the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body
but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.
the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like
all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that
there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are
but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo
this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury
and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that
bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent
the number of people who are pregnant and don't know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me
Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:
When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.
Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.
So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."
So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.
And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.
I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.
(Another example is post partum friends being like "oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth" and my doctor says it's NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like "Oh that's normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions")
When my sister was looking to get pregnant she was given the best advice. She was told that being pregnant is an experience akin to being in a moderate sized car crash, in terms of risk and lasting injury.
Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they'll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn't like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.
The vast majority of people survive and thrive, like. But their body is never the same again. And people should know that when they make the choice of whether to put their body through that or not
my mom had a complication postpartum that caused pain and swelling in her left leg. at the time she was told it was "milk leg" and that it was normal and she'd be fine, but it never went away or got better. she finally found a doctor recently who was willing to do some tests and found out it's a condition called "May-Thurner syndrome" and had surgery to fix it
she's been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I'm 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.
there needs to be more dialogue about the things your body goes through during pregnancy. "that's normal" or "everyone goes through that" need to stop being used to shut down conversations about the horrific, permanent damage that can be done to bodies during pregnancy and childbirth. just because it's "normal" doesn't mean it needs to be endured
I know this is not pertinent to the post but midwife is probably not gendered in the way you think. (The post gets this right btw but I see a lot of people getting it backwards) The “wife” in midwife (with the woman in OE) refers to the person giving birth, not the Obstetrician.
Granted, it still needs to be updated because not just women give birth.
Here is an etymologically equivalent but gender neutral term I just made:
- pregger helper
Hey also: babies are not medicine, or unconditional love playthings. Having a baby won't save your relationship, or fix the problems in your life if you haven't done the work to get yourself in a good place mentally, physically, and emotionally, already. People don't ask to be born, and having to grow up with parents that transfer their problems onto their children just perpetuates the cycles of abuse and life-long issues. Given you're not likely to get clear, concise, unbiased healthcare anyway, as seen above, and it will be continually impressed upon you that it is your duty to have children, make sure you're not succumbing to social pressures, or wanting to be a parent for the wrong reasons.
Genuinely, I think a large part of why so many people are unwilling to talk about risks, complications, pain and injury around birth, pregnancy and lactation is because of how deeply ingrained the (primarily but not exclusively) religious idea that "a woman's body is designed to have children" is. Because if you actually sat down and looked, clear-eyed, at all the many ways in which even a healthy pregnancy can negatively impact the body, it would be that much harder to believe that design factors in at all, unless we're willing to argue that the designer was shit at their job. But if you're sold the idea that pregnancy is some divinely ordained and/or ultimate expression of Feminine Life Purpose, and then you have a bad experience, you're much more likely to blame yourself, or to think there's something wrong with you, or to suffer in silence because nobody ever told you this could happen so there must not be any easy solutions, and that makes me so fucking mad I could spit.
