-at-500-meters hungry.

When I was nine I became a vegetarian, something that bemused my country-bred mother, as she ladled steaming skeins of sheep onto our plates every night. She assumed, I think, that I would grow out of it. So did I.

But we were both wrong. What began as a broad sympathy for all things fluffy became entrenched theme in my life due to poverty in my teens, politics in my early twenties and habit by the time I reached thirty. It's not that I've never eaten meat, or that I think humans fundamentally shouldn't eat meat. It's that I don't feel right eating it. It's flesh and I find that a wee bit weird. And more importantly, it takes a huge amount of resources to make a cow. And have you seen how pigs and chickens are made? Yikes! Even the pigs won't eat each other.

Before I got pregnant, animals large and small would welcome me into their enclosures with open legs (how wrong does this sentence sound?) and now they shift nervously from hoof to hoof in my presence. It's not just that I want to eat meat (albeit a pretty small amount compared to what the average Australian wolves down in a week). It's that I want to eat traditional food, food I grew up with - roast beef with mashed spuds, roast kumara, fish and chips made with fresh Blue Cod.

I have these dreams where I am in a six star restaurant burbling that ever obsequious line to the waitress; 'Oh however Chef thinks the fish pie should be done'...Then, later on in the degustation, I pick up the desert menu to discover that every item on the list is a type of lamington. Even the cheese platter. Especially the cheese platter.

And when I don't eat, well, that's another matter entirely. Worlds crash apart, there are tears, and a sense of impending doom so prescient I feel personally persecuted by every person I see who has had a meal in the last 20 minutes. Until now I've not felt the size of being pregnant, catching my reflection gave me a shock. But now the baby is on the move and growing quickly. I am expanding rapidly outwards. My horizons have shifted.

And all this requires food.

Consolation

"Nope, I'm going to have to get changed. Can't go into town looking like this"

"Like what?"

Huge. Like this. Just so huge"

"Come on, you're pregnant, if you weren't getting bigger then there'd be something to worry about. The aim is to get big"

"Yeah, there's big, and then there's" - quick survey of self in large, pink mission dress in front of mirror - "there's enormous. I don't want to scare dogs and small children"

"Rubbish! Children love huge things. And what about mascots? They're always really really big. Or that purple thing, you know, the McDonalds thing, Grimace! Kids love those things! They'll be all over you!"

Mumsy-fuck

It's my new expression.

The trouble with pregnancy is that there are so many variants - from mildly annoying to utterly disgraceful. I feel pretty good, for a pregnant woman. Knowing there are so many other women suffering through the worst ill-health of their lives means I cannot legitimately whinge about my fortune. So far, I've been middle of the road normal, with one or two exceptions. But whinge I will. Because this is a blog post, and I don't have a cat.

Everyone told me the second trimester would be wonderful, that I would feel like a million bucks, or at least have a sense of 'quantitive easing' which seems to be the equivalent nowadays. In short, I would have energy to burn. Well I am now leaving the second trimester, and so far I resemble a clapped out Russian nuclear reactor. There is wildlife proliferating in my forgotten corners.

I am exhausted. This, it seems, is unusual. Because every search on Doctor Google for 'tiredness' and 'second trimester' reveals the same litany of ebullient replies;

'Welcome to the second trimester, by now your tiredness will have subsided!'

I know what is wrong with me - I have chronic anaemia. I've been anaemic all my life, just like almost everyone else in my family, but now, with pregnancy, it's ramped up significantly. So, no big deal really. No medical mystery. All well within the realms of normal.

The other day I recounted my exhaustion to an older female relative. I mentioned how I didn't think I could work full days at all, and didn't know how women did it (I don't work fulltime). She said; 'Oh well they have to!' because of course, tiredness is actually just lazyness.

Let's be clear on laziness. Lazyness means you can't be fucked doing the dishes but you'll pop out for a surf at the drop of a hat. Or for an evening out. Or even just a meal after 6pm. That's laziness.

Tiredness is when you feel hugely guilty about not being capable of doing anything useful and when you do have any energy at all, you spend it all attempting to assuage your guilt by catching up on onerous jobs. The concept of doing anything fun, ever again, disappeared over the horizon months ago. If I have enough energy to breathe more than fifteen times a minute, then I'll clean the bathroom. I've entered an economy of movement one normally only sees in the chronically hungover. Nothing is wasted.

This is the only part about being pregnant I find troubling. I like growing a baby inside me, a baby whose kicks can be placated with a hand and a few words. It is at once profoundly ethereal and utterly native. I like my lump. I've not put on much weight, grown weird hairs anywhere, I can eat and stand the smell of coffee. And I am genuinely thankful everyday for my good health - and it's not just lip service either, the sense of being well on the way through this journey and as yet normal-ish, is very comforting.

But there's just no fun to be had anymore. No catching up with friends, no going-out dinners, no surfing, not even a nice walk to the beach.

All that remains are barely struggled through chores and an immense feeling of guilt for letting everyone down. And of course, that I have confirmed everyone's suspicions: that pregnancy has revealed my true self; a laziness so all-encompassing that all my movements henceforth shall only be measurable on the glacial scale.

I always thought I'd like to have more than one kid, but I've realised that there is no way I could look after a child in this condition. It is simply out of the question. And the next woman who says; Oh well you just do......well, you don't. I grow tired of the falsehood that mothering is something we all can do easily and simply. Women who struggle and suffer with motherhood have miserable babies and children. That's the final arbiter. No-one dies, sure. But no-one's having any fun either.

Holism

How many times have you heard that pregnancy is 'not an illness'. Well, it might not be, but it certainly does impressions.

Frequently, the women banging the 'it's not an illness' drum are the first to offer 'holistic' or alternative therapies to assist with the process. Where medical science stands back and says; 'Nahp, you get nussink, NUSSINK!', the alternative brigade offer up a variety of therapies, lotions and potions. They might not be medical treatments, but they're still treatments. And if you are treating something, it means you've identified it as a problem.

And another word for problem is 'illness'.

Offering treatments is like saying you can be cured. Well, there's only one cure for pregnancy - boarding school, and even they won't take the little demons till they're five. I don't need to be cured, or made to feel guilty for not being pro-active in 'treating' my symptoms. I just have to sac up, and remind myself that this is why we have the Pill.

In some ways, accepting my fate has made me feel better about the sucky parts of pregnancy. Basically, I just don't feel so guilty about being ruined for a couple more months.