Dux - Things I didnt expect (when I was expecting)

Things I Didnt Expect

Some women experience a greatly improved state of health during pregnancy, both bodily and mentally. They feel uncommonly active, strong, gay and happy. This is, however, not common. It is much more usual for the mother to be subject to loss of appetite, nausea, and to other disturbances of the stomach and other internal organs; to be annoyed by low spirits, fancies, and longings; to be nervous and irritable; and sometimes to be seriously disordered in mind for the time being.

Martin Luther Holbrook, Parturition Without Pain: A code of directions for escaping from the primal curse, 1871

My ancestors had all sorts of problems, but propagating the species was not one of them. Out of the seven great-great-grand vaginas that I know about came eighty-two babies. Thats 11.7 babies per vag. And this figure doesnt even include their collective miscarriages and stillbirths, which are sure to have numbered in the double figures.

Of course this sort of rapacious baby-making wasnt so unusual at the time. Thats what simple country folk did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But even by the impressive breeding standards of the age, I have one ancestor who stands alone. When we were kids, my brother Matthew and I were told she was our Great Aunt Hilda, although to us she was just a faded photograph in the back of the family album. Matt and I took morbid delight in the older black-and-white pictures that we found there, teasing each other that we resembled those long-dead, sepia-toned relatives. Hilda was easily the scariest. She wasnt far into her sixties when the photo was taken, yet already her face was horribly pinched, her back profoundly curved and her hair had fallen out in clumps, joining the teeth that had long since departed, leaving her with a sunken, gummy grin, like a scary, wrinkled Muppet.

My brother used to delight in showing this photo to any boyfriends I was silly enough to bring home. Lovely, isnt she? hed ask them. Thats what Monicas going to look like one day. It always got a slightly hysterical laugh from my dates, as well as ensuring that theyd never look at me in quite the same way again.

Many years later I fell in love with a good manone my brother actually likedand together we decided to continue the great Dux tradition and have some babies. And as my first pregnancy proceeded, I often thought of poor old Hilda. But I wasnt laughing at her anymore. Instead of wondering how the poor thing ended up looking so bad, I started marvelling that shed even survived. You see, Hilda had given birth to eighteen children by the time that infamous photo was taken, while even a few months of pregnancy had made me feel like her scary Muppet cousin.

Before we go too much further, Id like to put something on the record. When I was pregnant I was always glad that I was having a baby. Babies were something that I wanted, something that I actively tried for. And despite appearances, I was never depressed. I was just in a bad mood. Instead of glowing, I scowled.

My pregnancies were adventures in vomit, discomfort and sleepless nights. I wet myself. Often. I produced such a freakishly large amount of saliva that I was forced to carry around a wad of paper towel to collect all the extra spit. I endured severe constipation, displaced hips and relentless indigestion. My body retained a massive amount of fluid, swelling my face so badly that, in the third trimester, my husband innocently inquired about how it was possible that pregnancy had made my eyes smaller. My morning sickness was so severe that during my second pregnancy my toddler stopped drawing flowers and trains and took to sketching Mummys vomit instead.

Most foods seemed repulsive, but there were a few that called to me. Eat me, eat me, said those packets of sour cream and chive potato chips, and I would willingly comply. If its true that you are what you eat then during my pregnancies I was a bowl of instant noodles, Oriental flavour, with a sprinkle of the aforementioned chips on top.

When I did venture out of the house, which was rarely, I shambled like a zombie, shoulders hunched, expression blank, pallor deathly, peeing behind bushes, drooling into my spit towel. Small children would cower when I approached, hiding their faces in their mothers skirts until the Bad Lady went away.

Sadly, when the morning sickness finally started to pass, at about the four-month mark, my craving for deep-fried carbohydrates only increased. Which ushered in the next phase of pregnancy-related degradation involving massive and unprecedented weight gain.

When I tell people that I got very large during my pregnancies, and that I was distressed by this transformation, they usually scoff. Oh, but you were pregnant! they say. Youre meant to gain weight! Then I specify my actual tonnage at the nine-month mark and they go quiet and look uncomfortable. I dont want to inflict the same kind of discomfort on strangers, so Ill just say that in kilos I was well into three figures; in pounds, over a double century. During my second pregnancy I broke two kitchen chairs. As I entered the final trimester people started turning away when I waddled past, perhaps in fear that I might burst and splatter them with pregnancy goo.

But Im not just talking about sheer size increase. Consider, for a moment, my bottom. Its always been a proud bottom, fulsome and unashamed. I liked it that way, and I wouldnt have minded if it had got a bit bigger. Yet in pregnancy it not only inflated alarmingly but took on a whole new shape, a shape I didnt recognise. It was someone elses bottom, yet there I was, sitting on it.

Ill admit that there were some good things about being pregnant. The sedative effect of the second trimester hormones was definitely a gift to my husband. The prohibition on alcohol, while initially cruel, was a boon for my liver. And I did learn some valuable life lessons. For example, if youre going to vomit your breakfast, avoid rolled oats as they will clump together unpleasantly. Banana smoothies, on the other hand, are a joy to regurgitate, leaving a pleasant, fruity aroma and aftertaste. Other than that, Id have to rate pregnancy as a medium-level catastrophe.

Of course my story is far from unique. Some pregnant women cop it even worse than I did, and most have a similar list of physical ordeals that they could reel off, if they chose to. But even for the lucky ones, those who dont suffer endless vomiting followed by gold membership in the Kaftan Club, the experience of pregnancy has got to count as profoundly weird and disruptive.