The Kvetch of a Pregnant Woman

I am lucky.

In the morning, I wake up with a feeling like a hangover: heavy, sluggish, uncomfortable. During the day, the same, plus soreness in my breasts, occasional stings like a needle through my nipple, and the pain of stretching flesh in my uterus when I sneeze. Only at three or four (it seems earlier every day, although the internets assure me it will all disappear soon) does the nausea seep in. No vomiting, just growing waves of unease, bitter bile rising in my throat, and that awful feeling of clinging desperately to the slippery rail of a sea-tossed ship.

And I am lucky.

My sister vomits twice daily for eight months when she is pregnant, or, eight months out ever 15.  Another sister is on bed rest four months out of every year, and a third has battled gestational diabetes for most of the past decade.

I now deeply understand, as I cram cardboard crackers into my mouth and practice deep breathing through my nose, how closely patriarchy depends on a lack of birth control. How can a woman desire, let alone assert, her rights in the fog of illness and hormones of pregnancy and birth, year after year?

I may be suffering now, but I am not an obedient child of 18, thrust into this 20 year cycle of pregnancy-baby-pregnancy-baby-pregnancy-baby-pregnancy-baby-pregnancy-baby… I spent ten years of adulthood forming my opinions, my desires, defending my rights, becoming a woman, before I began this process of becoming a mother.

I say lets spike the mikvos (ritual baths) with birth control pills and see what happens to the cultures built on the backs of women too bent over with their belly’s burden to ever straighten out and stand up tall and demand their freedom….

Although someone else is going to have to collect and disperse those pills – pills – uhg –just the thought – like half of everything else these days, makes me retch… where the hell did I put my crackers??