I am over being pregnant. I’m just over 6 weeks away from my due date (April 4). By the time I’m full term, I will have almost been pregnant for an entire year due to the miscarriage I experienced before this pregnancy. It’s been a lot. It’s been my year of pregnancy and I would like to get onto the postpartum stage now.
Friends and family have been asking me if I’ll be finishing my PhD. At first, I was pretty adamant about dropping out. My priorities have changed with this pregnancy. I’ve shifted entirely from brain work to biological work, by which I mean the work of growing a baby. It’s been a full time job and the demands are only going to ramp up once the baby arrives. Academia also seems in opposition to parenthood. As a graduate student, I won’t be getting paid parental leave (already very stressed about that) and my fellowship funding runs out this fall. I’m not sure how I’d cover tuition, finish my dissertation, and parent if I return to the degree. Also, there’s the fact that I can’t work and look after a child due to my limited energy and health. (Side note: Yes, there are good childcare options provided through the university, but I’ll be finishing my degree remotely so that’s off the table for me.) Translation: I really don’t think I can have both. I would like to finish, since I’ve put so much work into the degree already, but for now I think I’ll file for a leave of health and see where I’m at once that leave is up.
That being said, I’d much rather have a child than this degree. Having a family is more important (for me) than my professional accomplishments.1 My dad, an academic with four children, joked about childless academics clutching their manuscripts in the grave when I brought this topic up with him. My dad finished his PhD before having kids. “I finished my PhD before I even started dating!” he tells me over the phone. That’s how demanding academia is! My dad was 30 when he met my mom and got married. My brother was born the following year.
I’ve noticed a lot of moms posting online about resenting their male partners because they aren’t burdened with the task of pregnancy. One of the responses I thought was more fair in this assessment—that they don’t resent their male partner, but that they resent North American culture that does not value or support pregnancy. Parents are at risk of being fired once they take their parental leave. Childcare is really expensive or incredibly difficult to get into. Both parents need to work to survive the high cost of living. (I live in Canada for context.) Less and less people are having children, or only one child. Extended family is disappearing (very few or sometimes no cousins). There’s the rise of the DINKS (dual income no kids) where people are choosing to not have families. We will likely only have this one child although it would be nice to have a larger family (I have three siblings who I adore). On the flipside, I never want to be pregnant again.
~ Some further rambly pregnancy thoughts ~
Pregnancy has been the wildest physical experience, some good, some bad. Things I’ve experienced during this pregnancy:
Severe morning sickness (throwing up 7 times a day at the worst of it)
Covid (absolutely horrible, was so sick)
Kidney stones (from severe morning sickness dehydration, 10/10 pain)
Extremely low iron (common in pregnancy, but the healthcare system doesn’t seem to want to help you with this unless it’s absolutely dire due to financial reasons)
Things I look forward to postpartum:
Sleeping on my back
No more morning sickness (occasional vomiting has returned again in the third trimester . . . yay!). Being able to enjoy driving/car rides and eating whatever food I want without being in fear of how my stomach will react will be so nice
Not having to force feed myself litres of water (well, I think I need to do this for breastfeeding but at least it will be easier without constant nausea)
I’m now spending my days reading a lot of birth stories and waiting for this baby to arrive! I think I’ll try to take some nice pregnancy photos of myself this week too ;D. (I really hate taking my picture.) I’ll post those along with a finished look at baby Esther’s room when I get around to it!
Bonus cute text from my dad:
No judgement of course to people who choose not to have children!!! Family can look like a lot of other things for different people!!! This is just something I want.