things i have learned since 2.31 pm yesterday

That a sense of mastery over your own destiny is illusory at best: things will always happen that are outside your control. A strong shake by the biggest and fiercest of all Mothers is a salutary reminder.

That diving under the nearest table and holding on for dear life seems much less silly and much more ingrained than it used to.

That if you are separated from your loved ones, the first thing you want to do is find them. While knowing our daughter was safe with her carer, our first thought was to leave work and go and collect her.

That walking home uphill after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake while nearly 8 months’ pregnant is slow, tiring progress. Thanks goodness a kind soul offered us a lift home. Otherwise, I could still be walking back.

That people can be very generous: we were not the only ones being offered a lift up the hill, and car pools were organised to get stranded commuters home to various locations around the greater Wellington region.

That the will to normalise is very strong: minutes after the earthquake, while some people were still wild-eyed and shaking, others were making flippant remarks or getting on with plans to get home. After about 24 hours with - touch wood - much smaller aftershocks, my nerves seem to be adjusting much more quickly than they did during the big earthquakes last month.

That maybe there is something to this animal instinct business and pregnancy after all. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I'm pretty sure my reactions to the earthquake are heightened by the sense of increased vulnerability I feel being pregnant. Weirdly, I have felt more in touch with my animal nature during these episodes than during birth and breastfeeding.

That having a very young child who slept through the quake and hasn’t really noticed most of the aftershocks is probably much easier to deal with than a fearful older child whose imagination is running riot and can’t sleep.

That having a sore bump and lots of foetal wriggling does not necessarily mean early labour, and, even if it did, 33 weeks is way more optimal than 28 weeks.

That outdated advice is still circulating, particularly around sheltering in doorways and the more dangerous ‘triangle of life.’ It’s much much less silly to dive under a table or desk and ‘drop, cover and hold.’

That social media and the internet generally are both a blessing and a curse in times like these: great for circulating messages and information quickly, while freeing up phone lines for emergency calls; not so good for sensationalising - reports of people ‘fleeing’ central Wellington seemed a bit over-the-top to me - and people feeling the need to to outdo each other in the pseudo-sophisticated flippant remarks stakes. 

That there are a number of well-coordinated services and people out there who worked through the strong aftershocks - and continue to work - to try and keep people safe or help them out: emergency services, lines-people, engineers, bus and taxi-drivers, civil defence and emergency management staff, GNS scientists, local and central government officials, and, yes, politicians too. They no doubt have loved ones they wanted to get home to as well, but put their responsibilities to their job and their community first. That is really humbling and I am very grateful.

That this will be a short post: this week, I was halfway through a review of sociologist Sharon Hays’ 1996 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, but, strangely, didn’t feel like finishing it this weekend. Hopefully, strong aftershocks notwithstanding, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

by george, she's done it!

I hadn’t planned for my first post in a wee while to be about the royal birth, not least because I’m not a monarchist, and have not been following The Pregnancy with avid interest. Two things, however, made me change my mind. The first is that my last few posts have been on reasonably ‘heavy’ subjects and I thought it was probably time for a change of pace. The second is that The Happy Event occurred about 24 hours after the earthquake I last posted about: news about something as everyday and positive as a new baby suddenly seemed way more appealing than it had previously. It also provided a bit of light relief from constantly refreshing GeoNet or the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office Facebook page for news.

The coverage of said Happy Event left me pondering a few things about the narratives constructed around pregnancy and birth, both this particular royal birth and births in general:

1) Back in March this year, author Hilary Mantel, who has written bestselling novels involving historical royals, made some fairly conventional remarks to the effect that Kate Middleton’s job was basically to look pretty and breed (although she may have worded it a little more strongly than that). Her point - a minor one in her talk - was about the perception of the Royal Person generated by the tabloid media, but this didn’t prevent her being pilloried by media (both tabloid and some broadsheets) and politicians alike (I mean, really, didn’t Ed Milliband or David Cameron have anything else to do that day? Surely the latter, at least, had benefits to cut, programmes to slash and jobs for the boys to distribute?) 

But, not surprisingly at all, the coverage of Middleton’s middle as it expanded and then of the subsequent birth pretty much conformed exactly to what Mantel said it would: a focus on her looks and body and on all the minutiae of the pregnancy and birth. So, basically, whatever else she may have to offer, Middleton, like other women in the public eye, was reduced to the corporeal, specifically to her reproductive capabilities. Attention was also drawn to the fact that she listed ‘Princess’ as her job on the birth registration form. Nothing like peddling some conservative constructions of womanhood to sell a few papers is there?

2) Having said that, I’m not going to deny that the birth of any baby is special. But, as nurse-academic Ruth de Souza, eloquently writes, I wish ‘we’ treated every baby as if he or she were as special as this baby. De Souza, who formerly worked in a post-natal ward, points out that not all mothers and their children are sentimentalised in the same way and provides some excellent background as to why. I particularly liked her wishes for all new mothers and babies:

• I wish the arrival of every infant in the world was greeted with the same sense of anticipation and enthusiasm as the Royal arrival.
• I wish every mother, infant and family could receive the same “care” as the Royals will.
• I wish “we” cared as much about maternal and infant mortality around the world.
• I wish “we” cared as much about “other” mothers who aren’t supported in their mothering and against whom active measures are taken to regulate and surveil their bodies merely because of the accident of their own circumstances.

