Wednesday 11 June 2014

Yes, it is fucking special



I have an acquaintance who objects to pregnant women being offered seats on public transport.  He considers himself a well-mannered individual, but strongly believes that pregnancy is not a medical condition and that, because a woman can choose to become or remain pregnant, doing so negates any claim she may feel she has to "special treatment".  

As you can probably guess, this attitude elicited a fierce response from me.  ("Fierce" being the word I choose when describing things to people like, say, my mother.  "Profane" would work just as well).  In the ensuing heated exchange of views, I concurred that yes, pregnancy in itself is not a medical condition.  However, leaving aside the myriad medical conditions that can and frequently do tag along with this "normal part of life," a pregnant woman is the most vulnerable she will ever be.  Physically larger, slower and clumsier, she is also permanently aware of and responsible for her cargo in a way nobody who has not carried a baby, either in their arms or their womb, can ever fully understand.  Try holding an egg on public transport at rush hour without breaking it.  Now imagine that breaking the egg will lead to your physical and emotional destruction.

During the course of the discussion, a recurring theme emerged from the spilled words of my opponent - oops, fellow conversationalist.  It's one I recognised, one I've heard before from other people - not directed at me in particular, but always at unspecified "women".  "Women," apparently, have an inflated sense of their own importance when they're pregnant.  "Women" expect special treatment for doing what billions of women have done before.  "Women" should just get on with it; and stop making such a big deal about it.  "Women" think the world should bow down to them, just because they've had sex and have a bump to prove it.  Never a name; never a person; nary even an example as proof of these accusations.  

At the time, I focused my arguments on simple facts, details that really should be common knowledge and common sense.  I provided information about the debilitating fatigue, constant nausea and dizziness that can strike women during the first trimester; the back ache, heaviness and sheer exhaustion of dragging around an extra ten pounds of baby, liquid and placenta in the last few months.  I mentioned the more severe side effects, the women with hyperemesis gravidarum whose stomachs forcefully reject everything that enters for the entire nine months, those who suffer from symphysis pubis dysfunction and find walking incredibly painful; the multitude of other conditions that can be caused or aggravated by this "perfectly normal" part of life.  

Of course, all of the above makes pregnancy sound like nine months of relentless misery.  For many people, this isn't the case.  Some women (I was lucky enough to be one of them) sail through pregnancy with only a bit of heartburn or a few sore ribs to mar the experience of creating new life.  However, there is no often way of knowing whether the tired-looking woman with the rounded stomach on the train looks a bit worn because she was tripping the light fantastic until 3am (though chances are, she wasn't); or because her energy has been drained from her like blood from a leeched wound by the almost unbearable agony of simply standing on a bus.  There's no way to know, and I'd always prefer to err on the side of caution.

Thinking about it now, there is something I wish I'd said.  I wish I hadn't tried to defend my pregnant sisters simply by listing all of the medical reasons for being a decent human being, but had stood up strong in acknowledgment and pride against what the world seems to think of as the cardinal sin of the pregnant woman - the accusation that we "think we're special".  There’s a trend nowadays to downplay this everyday miracle and pretend that it’s nothing more important than dealing with a crappy customer or a botched business deal – inconvenient, annoying and potentially able to ruin your day, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I wish I'd responded that yes, it is special.  It's special and it's brave and it's fucking wonderful.  Every woman going through it deserves a medal, never mind a seat on a smelly old train.  In fact, fuck that - what would we want with a medal?  It's just one more thing to clean.  We deserve a daily massage, a bubble bath, our favourite meal cooked for us and someone else to take care of the laundry.  We're bloody amazing.  We're courageous, heroic and strong, every one of us doing this thing that happens every day.

Most of all, we're brave.  We're dealing with the symptoms listed above and more, day in, day out.  We're going to work in discomfort that would have most people taking a personal day, because we want to save our time off for when we really need it.  We're getting up and going about our business in pain, because the boss is someone who doesn't give up his seat, much less his time, for pregnant women; or because the dog won't walk itself.  We're accepting that at the end of the longest and shortest nine months of our lives, our body is going to become a battleground and we'll know untold agony and fear death, or be pumped full of chemicals and fear death, or be cut open through skin and muscle and organ and fear death.  We'll welcome it, because it signals the end of pregnancy and the beginning of a new life, and because that battle is where we find the strength for the hardest battle of our lives – being a mother. 

We're brave because we knowingly and with intent put ourselves completely at the mercy and in the service of another human being, one who knows no compassion and has no social skills.  We embrace chaos, bid goodbye to life as we knew it and become at once the protector of innocence and more dependent and vulnerable than we knew it was possible to be.  We commit ourselves 100% to a venture that all the books and classes in the world couldn't possibly prepare us for, and we do it on no sleep.

But you know what the bravest thing of all is?  We love, adore, worship, and set our entire being around SOMEONE ELSE.  We remove our hearts from our chests and our sleeves and send them out into an unpredictable world which really couldn't give a shit about any of this.  Anyone who hasn't loved a child can't come close to the fear, the obsession, the addiction, the love.  You think you love ice cream or your mother?  You think you'd be lost without your husband or your best friend?  Multiply that by a million, then imagine that your mother is completely fucking helpless, that your husband is constantly, suicidally obsessed with electricity or crawling off high tables onto tiled floors, that your best friend has to be trusted with strangers who may or may not want to shoot or kidnap or assault her when she can't even open her fucking mouth to tell people that her shoes are on the wrong feet.  Now imagine signing up for a lifetime of this and doing it while loving every terrifying minute.

Yeah, we're fucking brave.  Yes, it is special.  And no, I don't give a rat's arse if you agree with me or not.  Now step away from the seat, matey, and go and call your mother to tell her you love her.












2 comments:

Alex said...

"But you know what the bravest thing of all is?  We love, adore, worship, and set our entire being around SOMEONE ELSE.  We remove our hearts from our chests and our sleeves and send them out into an unpredictable world which really couldn't give a shit about any of this."

THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!

Lord, you reached into my soul and read whats etched in there. That is what it is to be a mother.

Squish's Mom said...

^^^what they said!!!

Brilliant!