069: The Mother Myth

Yearning for perfection, learning to embrace the mess

Greetings, it’s certainly been a while! I’m delighted to share that Journal is back to regular programming. Keep reading to find out where on earth I disappeared to!

Late Afternoon, Etel Adnan

A few weeks after my first embryo transfer had failed, I was cleared by my doctor to try for a second round at the end of December. Incidentally, this happened to be the day before my fifth wedding anniversary. Had I not been crushed by the grief of the first failure, I would have considered this timing to be auspicious, kismet even, but infertility and IVF can drain the life out of a thing called hope. I accepted that I would have to submit myself to the cruel game of probability. Might as well get another doomed attempt out of the way, I thought.

On the day of the transfer, I arrived at my appointment with no faith and a full bladder. Following an unpleasant probing in a room full of strangers and a mad dash to the restroom immediately after, the procedure was complete and my husband and I headed home. Afterwards, I ate a lunch of salad and fries from The Odeon.

The next ten days were an exercise in denying myself feeling anything in the lead up to my pregnancy test; there was no room for hope here. Every day I reminded myself that I refused to feel the way I had previously, like a part of me had died. I spoke about a second failure off-handedly to my husband, and began mapping out what my limit would be, and what the course of action would be once that limit had been reached. Unlike before, when I spoke to the embryo I hoped would one day become my baby and fantasized about our not-to-be-life, this time I refused to acknowledge it. I tucked away the image I was given of the embryo after the transfer, along with the first.

The morning of the pregnancy test, I felt steady. I was going to get my bloodwork done and act like nothing had ever happened, and by the time I got the solemn phone call from the nurse, I would brush it off and go about my day. Nothing would upset me, nothing would phase me because I had been expecting it. What I hadn’t accounted for is that it is impossible to deny one’s feelings for too long. A few hours later, I was spiraling, frantically cleaning the apartment, obliterating every last speck of dust while listening to The Prodigy in hopes of exorcising the onslaught of emotion.

Then I got the call, the nurse sounding more upbeat than last time. The test was positive. I was pregnant. This I hadn’t prepared for.

Two days later, the morning of New Year’s eve, I went back for a second blood test which confirmed I was still very much pregnant. I had braced myself for only disappointment so that I struggled to accept that it had finally happened, that it could happen to me. On high alert, every time I got up from a chair I expected to see blood. One night early into the pregnancy, I had terrible pain and was certain something had gone wrong. It turned out to be a bad case of gas. Each morning I awoke riddled with anxiety and looked up the likelihood of losing again with the passing days. My first failure had convinced me that history was bound to repeat itself. Nothing prepares you for the long-term emotional toll of infertility and the ordeal of trying to conceive.

Something else I was entirely unprepared for: just how miserable the first trimester and a half of pregnancy could be. Through the process of trying to conceive and becoming pregnant, I realized how reluctant people are to speak about how hard it all can be, perhaps motivated by taboo or superstition, or a need to project a one-dimensional perfect image of pregnancy, designed to make people feel terribly about themselves. While I’d learned a fair amount about delivery, it turned out I knew very little about the disruptions the first trimester could bring with it. Embarrassingly, most of what I had known about “morning” sickness was informed by TV shows and their limited depictions of high-powered independent women dressed in business formal, their heads in toilet bowls before heading out for the day to take their place in the workforce. Otherwise known as Miranda Hobbes.

A few days into the new year, pregnancy sickness had taken hold. By five weeks, the very thought of food and liquids made me sick to my stomach. Though I was fortunate enough not to be throwing up, I had debilitating nausea and fatigue. Severe food aversion meant that my diet consisted of saltines, graham crackers and bagels with little-to-no cream cheese, foods I’ve vowed to never look upon again – I had anticipated fried chicken-fueled cravings that never arrived. It wasn’t until two weeks into my second trimester that I hesitantly braved scrambled eggs for the first time.

