Recently, I received a phone call from my friend Janice, who was pregnant. Janice had suffered two miscarriages in the first trimester, and all of her friends were concerned about her ability to carry this baby to term. When I called her back, the first thing I asked was, “Are you okay?”
“I’m terrible,” she said. I held my breath. Her voice made me think she had lost the baby. When she complained about her bad morning sickness, I was relieved.
An award-winning journalist, Janice had put off getting pregnant until she finished a major investigative series for a local newspaper. At first, she couldn’t conceive, and then she miscarried. This time Janice seemed to be holding on to the pregnancy. But she was also struggling with the hormonal symptoms common in early pregnancy. She couldn’t think straight, she was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed when her alarm went off, and she had terrible morning sickness. Her emotions were changing from moment to moment, and she had come to the conclusion that her career was over.
I did my best to comfort her. I told her that the hormones that protect the fetus also can produce many of the symptoms she was experiencing. She understood that intellectually, but my generalizations didn’t touch her where she lived. She told me that friends who didn’t have children couldn’t empathize with her; they couldn’t imagine it being that bad. They thought that she shouldn’t complain. After all, this pregnancy was working, unlike her earlier attempts, and they’d been present for her tearful losses so many times. She imagined that they were thinking, “You shouldn’t be complaining. You tried so hard to have this baby. You should be grateful. I can’t believe you’re being so selfish.” She felt extraordinarily guilty for wanting a baby so badly and now being so miserable.
Nobody had said to her, “Janice, you’re not a bad person; it’s not your fault. Yes, you feel miserable. Sometimes I felt miserable, too. But you will feel better.”
Then she told me that her writer friends had warned her that she would never again write the way she had before getting pregnant. Her mind would be permanently changed by motherhood; she’d have “mommy brain,” and she’d better prepare for life without the great career she had begun. Even if she was able to think intelligently again, she would be so consumed by diapers, baby food, and Barney that there wouldn’t be time to express what she thought.
“What?” I yelled into the phone.
“Well,” she said, “isn’t that true?”
By now I was angry. I reminded her of the prize-winning writers who had children, the full-time volunteers who had children, the women heads of state who had children. Janice was in a weakened condition, and she was vulnerable to old wives’ tales. We talked for about an hour, and then she asked me why nobody else had talked to her the way I did.
