Last week, I got sick again, the third illness in a row without breaks. Fortunately, that cold passed pretty quickly (though not before getting me snotty enough to vomit bile twice after not having thrown up for quite a while, ugh). I’m just pregnant-sick now, not additional-illness-sick, and I’d like to stick with that, please.
Other physical developments:
- I’ve turned a corner into the absurdly-frequent-urination part of pregnancy, though it still doesn’t seem as marked as it did throughout my first pregnancy.
- My upper back and chest have gotten insanely itchy, and all my skin is annoyingly sensitive, all of which contributes to my considerable existing sleep challenges. It’s not dry skin. And it’s awful.
- I’ve been astonished at how different the changes in my breasts are this time. Early in my first pregnancy, before I’d even told people I was pregnant, my breasts went from the-size-they’d-been-since-puberty to HUGENORMOUS; I was joking yesterday about how my bras from then look more like (and currently fit me better as) hats. It was very sudden and dramatic. After pregnancy and a year and a half of breastfeeding and gradual weaning, things evened out to a size much much smaller than pre-pregnancy. This time, my breasts have grown very gradually over the course of the whole pregnancy so far. I’ve been wearing my pre-first-pregnancy bras and adjusting them slowly, every couple weeks; I may need to buy a couple new ones soon, in a size between those and the hat-like ones.
- It seems very different not to have the placenta blocking sensation in the front of my uterus (I had an anterior placenta last time). Both Noah-as-fetus and this fetus have seemed very active and feisty to me. But I can feel this one’s movements in far greater detail and specificity than last time. And it’s much easier to tell, from feelings of heaviness/fullness and with my hand from the outside, where the fetus is at any given moment, which bit is its head, and so forth. It’s neat.
- Still exhausted. It’s hard to deal with fatigue for soooo loooong. The nausea, reflux, etc. are pretty much the same as they’ve been for quite a while. The part that bothers me the most right now, other than just hating the ebb and flow of queasiness, is the total unpredictability of when a little vomit will pop up into the back of my throat. So gross, and no warning or pattern.
from my journal on 13 January:
Well, that was a totally exhausting prenatal visit. I think we learned that having Noah skip quiet time so we could see Erin right after his school is a Bad Idea. He was climbing all over everyone, tugging on clothes (at one point he gnawed at Erin’s sweater), and just generally being loud and ungentle. I’ve been lying down and listening to music since she and Karen (whom we met tonight … I feel like telling her I swear he’s usually not this overwhelming and/or I swear we’re competent parents) left, while Eric cooks supper. It wiped me out.
On the other hand, Erin smiled so genuinely when she felt and heard the fetus moving around—we’d just been telling her it’s very lively and reactive. And she found its head and let me and then Eric feel it; it was so cool. She showed us where to put a thumb and index finger and then shimmy them back and forth a bit, and I could very distinctly feel the head shift and sort of jiggle between my fingers. Feeling the weight and three-dimensionality of a particular body part is pretty amazing. It’s wild to me that it’s already getting big enough that it’s possible to pick out and manipulate individual features.
The big news this week is that I think we’ve finally assembled our birth team. That is a totally dorky term, but what else can I call it? Karen (mentioned above) is an advanced midwifery student who’s started taking on her own clients under supervision and will act as Erin’s assistant at our birth. She has a great energy, and she and Erin obviously really like each other. They’ll both be at prenatals from now on. And although we haven’t met in person yet, I’m pretty confident that we’ve also found ‘Noah’s person’ (as we’ve been calling this role); a few days ago, I spent probably an hour on the phone with a midwife who also works as a doula and sometimes as Erin’s assistant. She seems very willing to serve in an odd role–taking care of Noah, answering his questions, helping him support me and witness the birth in ways that work for where I am at the time, making sure our dog gets to eat and go out–because that’s what we need and she totally gets why. These are three women who laugh a lot and respect birth, children, and our weird little family. And there’s something really cool about the idea of having three midwives at this birth–all that knowledge and strength and love–even though they won’t all be acting in that role.
