“Women are never allowed to publicly (or privately) discuss their regret at having children or becoming pregnant. They are supposed to accept every change to their body as a gift, whether it is damaged skin, damaged organs, damaged joints or damaged pelvic floors. The process of pregnancy and birth is one of the most dangerous and damaging a woman can go through, and yet, if she is anything but elated, she is likely to panic that there is something wrong with her. The same can be said for those days and weeks after giving birth, which are socially portrayed as some sort of perfect paradise – but are often filled with sleep deprivation, anxiety, aches and pains, heavy postpartum bleeding, the healing of stitches and internal and external injuries, bruising from injections, catheters and IV lines. Ultimately, women are expected to be completely selfless at the time of pregnancy and birth, they are not supposed to care what happens to their bodies and their lives, and only care for the baby they are carrying and giving birth to. No matter what goes wrong, or how many traumas the pregnancy or birth causes, they are supposed to feel that it was all worth it. And what if it wasn’t worth it? Would a woman dare even admit that?
The trauma surrounding pregnancy, birth and postpartum periods is obscured by the flowery, cute, fluffy, excited narratives of becoming a mother and ‘having a baby’. The ‘true calling’ of women. No matter what women have been put through, there seems to be no consideration for how likely it is that they have been abused or traumatised – and how triggering all of these experiences can be. Even for women without trauma histories, the experience can be a set of traumas in itself. The way this is all glossed over for pregnant women and girls sincerely irritates me. They are only ever told that pregnancy and birth will be an amazing, life-changing and beautiful experience in which all the fear, injury and illness will be worth it. When women tell them the horrors and experiences of birth and motherhood, they are scolded for ‘fearmongering’. What is clear, however, is that many women will never want to experience pregnancy or motherhood at all, and many more experience this time as terrifying, traumatic and, unfortunately for some, as a period of their lives in which they find themselves medicated and pathologised for being scared, unhappy, anxious or irritated.”
- Sexy But Psycho by Jessica Taylor