I would also be much happier about The Happy Event if it helped trigger greater awareness or debate about these issues. 

3) While the ante-natal vigil on the streets of London by journalists eager to scoop the opposition and press photographers poised to capture the first glimpse of the baby was kind of amusing - ‘our latest report is that there is nothing new to report’ - the post-partum parade of new mother and baby was a little disturbing. I know that a straightforward birth can mean a new mother can go home or be up and about within a short while of delivering a baby, but most get to slope incognito out the hospital door wearing trackpants and a loose t-shirt. 

Not so Princess Kate. 

Instead, she was paraded before the waiting media, hair done, full make-up on, tasteful dress echoing that worn by her deceased mother-in-law in her own post-partum parade. While this was no doubt expected and planned for - that dress was surely no coincidence - one can only hope she was doped up to the eyeballs so as not to feel any of the swelling and pain that even in the best circumstances doesn’t subside until weeks after the birth. I can’t help but feel that this kind of tableau perpetuates the idea that birth is a walk in the park, particularly in countries where both infant and maternal mortality is low, and creates false and unreasonable expectations for new mothers. 

What’s more, some media hacks and twitter trolls, who seem to have little understanding of basic biology, were already scrutinising her post-partum body and finding it wanting: look at that bump she still has! How’s she going to get rid of that?  Kate’s post- pregnancy weight-loss plan! Good lord. While trade in celebrity post-natal weight-loss stories has been going strong for a while now, other celebrity mothers at least seem to get some choice about when and how they participate in this narrative (and get paid for it!) The rest of us just get to feel bad about how we can’t live up to these impossible ideals. Following hard on the heels of this damaging nonsense, however, was a wave of commentary supporting Kate and her bump display, saying that she, at least, was sending a positive message to women and girls that this is what a post-partum body looks like and it’s perfectly OK.

4) Around the world, The Happy Event was celebrated in a range of ways: buildings lit up in blue and read, word spelled out by anonymous bodies on naval ships, commemorative newspaper and magazine covers. In Wellington, the plan was to conduct a 21-gun salute. Yep, that’s right: letting off 21 loud noises from phallic-shaped machines designed to kill people to celebrate something that is virtually the complete opposite. That’s not at all weird. 

What was weird, however, was the decision to go ahead with this ridiculous ceremony a mere day after the city had experienced a pretty strong earthquake, which may not have been deadly but certainly frayed nerves (mine included). Apparently celebrating the birth of a baby 12,000 miles away with a militaristic display was deemed more important than the mental wellbeing of some rattled residents. It’s great to know out city cares. 

Now, I’m not saying that they need even have done something as sensible as not marking The Happy Event at all, but perhaps a more suitable alternative could’ve been found in the circumstances. Releasing 21 balloons, perhaps? (Or even 99?)

5) I have to confess that it would’ve been quite nice if the baby had been a girl (and I'm not alone in this one either). Not, I hasten to add, because I have anything at all against boy babies. I’m aware that the laws governing the royal succession were changed to specify that either a boy or girl would inherit the throne before the gender of the baby was known. While this may have positively impacted other members of the aristocracy, a number of Commonwealth states, of which the British monarch is still the titular head, decided to opt for a wait-and-see approach. This means that their succession laws still specify that a male heir needs to inherit the throne, and this in turn impacts on the coming into force of the British law i.e. despite the law change, until all 15 Commonwealth countries who have the monarch as their head of state change their laws it's in no way a done deal. The arrival of a boy ensures that primogeniture - one of the ribs making up the skeleton of patriarchy - survives for another generation, at least. 

Kind of like the new Dr Who, in a way.

But in spite of all that, I wish you good luck new royal parents and baby: a newborn baby is  precious, but also hard work. I’m sure the privileges you enjoy will ease some of that, but then I expect the downside is that, as your baby grows up, you will continue to be publicly scrutinised, idealised and perhaps even condemned for your parenting in a way that most of us are not. 

quaking with fear

It is now nearly 24 hours since and earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale shook central New Zealand, including me and my family here in the capital Wellington. 

This quake was preceded by two other strong earthquakes, one which shook us awake just after 7am on Sunday morning and the other which caused office workers to dive under their desks on Friday morning. In between times, there have been numerous aftershocks, which have also continued since last night’s quake.

It was terrifying.

Even though I have been in moderately strong earthquakes before both here in New Zealand and also in Japan, seen at a distance the deadly damage wrought by the Canterbury earthquakes, and know that Wellington is built on a series of major faultlines meaning that we can definitely expect a ‘Big One’ at some point in the future, I was not prepared for quite how terrifying the experience would be.  Not so much in the moment when you just react - and I think the actions we took could probably do with a little fine-tuning for any future event - but afterwards when you start thinking about what just happened, what is continuing to happen, whether you’re adequately prepared or not, and how you’re supposed to ever calm your racing pulse again.

I think my nearly 3-year old daughter probably coped with this experience better than I did. Even though her heart-rending ‘mummy, mummys’ still ring in my ears, once she was with us and under the table she seemed calm and was even laughing and dancing round the living room as the evening wore on.

