Bumpy Road
Pregnancy changes everything.
by Rebecca Barry
March 1, 2007
You want to like being pregnant more, especially since everyone is happy for you. But you feel like you have too quickly become a vessel for everyone else's happiness: your husband's, your mother's, your mother-in-law's. Jerry Fallwell's. Your brother who loves golf sends you a card that says, "Congratulations! What a magical year you have ahead!" and this makes you feel like everything else you've done in your life doesn't matter now that you're going to be a mother. "It's not magical," you say. "It's biological. A monkey can do it." You are already tired of babies. Babies, babies, babies! The polar ice cap is melting and songbirds are dying. "Do you You have never felt more ferocious.know what human beings do?" you say to your husband. "They kill everything. What would be magical is if I gave birth to a penguin. They're endangered." Luckily, according to babycenter.com, Bucephalus, who has just lost his or her tail, can't hear yet. Your husband tells you not to worry, you will probably give birth to a liberal, and they will soon be endangered too.
You notice that every time you say you don't feel good in your pregnant body, people say, "You're not fat, you're pregnant," as if being pregnant should solve everything. But you loved your pre-pregnant body, and this new one has changed into a factory that has nothing to do with you. Your legs have thickened, you've begun to blush easily, and your breasts are so busy you wouldn't be surprised if they got up in the middle of the night and set up a cafeteria. It amazes you that no one talks about this, that the only rhetoric you hear is that pregnancy is beautiful. When you say you feel huge, people tell you you're gorgeous. Glowing. Beautiful. But to you, it's not beautiful. It's powerful. You have double the normal amount of blood coursing through your veins. Two hearts beat inside you. You have never felt more ferocious. When your Pilates teacher tells you not to walk alone at night, you tell her not to worry: You could walk into a war zone and say, Bring it on. Point a gun at me. I will break you with my bare hands, because I am pregnant, and you couldn't handle the nausea alone.
You're pretty sure you used to be more conciliatory. You miss getting drunk.
By the fifth month, babycenter.com tells you that the baby has begun to drink its amniotic fluid. You assume this means that not only is it swimming around in its own toilet, it's now drinking the water. "Which means it has a dirty mouth," your husband says. "Just like its mother." Then he falls asleep.
You stay up late reading about birth defects and the vitamins you should be taking. You are still nauseated. You look at your husband, who is sound asleep. You think about how all he had to do was have sex with you, and how you have to deal with everything — how much this is going to hurt, the breast pump, the sagging boobs when you're done nursing. You think about how much money you've spent in your life on tampons, birth control, ibuprofen, bikini waxes — about $32,560. You think about what men get away with in the world and you can't believe they have so much political, social and economic power.
You miss getting drunk.
©2007 Rebecca Barry and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Rebecca Barry's nonfiction has appeared in The Washington Post, Glamour,
The New York Times, and Best American Travel Writing. Her fiction
has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, and Best New American
Voices. Her first book, Later, at the Bar, was published in May. She lives in Trumansburg, NY. |
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