I understand why they call it “falling” pregnant. It’s a painful, humiliating and generally inconvenient experience, much like falling onto a sidewalk, or falling in love. I fell pregnant 38 weeks ago and my injuries have been so severe I’m forced to sequester myself to my boudoir where I remain sprawled across my bed like a flushed tuberculosis riddled Victorian posed for a sexy portrait.
I’ve been afflicted with a condition that I was certain I’d be statistically immune from up until I did the maths and realised 2% of pregnancies represents 2.8 million people each year. We few, we miserable few, have what is called “hyperemesis gravidarum”, or what some doctors downplay as “long term morning sickness” (if they want to get punched in the throat). It’s severe nausea and/or vomiting that can last for the entire 9 months of this magical journey. It sends people to the bucket, the bathroom, the emergency department, and even to facebook groups where we get to ask for fun pregnancy advice like “what medications can I take that won’t kill my unborn child?” and “does anyone know a good PTSD therapist in Sydney?”
I wasn’t going to write about this experience, because I’ve found long term suffering to be impossibly boring. To survive, I have to do the same things every single day. I wake up in the same bed, eat the same breakfast, get kicked in the same bladder by the same foetus, do the same daily exercise of walking to and from the bathroom a few hundred times, take the same medications, get back into the same bed and lay there until the sun goes down, my cat settles on my belly in the most uncomfortable position possible, and (if I’m lucky) I fall asleep. This is how I live, so myself and this adorable parasite growing inside of me doesn’t die.
But I’ve decided to write about this because I don’t want to forget how hard it is. Hormones are tricky bitches, and I know that if I leave this undocumented my brain might flood with oxytocin in the delivery room and I could very well find myself saying things like “it was all worth it” or “I would do it again in a heartbeat” or even (god forbid) “let’s have another one”. It isn’t that I don’t believe parents when they say these things, it’s simply that I know pregnant people are socially and biologically programmed to reduce our own suffering, our pain needs to be smaller than our function, or else, why would we do it? Why would we ever put ourselves through this?
I’ve spoken to friends who’ve had HG and never told me (or any of their other friends), some of whom even kept it from their colleagues and their families, who spent weekdays at work and weekends at the hospital getting pumped with a cocktail of saline solution and zofran like a cohort of functional meth addicts trying desperately to not get caught. Despite struggling to keep up with work myself, I’ve never felt more fortunate to have the kind of arts job where my in office presence is often considered more of a hindrance than a help. I’m grateful that vomiting mid meeting only involves hitting the mute button and tilting the camera away from my bucket instead of racing out of a meeting room like I’m Kirstie Alley in a 90s rom-com about to learn my married boyfriend knocked me up. Even still, I’ve had to cut down my hours and my income to give my relationship with my bucket the time it needs and deserves. I’ve had to field work calls from the bathroom floor, toothpick my eyes open after restless nights, and lie all the time about how I’ve been feeling. “A bit better” I’d say over zoom, grinning wide in the hopes that this would distract from the fact that I was wearing stained pyjamas at 2pm on a work day, the same ones I’d been wearing for the past week.
The facebook group I reluctantly joined (“reluctantly” because it’s on facebook) is full of people who’ve lost their jobs, their relationships, and their sanity, who are strapped and broken and about to have a baby, or else are in such dire and dangerous circumstances they’ve been forced to choose between their dream of having a child and their own mental and physical wellbeing. It isn’t lost on me that I found out I was pregnant immediately before Roe vs Wade was overturned in the United States, when the “free world” decided that pregnant adults and pubescent children alike should lose their freedoms (and potentially their lives) for a cluster of cells. I remember long turbulent nights in those first few months, when my head rested on my bucket like it was a firm fist and I seriously contemplated abortion despite knowing that my fertility circumstances mean this might’ve been my last chance to conceive. I’ve had two abortions, choices that were solid and important, and generally really well done on my part. But this was the first time I’d felt coerced into making such a choice, and it was by my own body. Illness has always meant something is wrong, and my gut instinct was, as you’d expect, to try to fix it. However, I didn’t get an abortion.
It’s strange to me that I, a person who once fled to the school nurse’s office crying with what turned out to be a small and generally quite painless ant bite, would choose such lengthy torment for the mere possibility of procreation. In his essay on suffering, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer hypothesises that humanity might cease to exist if the decision to have children was an act of pure reason alone. Of course, he was referring to subjecting the child to the suffering of existence and not the suffering experienced through pregnancy, likely because, as a cis man, he perceived the conjuring of children as a pleasurable (and very quick) act. But the distinction he makes between reason and desire still stands. I’d chosen to grab at this suffering in the same way an impetuous kid might choose to grab at a clearly labelled electric fence (something I’ve also done), focussed exclusively on the blissful aftermath (the euphoria of looking brave and cool in front of my brother’s friends) with little thought given to my own pain and survival.
Although in this case the stakes were much higher, and the pain far greater than I could’ve possibly imagined.
I fell pregnant with little foresight, but stayed pregnant because, as Schopenhauer writes, “life is a task to be done”. We cannot escape suffering if we want to live. I think about the millions of people who are currently, and for the first time, falling victim to chronic illness thanks to Long Covid. Many of them, similar to me, sequestered to their boudoirs, isolated and on their own (which are two very different things), losing time. I feel the heft of my privilege as someone who can at least imagine this as a temporary set back, rather than as an experience unbound. But I’ve been warned (and I can sense it) that the madness of this experience changes a person, that months of relentless illness - the dehydration, the rotting teeth, the bleeding throat, the sobbing so hard I frightened my cat to the other side of the house - will stay with me long after the symptoms dissipate, that going through this shit will impact the rest of my life.
I’m not sure I can put into words how I feel about this, except to say that I’m aware suffering often shapes us in ways we can’t predict, and sometimes those shapes are both more interesting, and more beautiful. Other times they can be squished and resentful, but I refuse to think about that right now. What I will think about instead is that I’ve fallen before, and that I remember it well, but what sticks with me most is that I eventually got back up.
Best wishes
I had my second baby 12 weeks ago and both my pregnancies were just like your experience. The second time around was also painful and I was scared that my body might not recover. It has slowly and I am so grateful! P.s the experience/s were so difficult that when my doctor suggested tubal ligation I jumped at the chance - also something women don’t seem to share. Definitely the right decision for me and an option I now feel pretty strongly all women should know they have in case it’s right for them.
All the best and thank you for sharing