I wish I could have been that carefree. Instead, any of the moderate after-shocks I felt made me grab her and head for the table. I was on edge all evening and slept poorly, unable to relax, especially after a strong after-shock around 4am.

My baby, on the other hand, slept, well, like a baby. 

It didn’t help that the earthquake struck just after 5pm, as the sun was going down, and the power cut out. The primal fear of the trembling earth was further enhanced by a fear of imminent coldness and darkness. We then had to figure out how we would cope without electric light and heat for the night. Fortunately, the Canterbury earthquakes meant that we had stocked up on torches, candles, matches and even a portable gas stove. Just as we were contemplating baked beans in the living room by torchlight, however, the power came back on. Big thanks to those lines-people who worked had to get the power back on. There’s nothing like warm food, light and heat to jump-start a feeling of normalcy.

It also didn’t help that I’m 29 weeks’ pregnant. I checked with my midwife this morning and could tell she was trying not to be too dismissive when she told me that an earthquake is extremely unlikely to bring on premature labour. Last night, in the dark, my tummy heaving as much as the earth below my feet, it didn’t seem like such a remote possibility. I had visions of either having to try to get to the hospital or trying to have a baby without professional help at home.  Neither was doing much to calm my fears.

This morning, though, has brought a little more reassurance. Regular updates from the Wellington Region Emergency Management Office have helped. So have Facebook, email and Twitter feeds (finally starting to see the point of Twitter a little more). It’s not so much the information - though that it is certainly helpful - but also the sense of connection: the reassurance that others are also going through this and that there is still a way to go yet. We checked on our elderly neighbour who lives by herself: she assured us that she was shaken but OK, and we’ll probably check in on her again soon. 

Particularly heartwarming have been the messages from Cantabrians who know better than anyone what the impact of large earthquakes can be, both physically and emotionally.  Even though the earthquake last night was nowhere as severe as those they experienced - and I have everything crossed that it stays that way - the expressions of support (like this one and this one) have been really helpful and extremely generous.

It has also helped that the aftershocks recorded on Geonet so far today have been barely perceptible, although we have been told to expect aftershocks, some moderate to strong, for several days if not weeks.

When I woke up this morning, I was extremely reluctant to let either my husband or daughter out of my sight. The thought of going into work in the centre of town - which we were mercifully advised not to do - was paralysing. The thought of being separated from either of them, particularly if another big earthquake strikes, was almost impossible to bear. My mind began racing with all the emergency preparedness things we hadn’t quite got round to doing: the emergency water should’ve been changed a few months ago, those large imposing shelves in the living room still weren’t secured to the wall, we had no getaway bag prepared. At the same time, however, the list of normal, everyday activities I had to do was whirling away in my brain: a piece of work with a deadline to finish, the bathroom to be cleaned. I realised trying to process all this along with the actual event of the earthquake and its aftershocks had sent my stress-levels sky-high and nothing I tried to do to calm myself down was helping much (this, when I was wide-awake, some time in the middle of the night).

Getting up this morning, I realised the way to deal with my still wild-eyed stress was to do something rather than just sit (or lie) around feeling anxious. So the water has now been changed, the shelves secured to the wall, a getaway bag prepared, the car filled with petrol, and some cash put aside. All this activity, and checking in with various people, as well as the ground staying comparatively still this morning has helped me relax little by little. My tummy is still churning a bit, but I feel much more confident that the baby-to-be, along with the rest of us, is in little imminent danger.

But, every so often, I catch myself thinking ‘what if’. What if another big earthquake comes? What if the next one is much bigger? What if we are all not at home when it happens?  These mental ambushes are almost worse than the earthquake itself.

So I have decided to write this post while my toddler is asleep on the sofa.  Marshalling my thoughts to shape some words has helped them not to stray too far into the wild reaches of fear and and ‘what ifs.’ 

For now, at least.

Kia kaha to all those living in the Wellington and Marlborough regions: let’s do our best to get through this in whatever way we can.

we can work it out

I’m counting down the days that I have left at work before I go on parental leave (24 to go!) Both that and the thought of the different kind of labour which awaits me got me thinking about the nature of work, specifically the role it plays in people’s lives.

In previous posts, I have been bothered by the focus on the career / motherhood question that appears to be heavily slanted towards elite women. In this post, I will be guilty of a certain narrowness of frame of reference too, as I am going to talk about the role of work for me: someone who has the luxury of choosing what kind of work I might do, even if I'm not compelled to become a CEO or political leader.

Before reflecting further on my own working life, I do want to draw attention to some recent research on the inequalities among working women. A 2013 British Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) study found that the gap between women who have a university degree or professional qualification and those in low or unskilled work was a whopping 198 per cent (for those born in 1958) narrowing to 80 per cent (for those born in 1970). By comparison, the gap between professional men and men in low or unskilled work was just 45 per cent (for those  born in 1958) rising to 61 per cent (for those born in 1970).

