I’m a pregnant roller derby athlete Part Two: the “Secret” struggle
Part two of my pregnancy blog is going to cover another tricky topic with pregnancy- disclosure. This is a difficult time for any pregnant person, but I think it’s especially difficult in a contact sport setting. Keeping secrets like this is tough, but being in a context where you are so easily “outed” by lack of contact while still being present makes this an especially difficult time for a pregnant skater.
I’ll give you a little background in case you don’t know much about the first trimester. Basically the risk of miscarriage for the first 12 weeks while the placenta forms is pretty high. Every week it get’s less likely, but it could still very well happen even at 10 weeks onwards. That’s why the general advice is to not tell the world about your pregnancy until 3 months into it, in case you end up miscarrying. More often than not, miscarriage is due to the fetus not forming correctly, and there’s not anything you could have done to change it. This situation of uncontrollable miscarriage lends itself to me feeling the most powerless I’ve ever felt. Besides that, I’m terrible at keeping secrets and lying, so this was a stressful time for me. The way I went about it was basically letting people know on these parameters.
I was ok with them knowing about me potentially grieving about a miscarriage
That I would be in a position to have to regularly lie to (i.e. my teammates and leadership).
I told the 2016 team immediately. I needed support and it was important for them to know why I’d be bowing out of Anarchy. At this point the new 2017 team had not yet been selected. I was still playing and so I decided since I didn’t know the newer skaters yet, to hold off on telling them my news. During this time, for the most part, life went on as usual for a few weeks. At around the time when I was 8+ weeks along, we had an upcoming goals meeting on the calendar. I was getting to the point I had decided to stop skating. I thought that since Balls was unavailable for Champs (my due date is Oct 31) this meeting might be a good time to let the rest of the team know, with the caveat of *THIS IS NOT TO LEAVE THIS ROOM. I hemmed and hawed about it for a while. We hadn’t even told our own parents yet. I did not feel confident about #1 of my parameters with such new people, but I felt like it would inform the goals discussion for the team. I made my choice with the team in mind even though I felt nerves about it.
This choice to share despite nerves about it, resulted in a number of situations that peeked suspicions/ leaked information outside of my “circle of trust”.
I want to say, I know that the people that ended up being nosy or sharing info didn’t have harmful intentions. They are my friends, and I have talked to them frankly about this, and amends have been made. But this is a topic we HAVE to talk about. This is not a cavalier thing, and it’s very often treated as such. The baby that was forming inside my body and fears I was having in my heart made me feel more vulnerable than I have ever felt in my life. I was not ready for just any person to know about it if it didn’t go as planned. It is an EXTREMELY SENSITIVE time, not to mention the hormones… oh the hormones.
I want to share this experience so that we can learn how to support your potentially pregnant leaguemates, instead of making them feel like I did. In about the course of 1-2 weeks of telling the new team, a series of events happened that made me more hurt and than I can remember in a long time.
At the meeting I definitely said the info was not to leave that room very explicitly, but I was really nervous and emotional telling the new members of the team. I fumbled through all the things I was planning on saying and got it out there. Within a week of that meeting, two separate of my teammate’s significant others congratulated Balls when they saw him in person. I did NOT TELL THEIR SIGNIFICANT OTHERS. And honestly, I knew some leaking was bound to happen, that was not the worst part about it. Under NO circumstance should they have disclosed to Balls that they knew. I was 9 weeks pregnant. One of my good friends had recently miscarried at 10 weeks. The fact that I knew that they knew, tore me apart. I had the knowledge that these SOs, that I was not at all close with, would potentially know if I had a miscarriage. I felt so betrayed. I did what I thought was best for the team, and it backfired. I cried.
A concurrent situation was also in the works. Leadership was now able to send out some call outs to try and find additional bench staff. Some call outs were sent to past players and potential candidates the team knew well. At this point, they were hoping to get someone to gain some experience and help out at Anarchy, in addition to needing someone to fill in for Balls at champs. They made up some “Family commitment” he couldn’t get out of as the reason. This raised suspicion for some candidates- what could possibly Ball’s be missing Champs for?