Never had I felt both so helpless and hopeless, unable to do the most everyday of things: I couldn’t read, work, watch television, listen to music, pour myself a cup of water, sit upright on my own, or look at my phone, though this may have been a blessing in disguise, having missed the questionable 2016 nostalgia and discourse on anything ending with the suffix -maxxing. By the time I stopped taking progesterone shots at nine and a half weeks, I had painful lumps and bruises along my hips that made lying down or sitting upright nearly impossible – I slept, when I could, with folded t-shirts under my hips to cushion them. For nearly three months, I was incapacitated, isolated from everything beyond it, disconsolate and deeply resentful.

When the pregnancy sickness quickly became so severe, I was sure something was very wrong. Of the people in my life who had given birth, none had mentioned the common difficulties of the first trimester. Across social media, I witnessed women document and discuss their pregnancies as an ethereal experience, blooming and joyous. Between the saccharine announcements and reveals, rarely if ever were there assertions of how hard pregnancy itself could be. Meanwhile, my skin tone fluctuated between shades of green and grey, and there were days I wondered if I could get by without brushing my teeth. Showering worsened my symptoms, causing me, a former lover of bathing, to dread basic hygiene. Even though pregnancy sickness affects a vast majority of those who have conceived, I felt very much like an anomaly, both lost and losing myself.

In the few moments I could look at a screen, seeking commiseration, I furiously read accounts by anonymous women forced to quit their jobs, who were bedridden or rushed to the emergency room because of how unwell they were, women who felt adrift and inadequately prepared for the degree to which how awful they felt. How could there be no systemic support for a condition so prevalent, particularly in a society where the pressure for women to have children has never abated? The first trimester is about survival, veterans echoed in forums. But with no structures set in place to guide, support, and educate the mother-to-be on the rigors of early pregnancy, she must find a way to survive on her own.

From the moment I received the news, I couldn’t believe that fortune had worked in my favor. And so I was perpetually suspicious of it (and still am, somewhat) waiting for the moment it would all disappear. The misery from pregnancy sickness was compounded by my belief that in feeling so low, I was being ungrateful, that my inability to bear the suffering with a smile would only further tempt fate. By those who hadn’t gone through what I had, I was reminded that this was a “miracle” and that in another time I wouldn’t have been able to have a child. It’ll all be worth it once you have the baby was a popular guidance, which seemed to me like a great deal of expectation to put upon an unborn child. Having dealt with infertility and a failed transfer, my pregnancy became tinged with superstition and shame. I felt that I had no right to feel the way I did. Guilt consumed me about how unhappy I was when I should have been ecstatic.

Societally, there seems to be a need to portray pregnancy as frictionless. To me, it undermines the immense strength, labour and fortitude that goes into the act of childbearing, and is disempowering for those who are led to believe that their difficulties are a deviation, not the norm. We must either invalidate how we feel or be hounded by guilt. As is the case with most things pertaining to women, in pregnancy, two (or many, many more) things cannot be true. The good expectant mother, we are directed, is one who is beatific and gracious. Any complexities that inevitably arise during this experience should be concealed, pushed furthest away from mind and view. At my first appointment with my OB, I shared with her how horrible my first trimester had been thus far; “People act like pregnancy is glamorous, but it’s not,” she assured me. The unwillingness to betray how messy and complicated it is to bear another life detracts from what makes it a beautiful experience.

The pressure for a woman to be perfect continues to be unrelenting. Everywhere I look there’s a renewed heightened sense of urgency for a woman to erase the things about herself which make her real, even in motherhood, perpetuating a cycle which none of us ultimately can live up to. To take ourselves for who we are and to show up as just that does not fit the arbitrary schema of perfection. But aren’t our truths what make us uniquely, wonderfully human?

It is only now, halfway through my pregnancy, that I’ve finally come to realize that the past few months have been a testament to how resilient both my mind and body are. In early pregnancy, I thought often about how I had lost control over myself, agonizing over how useless I had become. I was cruel to myself when what I needed was compassion. I wish I could have understood then that my body was doing something incredible, and that the difficulties were just as much a part of the process.

Motherhood for me so far has been anything but perfect, which is to say, it has been exactly as it should be.