Dalia Ben-Galim, the associate director of IPPR, comments "many of the advances for women at the top have masked inequality at the bottom. The ‘break-the-glass-ceiling’ approach that simply promotes ‘women in the boardroom’ has not been as successful in changing family friendly working culture or providing opportunities for other women to advance. Women are still concentrated in low-paid and often part-time work. Women with lower qualifications and those who have children at a younger age are finding it harder to secure good jobs and opportunities at work." 

Work, then, is a feminist issue, and comprehends so much more than the fantastical notion of ‘having it all’.  I believe a feminist approach to work should be about changing the paradigm of what work is like: transforming working environments so that women are not unfairly penalised for having had limited educational opportunities, for becoming - or not becoming - mothers, for not wanting to work round the clock or conform to old-school leadership models (a particular pet peeve of mine: bullying bosses are bad news whether they are male or female). I believe this transformation would enrich the lives of male workers too.

When I was young and naive, I remember saying to a co-worker that she shouldn’t work past the hours she was paid for - she routinely worked an extra hour or so at the end of the day so, as she put, ‘she could feel she was on top of the job’ - because it meant our employer was ‘stealing from her’ i.e. by working extra for nothing, the company was taking a free-ride on her labour. Needless to say, I don’t think she appreciated my two cents.  But in my way, I was alluding to something that much greater minds than me have traversed at much greater length: as a worker, rather than employer, the thing that you have to ‘sell’ is your labour power (regardless of whether it is physical labour or intellectual labour).  An employer ‘buys’ your labour power, but, even among the well-recompensed, at a much lower cost than what he/she/they will profit from it. This is (very) basically how power operates within capitalism.

The job I was doing at the time I gave my well-meaning but not well-received advice, was not something at which I planned to make a career. I was on a working holiday in London, so the work I was doing had a larger function: to pay my living costs, yes, but also to help me enjoy my ‘OE’. While I didn’t slack off, ambition was definitely not the driver of my working-life at the time. For my colleague, however, work helped her provide for her family, and she wanted to progress as far as she could with it, even if it meant putting in some unpaid overtime.  However unconsciously, she calculated that the extra effort would pay off for her in long-run. 

When I grew up and started working in more career-oriented jobs, I became much less sanguine about my work-life balance without really thinking about it. This was complicated by the fact that my chosen career involved ‘flexible’ work that didn’t always require being in an office. Many aspects of it were enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, so much so that it didn’t ‘feel’ like work. Suddenly, work seeped into evenings and weekends. After some soul-searching about whether the trade-off was worth the increasing lack of a personal life, I decided to leave the career path that I was on. 

Since I left that career path, I have been fortunate to engage in work I felt was both socially important and personally satisfying. However, I still hadn’t quite learned all I needed to about work-life balance. One particularly demanding job resulted in a serious overuse injury that can still flare up during particularly stressful working periods. 

In this post, however, I want to reflect a little on how pregnancy has affected my attitude towards work. 

During my first pregnancy, I worked full-time. I didn’t often work evenings or weekends (learned my lesson there, but I did make the odd exception) but I certainly worked about 110% during the day to make sure that I didn’t work evenings and weekends. The primary reason for that was not ambition, but passion: most of the work I was doing was not only challenging and enjoyable, but had a sense of making a difference too. Indeed, just before I realised I was pregnant, I put my utter exhaustion down to over-work. My manager encouraged me to use some of my stock-piled annual leave. It was a few days later that I took a pregnancy test and discovered there might be another reason for the way I was feeling...

That first time, being pregnant led me to ease up a little at work. I knew from previous experience that stress and over-work can have physiological consequences and it was now important that I not only not inflict them on myself, but also on my growing foetus. Again, I did not slack off, but I started saying ‘no’ to more things, asking higher-ups to prioritise what they wanted me to do in the time available, making sure I had at least a 30-minute lunch-break every day and didn’t just eat at my desk and so on.  

The sky didn’t fall in. As far as I can tell, no-one thought any the less of my ability to do my job. And I saved myself some unnecessary stress. Being pregnant gave me the incentive to be more protective of my self at work, to set boundaries and realise what a healthier attitude to work could have been all along.

This time around, I am in a slightly different position. I work three days a week in paid employment, and try to avoid saying that ‘I don’t work’ the other days (because, census-takers, it most certainly is work). Once I was back at my job, and especially before a job-share partner was found to share the full-time role with me, it took me a while to realise that I wasn’t a full-time worker anymore and adjust my work-habits accordingly. Early on, I even made arrangements to come in for an ‘important’ meeting on one of my non-work days. Watching the clock with increasing anxiety as I listened to others witter on, I made that the first and last time I worked outside my nominated three- day week.

Because when you work part-time and come in for a meeting on a non-work day or take some work home ‘just so it gets done’ (how my former colleague would smile at me now!), you could - and should - be being compensated for it. After the first time this happened, I realised what my younger self already knew: I might earn brownie points for dedication, but I certainly wasn’t earning any money. The person I was cheating was myself, and - if I continued to do this - my family.  I agree with Guardian columnist Zoe Williams' exhortation that women part-time workers should not be apologetic for the fact they work part-time and should, instead, lobby hard for their own interests.