And the rumor mill started. I had teammates let me know that one of the candidates had been asking around and grilling the current team about if I was pregnant. Not just once, not just twice, but multiple different people, on different occasions with series of questions. Now this person is a friend of mine, but again, I was still just not ready to disclose unless it was necessary. It is so unfair to force people to lie or tell you what is going on in their uterus. This cavalier line of questioning in order to satisfy nosiness needs to end. I am not uncomfortable with vulnerability, but this felt so different. The lightheartedness with which my biggest fears were being treated made me so upset. My worries were reduced to juicy gossip. I cried some more.
Balls ended up disclosing to that person for a number of reasons: explaining the bench situation, they were our friend, but also make the rumor mill stop. Now that they knew, they were obviously sworn to secrecy themselves and would never tell someone else. I did trust that they wouldn’t tell, but it sucked so badly they felt an urge to be in that circle that they forced our hand. I felt relief that hopefully I could fly under the radar for a week and a half longer until I had my scan.
At this point I was still really worried about miscarriage because the closer you get to that scan, the more real it all seems. Before that point some days you feel so emotional and pregnant, other days you wonder if this is really happening. Literally when you first find you’re pregnant, they don’t do extra tests at the doctor. It’s just like, “oh the stick is right! Here you go take your vitamins. See you in 2 months” My scan was set for the Thursday before Anarchy and it was only 1 week away.
Another LRG league mate had noticed I was attending training, but not skating. They were in the know about the call outs for bench, and so they decided that I must be pregnant. They asked around to a couple of my teammates / friends but no one confirmed my news for them. A few days before my scan, they sent me a message online with only the words “how many weeks”.
At this point, I’d had it. I was no longer sad about it. I was irate, the gall to tell someone that they were pregnant and confront them about it. My choices were to lie, to disclose or ignore it. I decided to lie and say I had an injury, but to also angrily tell her how inappropriate it is to put anyone in that position. It is NOT an innocent request, even if the intentions aren’t nefarious. A few days later I had my scan and I told her I was in fact pregnant and didn’t have a shoulder injury. Gah, SO awkward.
Once I had my scan, everything checked out, and I felt so much relief and joy! This thing in me was real. It was there and I had a photo of it. It was so weird and great to hear the sonographer say “there’s one baby in there”. And then all the tests to come back in the clear. The scan was a huge turning point for me, both in connection to my pregnancy and being out of that terrible anxiety-ridden time of forced disclosure.
I didn’t write about this experience to call out my friends. Seriously all is forgiven and moved on from. It’s one of the harder things I’ve been through, and I think it was so hard because I was hurt by choices of people that ARE my friends. I don’t think they meant to hurt me, but I was in fact, very very hurt. I write about this experience because now that I have been through it, I will certainly treat it differently when I’m on the non pregnant side. So without further ado, I leave you with some advice on how to navigate and support your friends and teammates.
My advice to you:
If you hear the news with everyone else
Don’t tell them, “I totally knew it!” - this also feels shitty... it feels gossipy and that I did a bad job of hiding it. Either way, it didn’t feel good like “congrats!”
If you know someone is pregnant but has not yet told the world
Don’t share news that is not yours to share. Telling people is one of the most fun parts and it sucks not to get to do it first hand.
If you do share the news inappropriately, make sure they don’t find out about it. It matters!
If you think someone might be pregnant
Keep it to yourself.
Don’t ask others and start a rumor / widen the circle of suspicion.
Don’t ever force someone to disclose or lie by asking them directly. Basically don’t put baby in a corner.
Thanks for hearing me out. These two blogs were the first big sort of hard issues I went through and it took me some time to get my thoughts written down. I’m hoping to write more regularly and in shorter segments about some other topics, (hopefully more as they happen instead of in such hindsight!). Next up is Part three: a new team role.
