Gravida

When I was pregnant with Gus, my mom sent me her copy of Eastman's Expectant Motherhood, a book that her doctor had given her when she was pregnant with me back in the 1970s. She thought I would get a kick out of it what with all of my women's and gender studies training, but since I was drowning in dissertation defense preparations and rewrites I had little time to look at it. Now, I have enough time to give it at least a glance every now and then.

On the inside cover, my mom had documented her weight gain. My mother was so small at 106 and three-fourths pounds that her doctor wanted her to gain very little weight. Nine days before I was born, she weighed all of 121 pounds, something I have not seen on the scale since high school. Her handwriting has changed very little.

First published in 1940, Eastman's Expectant Motherhood, written by Keith P. Russell, M.D., begins in its preface: "Pregnancy should be a happy, healthy time. Childbearing is a natural process, the supreme physical function of womanhood, and no other event confers such deep, abiding contentment" (xii).

Some of the language is overblown here. "[S]upreme physical function of womanhood" gets my dander up a bit as does the insistence that pregnancy is the ultimate patron of "deep, abiding contentment." The past twelve weeks have been rough ones. Constant nausea. Bone crushing fatigue. Mood swings that make me say the most horrible things to my husband who is mostly blameless except for forgetting to clean up the dog shit in the backyard or failing to take my hints that I would love some damn help unloading the dishwasher already.

While I was sick with the stomach virus this past weekend, I wondered what the great female invalids of the nineteenth century would do. For many of them, pregnancy provided a time to write during their "confinement." They did not have to worry about their dishes being clean or about getting a quick lie-down while their toddlers crayoned the walls.

But back to the text....

However, not all of it is all that wrong-headed. Natural? Yes, for many women, it is natural, and I am incredibly thankful that getting pregnant has never been a problem. But some struggle for years and with every tool of science and technology at their disposal. Moreover, pregnancy, far from being a disease, now is referred to routinely as "an altered state of health." A google search of that phrase along with "pregnancy" generates 5,950 hits.

Even with my complications of gestational diabetes past and my goitre, Gladys, my doctors seem unworried, confident that they have the tools to monitor my conditions and provide the necessary treatment. Even Eastman's Dr. Russell insisted seventy years ago that pregnancy "is a much safer undertaking than a long automobile trip" (viii).

What fascinates me about this book so far is that it was written when the diagnosis of pregnancy was far from certain, that a woman could not know for sure until she was two or three months along. The only proof for Dr. Russell back in the day was detectable heart sounds, discernible movement, and, get this, an X-ray (17).

I knew before I even took my first pregnancy test on the day of my expected period. On the day before, Gus and I were in Costco. Suddenly, I became incredibly dizzy and felt this odd compulsion to hit up every single sample cart in the entire store. I normally avoid the samples because I hate the shoving and that look in people's eyes, the fear in them that the food will run out in a store that size. Not only did I eat all of the samples, I pursued those samples aggressively. I did not care who was in my way. I needed that salsa, those pizza bites, some chicken tenders, those chips, a handful of granola. Gus looked at me, puzzled and a little annoyed, because I was being stingy with the free food.

After a week of knowing only oatmeal and scrambled eggs, my stomach is back to normal, mostly. It is almost two in the afternoon here, and I don't feel like I'm going to collapse from exhaustion or have to revisit my lunch. Maybe tomorrow will be different, but today is definitely a better day.

There will be more from Eastman's Expectant Motherhood in the coming months. There are some gems in those pages.