There has been a further twist in my working life while pregnant this time round. Through the whole course of my current pregnancy - and well-beforehand too - my organisation has been going through a review process that is, next week, to culminate in the final announcement of a re-structure that will mean some people will lose their jobs. A substantial portion of those who don’t will, however, have their positions ‘disestablished’ and will then go through a process of being ‘reassigned’, ‘redeployed’ or made ‘redundant’. It’s a salutary reminder that whilst one may be working to pay the bills, to do something meaningful, to achieve work-life-balance, or even to try and ‘have it all’, those in positions of power ultimately have the ability to determine whether you work at all. 

In some respects, assuming that I keep my job, being pregnant at this time gives me a kind of ‘get out of jail free card’. By that I mean, I will shortly be taking just over a year’s leave from what is likely to be an unhappy, uncertain and difficult time for my colleagues. When I return to work, the blood will have been spilled and - hopefully - cleaned up, and I will be able to assess whether I want to stay there or look elsewhere for a job. Of course, I am not suggesting that looking after a new-born baby is not work or that it’s an easy option. But, in my current work environment, it does give me just that: another option. Score another point for the value of work-life balance.

But work-life balance for an individual doesn’t solve the collective problem of inequalities at work: working that out requires a major transformation of all our working environments.

In the midst of life ...

I should say at the outset that this pregnancy-related post is quite a solemn one (don’t worry, I’m fine!), and even though it is firmly grounded in my own experience may act as a trigger for some readers. 

* * * * *

This is a tale of two pregnancies.

During my first pregnancy, I began to bleed at seven weeks. As I’m sure you can imagine it was a startling and unexpected sight. Given that I was still in my first trimester, I worried that I might be about to miscarry and quickly made an appointment with the nearest GP that I could find. After a check-up, he seemed fairly relaxed that my fears were not about to be realised, but sent me for a scan just to be on the safe side. I felt calmer, but was eager to see what was going on in my otherwise-much-as-usual abdomen.

I don’t think that I really expected to see much at this scan. After all, the scans where you can discern faces and legs and hands come later, at 12 and then 20 weeks. I guess I thought the radiologist would have a quick look and reassure me that everything was just fine (well, fingers crossed anyway).

After consuming practically my own body weight in water in the hour before my appointment, I propped myself up on the bed and gel was smeared across my tummy. Using my inflated bladder as a guide, the radiologist soon found what he was looking for. There, magnified several times, was a small shadowy circle: that, he said, is the remainder of the egg sac, the proof we sought that my pregnancy was still viable. Phew!

But there was something else there too. Something I had not expected to see.

It was like a tiny flickering light, a candle buffeted by a draft. 

As we looked at it, the radiologist turned on the sound. Clear, regular thuds turned the flickering candle into a sure sign of life: a heartbeat. Along the bottom of the screen, we could see the jagged lines graphically representing that heartbeat. This fetal heartbeat, much faster than ours, pushed the lines close together, into steep, high peaks, and deep, narrow valleys.

I watched, speechless, unexpectedly moved by this testament to a life that was still going strong, despite what I feared. Whatever the reason for my bleeding, it was clear that the foetus and I were still in this together.

Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about this moment. It got me thinking about, of all things given my very recent fears, abortion. I was and am firmly pro-choice, believing that it is a woman’s right to control her own fertility. But my experience at the seven-week scan had given me a different perspective. I didn’t agree with pro-life advocates, but I could understand better where they were coming from. It was hard to deny the life-force of that tiny but steady beating heart, that palpable assurance that ‘yes, I’m still here.’

It reminded me of the anti-abortion sign parked by the side of the road of State Highway 2, which infuriated me every time I drove past it: ‘abortion stops a beating heart.’ Designed to guilt-trip, it now seemed like they might have a point.

I’m not the only expectant pro-choice mother who has been given pause by an early scan. In Misconceptions, Naomi Wolf wrote of her reaction to her three-month scan:

As I saw that hand and foot, something irrational happened: a lifetime’s orientation toward maternal rights over fetal rights lurched out of kilter. Some voice from the most primitive core of my brain - the voice of the species? - said: You must protect that little hand at all costs; no harm can come to it or its owner. That little hand, that small human signature, is more important now than you are. The message was unambivalent. (Misconceptions, chapter 5)

While I did not share many of Wolf’s sentiments - ‘voice of the species?’, ‘more important now than you are’? Jeez, Naomi! - I related to her altered perception. And how it led her to question her basic notions of identity and politics. She comments further:

I was still passionately pro-choice. But I was beginning to wonder if a pregnant woman was an implicit challenge to the autonomous ‘individual’ upon which basic Western notions of law, of rights, even of selfhood were based. There are two people inside me now, I thought. Everything is different. Pregnancy, it seemed required a different kind of philosophy; even a better pro-choice language. (Misconceptions, chapter 5, extracted here)

In a previous article in New Republic, Wolf opined that the pro-choice movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as a form of homicide and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continues, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."  Wolf concluded by speculating that in a world of "real gender equality," passionate feminists "might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with the doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead."

I don’t think she’s on the right track here, but Wolf does have a point. Trans-historically, cross-culturally, and among other animal species, reproductive control - whether through abortion or, more troublingly, infanticide - is the dark other side of the story of women’s ability to bring forth life. 

My own reflections on this topic didn’t end with my first pregnancy, however.

