I’m pregnant. It feels nice to say that. Thank you for your congratulations. Yes, thank you, thank you. It’s great, I know. I’m still in the first trimester. Yes, I know I’m announcing early, but I’m an impatient person. Rash, possibly. I know something could happen to the pregnancy in the next few weeks, but I can’t sit on the news.
Some general stats for my readers: I’m 32, a PhD candidate, and deeply partnered. Another stat: I don’t have a mother. She died in 2012. Doing pregnancy without a mother has always scared me. I have so many questions I want answered! I’m constantly asking my mother-in-law baby questions: What foods should I eat for milk production? Does breastfeeding hurt? What about the delivery? Should I get an epidural? How do I keep the baby alive! My mother-in-law also grew up without a mother—her mother tragically died during childbirth with her—so it’s two motherless women talking to one another about parenthood.
The other thing that scares me: I’m chronically ill. So was my mother.
My mother was not present in my life. She would either be in her room or in the hospital when I was a child. Then, when my parents got divorced, my dad was awarded full custody. My mother never tried or indicated that she wanted custody of us. It didn’t seem odd to me at the time. She never acted like she wanted to be our parent. So this has always been my maternal blueprint: sick, absent, mostly disinterested. I never want to be that kind of mother, but I also don’t know anything different. How to parent well as a sick person?
The two things that scare me also overlap—the illnesses, the motherless pregnancy—because I no longer have access to a body like mine that I can ask more pointed questions to. I can’t ask my mother-in-law how to best manage my symptoms before or after pregnancy, for example, because she’s not chronically ill. (Sleepless nights will make my pain much worse, I imagine. And I’ve heard that symptoms generally flare up postpartum.) There is grief in losing access to this information.
With this series, I hope to document my pregnancy as a sick person, what I’m doing, thinking, feeling, eating, reading, buying, scheming. Maybe it will help others make the choice of parenthood? Or maybe it will simply help me process this big new thing in my life. Posts will be sporadic, informal, and hopefully fun! I’ll also be turning on paid subscriptions for this series with the occasional free post. Subscriptions will help go towards my unpaid parental leave because my university does not offer financial support to new parents. (More on that in a future post.) Thank you for following my pregnancy.
:) Olivia
Thank you for sharing this ❤️❤️