I have to go back to work (and commuting) in a couple weeks and am freaking out about that. I’m barely, barely able to manage my physical problems well enough to enjoy my life at all right now. I simply will not be able to rest and take care of myself the way I really need to be doing once I’m teaching three courses and driving two hours a day three days a week. Things are hard enough right now, with a very flexible schedule and near-constant access to my bed, refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, etc.: I just don’t know how to transition back to work without pushing my body and myself over the edge into really-not-okay again.
Have I ever had “ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact”?
Earlier in this pregnancy, I filled out my “Initial Health History” form for prenatal and birth care. You know: check the box if you’ve experienced severe headaches, diabetes, all sorts of things. After the usual “Emotional abuse,” “Physical abuse,” “Sexual abuse,” I got to this very interesting item: ”ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact.”
And I almost went blithely on without checking the box that means I’ve experienced it. Because nothing has happened to me, really, right? I’m supposed to feel lucky, right, given that I’m a woman in a culture where horrible things very often happen to girls and women? But then I actually thought for a second, and reality hit me.
–
I have been grabbed and forcefully kissed, open-mouthed, by a stranger while walking through a crowded club behind friends.
I have been groped and rubbed on while dancing at parties in college, at bars, at clubs: a parade of hard penises I most certainly did not want to feel. For a while, I went dancing at a bar where women could dance on the bar, because it was the only place I could figure out to enjoy dancing without getting felt up: being ogled and treated like I was likely to strip at any moment felt safer and less disgusting than the alternative. And I like dancing.
I have felt my ass grabbed and pinched and stroked on crowded city streets and public transit, from early adolescence on.
When I was fourteen, I hemorrhaged while menstruating, leading to a very early first gynecological exam. After putting her fingers inside my body as I lay–abjectly terrified and deeply ashamed, feet in stirrups–on the table, the doctor asked whether I was sexually active. And when I said no, she assumed I was lying. That was my first experience of another person touching my genitals, and while technically she had my consent, let’s just say it didn’t go well. Many years of nightmares, body shame, and bouts of anxiety ensued.
Between the ages of twelve and nineteen, I attracted a great deal of ‘fatherly’ attention from middle-aged men who stood too close to me, touched my shoulders for no apparent reason, moved me physically where they wanted to go rather than using their words.
I’ve had boyfriends repeatedly touch me sexually in ways they knew I didn’t like. Because they wanted to.
There was a professor in grad school who would stand way too close to me (and lots of other young women) at department functions, doing odd things like stroking my arm, leaving me quite unsure how to respond without harming my future as a student and as an academic.
When I was twenty-one, a married acquaintance in his forties asked me to meet up with him and a group of friends for a drink one evening. He was drunk when I got there. He licked my neck. When I left for my car (to get the hell out of there and see my new boyfriend, who incidentally was Eric), the man followed me outside, scaring the shit out of me. He stood there towering over me in the dark parking lot, me backing away from his closeness, as he tried to convince me to go with him to his car.
Just for instance.
–
I’d never envisioned these little experiences as part of a larger pattern before filling out that form. They’re just so ordinary. My mother and stepmother and friends and, I’m sure, students have experienced all of this shit, and are continuing to experience it–and much scarier and more scarring shit, too. Many of you have, and do, and will. In many senses I am lucky. Yet despite my comparatively good fortune and my considerable privilege–which I totally acknowledge–the truth is that each of these ‘little’ moments in my life articulated what quickly became a powerful theme:
Your body is not for you. Your body is for men’s pleasure.
And you are at risk, all the time.
–
When I checked the box next to this item on the form, curious five-year-old Noah asked what it meant. I read it to him, and he asked what it meant again. I said something like “Well, Erin wants to know whether anyone’s ever touched me in a way I didn’t want, like kissing me when I didn’t want that, and unfortunately that has happened to me. A lot. But not recently.”
He looked at me very seriously.
Then he gave me a serious smile and slowly, slowly, maintaining eye contact, gave me the gentlest kiss in the world, on my mouth.
I refuse to do the happy dance because I was fortunate enough not to be molested as a little girl and have not been violently raped. I refuse to be abjectly grateful for ‘getting off easy’ with the experiences I’ve mentioned here.
Because I deeply resent that they are normal.
Because I can hardly stand the thought of these constant erosions of personhood seeming normal to our daughters and sons.
But for this love and gentleness and compassion, I am infinitely grateful.