In this, my second pregnancy, I also had a seven-week scan. This one was simply ordered as a ‘dating scan’ to establish an estimated due date, rather than to confirm the viability of the pregnancy. Again, I sloshed into the radiologist’s room, had the gel put on my tummy, and looked expectantly at the monitor. This time my fear was not that I might have lost the baby, but that there might be more than one heartbeat in there. 

Again, we saw the shadowy egg-sac - just the one, thank goodness - appear on the screen. Again, we saw the candle-flame flickering. Again, we saw the jagged heart-rate and heard the quick rhythmical beat. 

This time, however, my emotional response to the scan was quite different. 

This time, I was more matter-of-fact, less surprised: ‘There it is’, I thought to myself, as if I had just found a lost set of car-keys. I watched the monitor and was only surprised by the fact that I was not really surprised.  What had changed since my previous first scan and this one?

In a word, experience.

While I still remembered my sense of wonder from the first scan, I was also somewhat older and wiser about what it takes to bear and raise a child. I remembered feeling sick as a dog during my previous first trimester. I remembered nearly dying after giving birth, and the long process of recovery from that. I remembered the sleep deprivation, near-constant breast-feeding, isolation, and marginalisation that counter-balanced the marvel of a new baby and the joy of her every movement. I remembered that there are emotional, financial and social costs in having a baby, just as there are incalculable gains. 

More importantly, I knew that I had wanted my first baby and I wanted this one. But I also knew that not every woman who finds herself pregnant does (for whatever reason that may be). I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with pregnant Guardian columnist Tanya Gold, who recently wrote: “Pregnancy has made me more pro-choice, not less; an unwanted pregnancy, I now know for certain, is too much to ask, here or anywhere.”  Similarly, journalist Caitlin Moran powerfully narrates her own experience of abortion, after already suffering a miscarriage and giving birth to two children, in How to Be A Woman. Her conclusion? That women know best about what’s best for them.

But, as my reaction to my first scan attests, this is a complex area.  

While I remain pro-choice, I cannot un-remember the flickering light of life I first saw approximately three years ago. Nor can I ignore the fact that, for some groups of women, the right to have children is threatened by things I am extremely unlikely to experience, such as forced sterilisation (see examples here and here). Nor that some groups of women are stereotyped as ‘bludging breeders’ and are on the receiving end of social censure for having or wanting to have children. But in every circumstance, when it comes to fertility, women are often positioned as less than human, their right to control their own fertility - be it having children or deciding not to have them - is seen as a matter for others to determine. 

Knowing now what I was yet to learn then, I am more convinced than ever that it is the state’s responsibility to provide women with access to legal and safe abortion, not only in cases of rape, incest, threat to the mother’s life, or for medical reasons, but also in cases where a potential mother does not want to carry a child to term for whatever reason that may be. Anything less would be, ironically, to infantilise women, to treat them as if the state - and, by that, let’s face it, I really mean patriarchal ideology - knew better than women themselves about what is best for them.

This is not an abstract or settled issue, either. 

Just this week, Texas senator Wendy Davis filibustered for 11 hours to stall proposed legislation that would have limited Texan women’s right to exercise control over their own fertility. The proposals she took a stand against called for abortions to be banned after 20 weeks, clinics to upgrade their facilities to be classed as surgical centres and doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. They would have forced 37 of the state's 42 clinics to close, making it very difficult for women in rural areas to obtain an abortion if they needed one. 

Since her actions, and those of her supporters, succeeded in over-turning the vote, Davis has been attacked by male politicians for being a teenage mother of a teenage mother, someone who should know better than anyone what the value of a life is. 

Given that Davis was a divorced single mother, working two jobs to support her family, and living in a trailer park by the age of 19, I think she, far better than her male critics, probably does know what the value of a life is and what it takes to make and raise one. She did not choose to end her own pregnancy, but she knows enough to know that not all women would make the same choice she did.

review: Wonder Woman

Unfortunately, this is not a review of the comic, film or TV series of Wonder Woman, the feminist super-hero, but a review of Australian journalist Virginia Haussegger’s 2005 book Wonder Woman: The myth of ‘having it all’.  

Its starting point is a provocative and visceral article entitled 'The Sins of our Feminist Mothers' Haussegger wrote for The Age in 2002. In it, she bared her soul about the recent and devastating discovery in her late 30s that she was not able to have children. Her article went further, questioning whether feminism has sold women a myth: that despite its important gains, it had made women like her believe that they could ‘have it all,’ when in fact they might really have to choose between career success or children.

This book grew out of the huge reaction, both positive and negative, to that article: 

That sense of being sold ‘a crock’ was a common theme in the outpourings. What fascinated me about many of these letters, emails and commentaries was that it seemed no matter where a woman stood, be she mother, mother-to-be or non-mother, something was wrong. It was as if a scabby old scar had been ripped off a festering wound. (p 25)

Haussegger clearly intends her book to be a Betty Friedan-esque expose of a kind of modern-day ‘problem with no name’ (p 289). She tries to connect her own experience with that of the women who responded to her article - both the mothers who felt short-changed by the experience of motherhood (whether finding out having kids was not all it was cracked up to be or missing out on career opportunities) and the women who did not have children (whether the ‘child-free' women who adamantly insisted on their right not to breed, or women who did not have children for one reason or another).

