Emanations under Baby-Brain

Since it appears that most of my mental wanderings now come back to the baby, I thought for the sake of my conscience it would be timely to map a little the mandala (or, for the vertically-minded among you, great chain of being) that spreads out, in my mind, from her.  This comes in particular from the dimly-remember months interspersed throughout last year when I wasn’t pregnant.

Less this be too obtuse, I should be clearer.  I am thinking about pregnant women, and women bereaved of their babies or their foetuses or denied their fertility, and of women too who make the vexed and private decision by which pregnancies don’t continue.  I don’t want these baby-centred entries to be a source of pain for those whose experiences of fertility, natality and maternity have turned out differently from mine, and I don’t want this narrating of the fog of motherhood to obscure those other stories.  This is all part, I suppose, of being what I am increasingly thinking of as a conscious writer (which is different — shut up — from all things to all people, or second guessing my reader).

I’ve been looking for some way in which I could acknowledge and reflect on all of this without sounding too heavy-handed, too overbearing.  As is often the case with writing online, however, I’ve found a source in which someone else has done this first and in a manner comprehensive enough that I need only point to it to signal my own feelings.

Anjum Rahman is keeping a Ramadan Diary, of which her second day was concerned with meditations on birth, concerning which she adds “i mean to include pregnancy and the couple of months after birth as well”.  Her theme is her own personal gratitude, which is a little different from mine here.  It’s the way, however, in which she casts her net that parallels the way in which I want also to be mindful, from how “society places so little value on women who don’t have children” to “having control over the birthing process”.

The first point I would further refine to something like this: the mainstream social narrative assumes child-bearing and -rearing as a goal for most women and foists scrutiny of varying intensity, from passing curiosity to ongoing suspicion, on those who don’t, won’t or can’t share this aim. Of the latter point I say heck yes, particularly in regard to how

this is something that is special for nz women, that we can discuss with our midwives how we want our birth experience to be, we are able to make informed choices without being dictated to. my birthing plan was really simple: i told my midwife that i wanted every possible drug available during labour, and i wanted those drugs at the earliest possible time.

(Of my own memory of labour, my midwife’s serene declaration that “it’s time for an epidural” brought me the closest to theism, or at least goddess-worship, that I have been in a long time.)

There’s this, too:

i think of all the women who have died in childbirth, and or have had their child die. i think of the women who have had to go through labour far away from medical care or any kind of pain-killing drugs. i think of the women who bring children in this world knowing that they don’t have the means to feed them, or knowing they live in the midst of war and violence. i think of women who have the responsibilty of raising a child with disabilities, and of the particular pressures that brings. i think about the women who have been forced to adopt or to part with their child soon after birth.

Parturition dragged to the surface my bleeding liberal heart; the things above were the things about which I cried during my stay in hospital, far more than the pathos of the harvestbaby’s difficult start.  I don’t suppose I was the first mother to express distress at the thought of all those other babies and mothers being born and dying with so little of what they need, but it was unusual enough for the staff midwife to raise an eyebrow and say, “well, we can’t do anything about that but we can help you with your baby”.

The happiness of one so easily rides roughshod over the suffering of another, and it’s my continual returning to this that leads me to agree with Anjum about how “it is impossible to quantify the magnitude of my privilege when it comes to issues around pregnancy and childbirth”.  The señor and I sing cheerfully along with Weezer that in future “so much pain may come our way” (and it’s probably best for everyone that I don’t attempt a post on my attempts to be mindful of the ephemerality of the moment) and yet that bed of privilege is here.  That said, if the experience of this baby can strengthen connection, can strengthen empathy with others whose experiences have been different, then this post attempts, clumsily nonetheless, to draw a line to that.  Gratuitous embedding of favoured non-baby love song, cited above, occurs below.

Tagged as: baby