Being
Pregnant: What Momma Didn’t Tell Me
By Ruth Berkowitz
My blue jeans can’t zip; my bras
don’t fit; and I wake up at least twice a night
to use the loo. I always wanted children, but I never
guessed how hard it is to be pregnant. In the abstract,
pregnancy seems graceful, like the flight of a hot air
balloon. However, instead of elegantly soaring through
the air, the balloon grows inside of me, distorting
my figure and making me buy clothes labeled “Motherhood”
and “In Due Time.”
My Momma told me that she loved being pregnant and that
I would, too. Pregnant three times, she was in this
beluga state for almost four years straight. “It’s
wonderful,” she reminisces as we walk (she walks,
I waddle) on the beach. Eight months pregnant, I am
wearing the jeans with the elastic front. I also wear
non-maternity clothes in larger sizes, but sometimes
they make me look – as Momma says – as if
I ate too many doughnuts: “Just plain large.”
“It isn’t all wonderful,” I tell her
as we watch the waves pound the shore. What about the
sensitive breasts, the heartburn and the pain from the
uterus growing and stretching? She responds, “I
was just thirsty. Everything was wonderful.”
Momma either forgot what it was really like, or she
was one of those naturally-talented pregnant women.
Momma never told me that I am not allowed to sleep on
my back. She didn’t tell me that my breasts would
get so big that I’d have to hold them up when
I ran. She didn’t tell me that I, a spicy food
kind of gal, would become ravenous for ice cream and
root beer, and averse to garlic and salsa. She must
have forgotten about the enhanced sense of smell and
the need to walk with a dog because of the flatulent
odors spewing uncontrollable out of my nether regions.
Nor does she remember the uncontrollable need to nap.
“I was exhausted taking care of you three kids,”
Momma says, “but I don’t remember being
tired from pregnancy.”
Her health advice is simple: “Just don’t
gain too much weight.” When she was pregnant in
the Sixties, weight gain seemed to be every woman’s
main concern. She gained only 20 pounds; I have gained
almost twice that. Back then, a woman smoked and drank
her way into the delivery room, while the father paced
the lobby with cigars in hand. Today, sipping wine brings
glares from strangers; fathers don sterile medical suits,
attend childbirth classes, and, with luck, do not pass
out during labor and delivery.
I tell Momma about the graphic birth videos I the childbirth
preparation class my husband and I are attending. Giving
birth looks excruciatingly painful, “Ignore the
videos,” she reassures me, as I feel a kick from
this mysterious being I’ve named “Wild Thing.”
Momma makes it all sound so simple. “All you have
to do is push, she instructs. “Remember, all babies
come out.”
Fast forward a couple of months. After 36 hours of labor,
I am rushed into the operating room. This was not in
our “natural birth plan,” in which my husband
Tim announces the sex of the baby, whom I bring right
to my breast. Instead, I saw Momma, wearing a medical
shower cap and scrubs, with tears in her eyes. She wouldn’t
leave my side until they sewed me up.
Fortunately, the doctor adroitly maneuvered the baby
out by forceps. The umbilical cord was wrapped around
her neck at least three times, making “Wild Thing’s”
birth experience pretty lousy and earning her an Apgar
score of two and a pointy almost alien-like head.
A few hours passed until Tim could bring Maya alias
“Wild Thing” to me. As I held her tiny hands
and inspected her, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Tim and I wanted to knock on all the doors and let everyone
know that before us was the most beautiful baby in all
the world. She smelled of perfection, and we felt ecstatic.
That night, all three of us slept together on the single
hospital bed. “We’re a family now,”
I thought.
“And I’m a Momma.”
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