On the positive side, the personal stories that Haussegger recounts in the book are incredibly moving, and her ability to connect with the women telling them is certainly part of that. Reading about Carolyn, a woman who struggled with numerous fertility treatments for well over a decade was almost unbearable, and left me hoping her story had a happy ending. It did. In her early 40s, Carolyn eventually gave birth to a much-wanted son. Other women who struggled with fertility, and whose stories feature in the same chapter, were not so fortunate.  

What is clear from the stories Haussegger tells is that women occupy a spectrum when it comes to their reproductive capabilities: from the extremes of the militant child-free women who voluntarily sterilised themselves to women who know from a young age that being a mother is a core part of their identity and thrive on having large families. Whatever position women occupy on this spectrum, both their humanity and their rights are not solely defined by their biology. It’s not simply a question of mother versus non-mother, and it’s  shame that Haussegger presents it that way.

What lets this book down, then, is its attempts to connect the stories together into a political analysis. Haussegger makes clear that she’s read several key feminist works, yet she somehow manages to lay ‘the blame’ for all women’s dissatisfactions with their lives at its door. It’s quite astounding that terms like ‘patriarchy’ (or a similar structural term) or even ‘power’ barely rate a mention in the book. Even the notion of assigning blame to someone or something for what, at least in Haussegger's own case, sounds like a particularly cruel twist of fate, seems to stop at the level of the individual and her ‘choices’ (or 'non-choices'). 

Several of the chapters in the book see either the women she quotes or Haussegger herself blaming ‘other’ women for their problems. A particularly egregious example is provided by one of the child-free women who, in the course of asserting the validity of her own life-choice (fine), took a swipe at all people who care for children on more than a casual basis by saying that all they do is ‘sit around all day’ (and paid parental leave is an 'unfair advantage' that involves 'getting paid to sit around all day' p 239)! Frankly, this is both offensive and wrong, and not exactly a great basis for solidarity around respecting all the subject positions that women occupy. 

Rather, the heart of the issue is that a patriarchal system primarily defines all women by their biology - how they look, how sexually available they may or may not be, whether or not they have children - regardless of whatever else they have to offer. That will manifest in different ways depending on what other subject positions an individual woman occupies: some women will be derided for being successful in traditionally male roles and not having children (just this week, yet another extremely offensive and sexist attack on Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard proves this point), while others will be seen as ‘doing nothing all day’, as well as losing out on any number of economic benefits, because they are stay-at-home mothers. Blaming each other or an abstract spectre called ‘feminism’ for this only serves to leave dominant structures of power intact.

Commentator Leslie Cannold is spot on about the central problem of this book:

While Haussegger is a wonderful raconteur, and demonstrates a clear gift for exploring emotions - her own and, through interview, those of others - she desperately lacks any capacity to think her way out of the complex problems she explores in Wonder Woman.  

Despite having read most seminal and popular feminist texts ... she clearly failed to absorb their central and most important message: that the personal is political. Without this understanding, or some structural framework to make sense of her experience and those of other women in terms other than those proffered by liberal individualism, Haussegger lacks the tools to extricate herself from the circular path of self-blame and DIY solutions that have characterised her journey, and to cut a clear path forward for her female readers. (Cannold, The Age)

And it got me thinking about the way she defined the problem too. 

‘Having it all’ seems a popular fantasy of the new millennium. In 2012, Anne-Marie Slaughter provocatively opined in The Atlantic that, for women ‘of her demographic’ - ones who have reaped all the apparent advantages from the feminist revolution - ‘having it all’ (i.e. successful career and family) was still not a realistic possibility and young women were being done a disservice to be told that it was.

While elements of both Slaughter’s article and Hausseger’s book resonated with me, I was principally left wondering about this mythical notion of ‘having it all’. This seems like a distortion of feminism to me. ‘Having it all’ sounds much more like the acquisitive language of capitalism - particularly when it is mentioned in the same breath as ‘choices’ - rather than the language of feminism - which has drawn on revolutionary language like ‘emancipation’ and ‘liberation’ or rights-based language such as ‘equality’ (ideally, of the substantive rather than the merely formal kind), or ‘the right to choose’ (i.e. the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy when it comes to reproduction). It also implies that all men ‘have it all’, which is clearly far from the case. 

I’m not the only one perplexed about the ‘having it all’ fantasy. Commentator Tressie McMillan Cottom says that Slaughter’s article left her cold because she did not relate to its concerns, whether from the subject position of her race or class, or ideological orientation: 

The article seemed to not only take for granted that all women have been told that they should have it all but that all women have–if not intimate–then definitely not adversarial relationships with power .... More often than not, power has worked to undermine my reality and my existence. And I don’t mean that in some fuzzy theoretical sense. I mean that when power, for example, starts talking about reforming welfare it is usually meant to be an act made on people who look like me; people with whom I identify even if I do not share their economic status. (Cottom, The Atlantic)

I too was somewhat bothered by both Slaughter and Hausseger’s analysis which speaks mostly to women in elite positions of power. This is not to downgrade the many challenges that women have faced to access those positions and crack the glass ceiling. Rather it is to note that most working women - and men, for that matter - are not CEOs or star journalists or politicians - they’re people making ends meet or, where they have some choice in the matter, trying to engage in work that matters to them (which may not be of the most well-remunerated kind). An analysis that fails to take account of this - and other realities, as Cottom attest - can only ever be partial and limited.

