Angela Garbes - Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

For Mom and Noli Jo, who made me

Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of.

Octavia Butler

The moment I found out I was pregnant, I was hungover. While epic evenings of drinking were mostly behind me (after I hit thirty, my hangovers had morphed into cruel, multiday affairs), the previous night had been a rare, fun exception. I was sleeping it off, my heavy breathing interrupted by the ring of my cell phone.

The night before, my husband and I had martinis at our house before heading to our favorite neighborhood restaurant for a pizza with anchovies and pickled peppers. Id lost a pregnancy a couple of months prior, and a big part of our grieving process had been to give ourselves a break from focusing on anything baby-related. So, embracing our ability to act spontaneously, we ended up having a big night out like the ones we used to have when we were first getting to know each other and falling in love. Conversation, laughter, and affection (also cocktails and wine) flowed in the familiar, easy way that they had not in the weeks following my miscarriage. After dinner, we decided not to go home. We went to a 90s R & B night at a club; I drank tequila and danced to Mariah Carey.

When my doctor called with the news the next morning, it felt as though my barely conscious brain had been jolted awake. During the months after my miscarriage, my period had not returned (and, lets be honest, we werent having much sex anyway), so the possibility of pregnancy wasnt on my radar. When I saw the number on my phone screen, I scrambled out of bed and tried to pull myself together, as though he might actually be able to see me over the phone. I was in no condition for this.

Hello! I said with forced energy. The fake sound of my own voice startled me. Hello, hi, this is Angela, I tried again.

Good morning, Angela.

As soon as I heard his voiceunnervingly calmI stopped moving. Id recently had blood drawn to measure the level of the pregnancy hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in my body. The test was supposed to offer insight as to whether my uterus was back to its pre-pregnancy state or if it was still holding on to any retained products of conception, the clinical term for the placental and fetal tissue that can remain after a miscarriage. If the test results revealed the latter, I might need a surgical procedure of dilation and curettage (D and C) to completely evacuate my uterus. What I was hoping to hear was that my hCG level was back to zero, that my uterus was empty. That my cycleand my lifecould finally go back to normal.

My doctor cleared his throat. I think youre pregnant, he said.

No, I dont think so, I replied confidently, dismissively.

He paused.

Sorry, let me start over. Angela, this is your doctor calling. Im calling to tell you that you are pregnant. Last week, your hCG level was six. Today it is 1,033. The only way that happens is pregnancy.

It was as though he had whispered an electric secret in my ear. The unexpected news was a pulsing live wire that I could neither control nor ignore. Pregnancys current raced through me, giving off sparks of uncertainty and possibility. My mind flooded with an endless stream of questions, including a panicked, Did I just pickle my embryo with tequila?

Immediately after hanging up the phone, I began Googling.

You may have heard that an occasional alcoholic drink is okay, but its best to be on the safe side when youve got a baby on board, I read on the What to Expect When Youre Expecting website. Why? Alcohol enters your babys bloodstream in the same concentration as yoursand takes twice as long to leave itso whatever youre drinking, your babys downing one, too.

Uh-oh.

But what about that night out with the girls (and a few too many margaritas) a couple of days before you found out you were pregnant? the next sentence continued. It happens to many moms, and (what a relief!) theres no need to worry.

Whew. Wait, what?

The rules on my computer screen seemed definitive yet contradictory, vaguely rooted in science yet pulled from the ether. I consider myself a generally calm and sensible person, but just minutes into this pregnancy, I was reeling with paranoia and confusion. I worried that the alcohol I had consumed the night before had already damaged the fragile (sesame seedsize, according to BabyCenter) life-form inside me, one I had spent the last months wondering if my thirty-six-year-old, past-its-reproductive-prime body and dusty, cobweb-lined uterus could even support.

This was my first clue that over the next two years, I would have many more questions than there would be sufficient answers.

My hunger for information was insatiable. I turned to booksclassics like What to Expect When Youre Expecting and the Sears The Healthy Pregnancy Book and The BabyBookas well as online communities such as BabyCenter, The Bump, and What to Expect. I was looking for guidance, but after hours of reading through posts that used a strange lexicon of acronyms I didnt recognize (BBT, EBM, IC, LO, TTC) and texts that felt outdated, I never felt like I was being spoken toand I still didnt have answers to my questions. These resources are written by doctors and mothers who present their opinions as definitive, which, as someone whose experiences fell outside those lines, left me feeling insecure, overwhelmed, and, often, judged.

If youve ever leafed through the pages of a pregnancy guidebook, you know what Im talking aboutthe subtle (and not so subtle) finger-wagging implicit in even the most innocuous-seeming advice:

Scientific research has not yet determined whether cell phone radiation is harmful to mother or baby. Dont wait for the science to be conclusive. Certainly dont sit around with your tablet or your cell phone propped up on your belly. Even stashing your cell phone in your purse may be too close.

Dont put any plastic containers in the microwave; choose glass or ceramic instead. Think about what is important to you and how you want to honor this very special time in your life. Be a strong mama bear and focus on protecting yourself and your baby.

This attitude isnt limited to booksjust look at the way pregnancy and motherhood are typically portrayed in popular movies and television shows. In American culture, motherhood is inextricably tied to the language of morality. Over and over, the message reinforced to expecting mothers is that theres a right and a wrong way to do things: You are a supposedly good mom if you abstain from caffeine and alcohol while pregnant, dont gain excess weight, plan a so-called natural childbirth (for the record, I believe that all birth is natural, no matter how it happens), breast-feed for at least a year, and glow with happiness throughout the whole process. You are a bad mom if you have the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy, experience anxiety or ambivalence about having a baby, look forward to an epidural, feed your baby formula, or take a pull off a joint once the kids are in bed because children are exhausting. This cultural standard is so well established that we even joke about it, proudly proclaiming ourselves bad moms when we stray from these expectations. We are trying to reclaim a term that wed be much better off abandoning.

During pregnancy and the first few months of my daughters life, by far the best advice I received came not from books or websites but from other pregnant women and new mothers. Some of them were close friends (or their older sisters) who lived across the country, others were friends of friends, people I barely knew. In pregnancy and motherhood we found camaraderie, a feeling that we were in the trenches together. We didnt necessarily have hard science to explain such perplexing phenomena as getting a transverse or breech fetus to turn head down, cluster feeding, perpetually leaky and/or saggy breasts and vaginas, and the slow healing of C-section incisions, but we had our own experiences and instincts. We were an army fighting for sanity and information. We texted back and forth at all hours of the day and night.