Horror Show

Someone I know is 1) pregnant and 2) young looking, so the cavalcade of advice has begun with complete strangers assuming she’s a first time mom In For It. Young people need extra advice, right? ALL THE ADVICE. And also, because her particular adventure involves pregnancy, ALL THE HORROR STORIES. See, there’s this thing. When you take up rock climbing, people don’t regale you with stories of climbers who’ve had to chew off their own limbs to escape being trapped. When you take up running and are about to do your first 5K, people don’t normally regale you with stories about Hitting The Wall and how they turned into fountains of diarrhea and vomit during THEIR first 5K. When you get your first car, people don’t casually mention every single flaming 50 car pile up in the history of ever. But when you’re pregnant, everyone comes out of the woodwork to tell you all about how they were in labor for a month straight and their episiotomy when from their bully buttons to the small of their backs and how their uteruses fell out and now they have to cram it back up with a pessary every time they sneeze. So what’s up with that?

I think it’s a few things.

First, I think it’s that women rarely get to share their stories and have them appreciated. Although women are stereotypically considered more talkative than men, better at communicating and using words, their words are still given little value. Especially when what they are talking about is considered in the female sphere, like getting pregnant and giving birth. Ew, vaginas! How gross! Don’t talk about that ever again!! Right? Even among bloggers, female-identified people who blog about parenting are called ‘mommy bloggers’ while male-identified people who blog about parenting are called not ‘daddy bloggers’ but ‘dad bloggers’ or ‘parenting bloggers.” Mom. Mommy. It’s the little dings like that which really enforce whose words are given credence, given weight. So people who have been pregnant are eager to share their pregnancy stories with other people who are pregnant because here! Someone who will listen! Someone who will APPRECIATE a good vomit rocketing out of the bedpan onto the wall story!

Second, I think it’s also a way of saying “you’ll be ok.” As in, “I was in labor for forty-seven million hours and my uterus shattered into a hundred pieces and I lost ALL OF MY BLOOD and my legs fell off and I survived this and you will too. I shit myself in front of everyone, but I’m still here and so is my kid. YOU WILL BE OK.” It’s a way of saying that child birth, frankly, sucks. Pregnancy sucks. But most people survive it. It can be awful! But also survivable! And at the end you have a kid. And other people who’ve been pregnant know a lot of what you’ve gone through and are going through and will go through and you aren’t alone.

Third, of course, is that people are awful and just like talking about Shit That’s Happened To Them. Because PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

So if/when you have people lining up to tell you about how TRAUMATIC and TERRIBLE their birth experience was (or how they couldn’t stop puking while pregnant and lost 30 pounds and had to have several IVs to prevent death or whatever) don’t take it personally. They’re bringing a lot of their own baggage to the table. And you? You’ll do fine and will rack up your own stories to torment other people with. Or keep to yourself, depending on how you play.

Mirrored from Now Showing!.