Unfortunately, especially given her public profile in Australia, Haussegger's book falls into this category.

On 'baby brain'

I am now well into my second trimester. The morning sickness is, thankfully, a distant memory, and the lack of manouvreability and difficulty sleeping is still to come. Most of the time, except when I’m trying to get somewhere in a hurry, I feel pretty normal. 

So normal, in fact, that I sometimes even forget I’m pregnant.

And, when I catch myself forgetting, I start feeling guilty. Guilty, already, that I’m not paying enough attention to this baby, that it might somehow be second-best to the active toddler who came first.  

At the moment, I can still lift said toddler. Indeed, my manageable bump offers a convenient ledge of support on which to balance her with one arm while I open the car door or hoist up the nappy bag. My back is starting to groan a little more with each of these lifts, but I figure I’ve got a good month to go before all I’ll have to rely on to persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to do is my own brilliant logic and winning smiles.

Guilt is a pre-requisite for Maternity 101. And it can start even before the baby is born, as this helpful website points out. I’ve previously blogged about the guilt induced by nutritional choices, but, it seems, I’m not the only one who feels guilty second time round at forgetting my pregnancy - and, whisper it, maybe even feeling glad that I’ve forgotten. I feel guilty because I’m wondering if it’s wishful thinking: do I really wish I wasn’t going to have another baby? Especially having had first-hand experience of what it was like first time round?

Forgetfulness in general is another symptom of pregnancy. Last time round, I came into work specially on a day off to attend an important meeting, then promptly got so caught up in something else that I totally forgot about the meeting until it was over. Lots of ‘baby brain!’ jibes came my way that day, let me tell you. Again, like last time, I’m finding some of my short-term memory skills affected: absent-mindedness, difficulty remembering all the things I need to do unless I write a list, and basic numeracy (since my first pregnancy, I’ve had to quite consciously make myself remember my own phone number or PIN number each time I need to use them).  I hasten to add that the remainder of my mental faculties are unaffected. I am not alone in this regard, either.   

Some psychologists have found that ‘baby brain’ is based in reality. And, inevitably, you’ll find someone postulating an evolutionary reason why ‘baby brain’ might be a useful adaptation for expectant mothers: one women’s health expert says, "It has been postulated that, from an evolutionary standpoint, this memory impairment may be helpful so that women will forget about other stuff and focus on caring for the child."

Others are more skeptical, putting it down to factors commonly associated with pregnancy: changes to diet and routine, surging hormones, and disrupted sleep being particular culprits. Whatever the cause of ‘baby brain’, however, most researchers are convinced that it doesn’t alter the brain’s actual capacity.  This Australian study was also careful to point out that the minor cognitive impairment or ‘baby brain’ experienced by up to 80 per cent of the women in the study did not justify discrimination on the part of employers. The warning is apt, as other studies have shown that pregnant women can face significant prejudice especially at work.

Interestingly - although ethically much more problematic - comparable animal studies have shown the opposite results: rats and other lab animals have shown evidence of cognitive enhancement during pregnancy. Indeed, more recent - and nuanced - research has shown evidence of cognitive enhancement in pregnant women in other areas, such as increased sensitivity to danger (as I’ve blogged about previously) and increased response to the cues of a newborn baby.

Psychologist Christian Jarrett sums up the shifts in thinking about ‘baby brain’:

the idea that it’s a purely negative effect is a myth that's in the process of being debunked. Any pregnancy-related impairments are likely a side-effect of what ultimately is a maternal neuro-upgrade that boosts women's ability to care for their vulnerable off-spring. Many will welcome the demise of the pregnesia myth, because it's a simplistic, one-sided concept that almost certainly encourages prejudice against women. 

All of which is well and good - boo, down with pregnancy prejudice - but what happens when what you’re forgetting is the fact that you’re pregnant?  How does that help prepare for the baby?

Not least when it comes to remembering the things you’re supposed to do to help them grow. This time round, in a new development since I was last pregnant, I have been prescribed iodine pills, one to be taken every day throughout the pregnancy, and then throughout breastfeeding after the baby is born. The reason is to make sure that the foetus gets enough iodine, as it ‘makes the thyroid hormones which are essential for brain development and function and for the normal growth and development of children.’

The only trouble is I’ve been finding it hard to remember whether or not I’ve taken one of the the blasted things every day.

Forgetting to take my iodine supplements, forgetting I’m even pregnant. Whatever next?

Forgetting that ‘motherhood’ is a culturally-loaded institution that damns women if they breed and if they don’t, if they work and if they don’t, if they eat well and if they don’t, if they raise their children ‘right’ or if they don’t?

Unlikely.

Maybe that’s what’s driving my second-trimester absent-mindedness: the fear of upending the delicate balance that I’ve managed to cultivate between my various roles since our first child was born and our world turned upside down.