Pregnancy, week 36: Everything irritates. Why shouldn’t it, when everything hurts? I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to entertain anyone. I don’t much want to leave my house. Who will sit quietly on my porch with me? There is a roaring in my ears: my baby, my baby will be in my arms soon, soon, soon. I am full and content. I am somehow also restless. I am looking always a little inward.
Literally brooding, I realize this is. I think that I should wear some sort of symbol to this effect. After all, everyone respects the right of a hen to this behavior. I struggle to know if I’m entitled to mine. Brooding, I say to my aching, nesting self again, and it feels right.
But should I say such a thing out loud? The hot-pink feminism directed at girls in the nineties and aughts might have made me a little offended at the image. Pregnant people are still people, part of me huffs. What if a man gets ahold of these animal metaphors?
But pressure to shrug on my shoulder pads and go conquer something—all while my ligaments are unmooring and my bladder has become my body’s afterthought—doesn’t pump up the power in this girl. On the contrary, that pressure whispers constantly, we are not safe. We are not safe while we have bodies, or weaknesses, or babies. This is, of course, true. But neither have shoulder pads made us safe.
It has done us no favors to spin the narrative that we can do it all. It’s done the world no favors to capitulate to the image of true humanity as the nondisabled, straight White male—bizarrely hyper-rational, terrifyingly disconnected from the embodied self, and allergic to the drudgery and humility of caretaking. If I currently have more in common with a chicken than with that guy, so be it and praise the Lord. I will not collude with that guy by pretending it’s a secret that pregnancy can be a painful, nearly all consuming experience—as well as a sacred thin place between worlds. Demeaning and dismissing our reproductive labor, after all, has not convinced him to stop forcing us into it.
I’ve long maintained, alongside so many others, that true feminism is the right of women—and thereby the right of everyone—not only to be respected in traditionally masculine roles and qualities but also in feminine ones. Women in spacesuits are great. Men in nurseries are revolutionary.
Creation begins in the beat before the action. Genesis 1:2 says, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (NIV) In various translations, “hovering” is also rendered as “moving,” “fluttering,” “sweeping,”—and “brooding.” In the darkness and depths, God is there, in an active and watchful waiting. Restless but nurturing, creatively tending to what is watery and mysterious and begun and unbegun.
Count me in to a feminism—and a Christianity—that still says I count while I am brooding. Sign me up for respecting the natural world, and my body as belonging to it, enough to allow its processes, its quirks, and its seasons. Stop handing out medals (and promotions) (to men or women) for working through our children’s infancy as if infants themselves are somehow shameful or indulgent. Extend payment equal to the inherent dignity and deep skill of caretaking.
I won’t expend my energy trying to convince anyone what a rational thinker or what a tame and pliable body I can be at all times and places. I am far, far more than that.
I am not so concerned about being “taken seriously” by strangers or in boardrooms anymore. I want the difficult work of the last six weeks of pregnancy itself to be taken seriously. I don’t care to convince anyone that I am strong, smart, and capable—I already know these things about myself. I want to live in a world where I am seen as valuable, essential, and worthy of care, even when I’m uncomfortable, distracted, and busy doing work no one can see. And for now, it is the serious and sacred (if I also admit, just a touch absurd) work of brooding.
peace, love, bread, and wine,
Lyndsey