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Abstract

ast and the world had begun to look just a tiny bit brighter.And now, here I am in the third trimester, thankfully free of nausea (for the most part) and wondering where most of the time went. Wondering why I am so tired. Wondering what happened to the energy I had in what now seems like my past life.I’ve always considered myself a “productive” person, someone who can get it done. This baffled my husband for a while when we were first married. “Can’t you just sit down and relax?” he’d ask me on the weekend, as I cleaned the kitchen and worked on projects and wrote thank-you notes and organized wedding photos. “It feels like you’re just manufacturing tasks.”Maybe I was.But these days, I feel like a limp, wrung-out washcloth. I’m still working full-time, so after eight hours on the job I find myself wanting to do nothing but put my feet up and relax with a book or my laptop. Except that isn’t really practical, so I find myself picking and choosing between other tasks, trying to eke out the bare minimum.On days when I manage to exercise, I can’t muster the energy to clean up the dishes in the sink. On days when I get a load or two of laundry done, the homework for my online classes seems like too much to handle. I can’t remember the last time I vacuumed out my car.Yet the guilt over not doing enough, the need to complete tasks that are already there and waiting (never mind manufacturing new ones) is hard to shake. I know I’ll have even less time on my hands and will be more sleep deprived once the baby gets here. The urge to be as productive as possible now, with the knowledge that I really have no clue exactly what my life will look like after the baby comes, is a strong one.There are good days and bad days. The good days are full of excitement and anticipation and gratitude for the precious gift of this little person. The bad days are full of frustration and inadequacy and self-doubt. I wish they balanced equally, but they don’t.Being pregnant has taught me more about my limits and weaknesses than anything else in my life so far. I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy mostly good health. But the art of making a person — or, as my husband calls it, “bodybuilding” — has stymied me. The discomfort, stress, and fatigue that my doctor tells me are completely normal at this or any stage of pregnancy still have me second-guessing my own capabilities.Female empowerment is a hot topic these days, and encouraging pregnant women to feel successful and empowered seems to be a common theme in every advertisement geared to the expectant parent. But the “strong mama” mantra hasn’t done much to help me — telling myself I need to feel empowered and that my body CAN DO THIS just makes me feel more inadequate, as if this is yet another area in which I’m not measuring up.I understand why the message o

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f motivation and a can-do spirit is encouraging and helpful to many. For some women, pregnancy is no big deal, and continuing on with what they’ve always done is just par for the course. This makes sense, because every body is different. The problem arises when the “no big deal” experience is touted as the standard. I thought my pregnancy was going to be one of these, one of the special ones that gets packaged and sold like the norm. It hasn’t been, and I’m struggling with feeling like an impostor.Much has been written on the topic of women’s invisible labor. In the workplace, in the home, in the classroom, women are constantly doing extra and picking up the slack and cleaning up the mess without much acknowledgment. I knew this, I’d seen it, I’d felt it, but it truly hit home for me once this particular type of invisible labor became my own reality. (I’m looking for a pun on the invisibility of fetal development and the preparation for the labor of childbirth. I didn’t land on it in time to finish this paragraph, though.)Sure, everyone sees the visible manifestation of growing a baby. At this stage in my third trimester, the bump is pretty hard to conceal. But the physical toll that this process of nurturing takes on the body doing the nurturing is harder to see. And even when it’s your own body doing the work — and telling you to rest — it can be hard to acknowledge.But the need to rest is not intrinsically tied to a reward system of how much you’ve visibly accomplished. And human worth is not found in what you do or what your body is capable of. I don’t cease to be myself because I’m not completing as many ticks on my to-do list as I did before I became a mom. And I’m not less of a person because I need more sleep and more breaks and fewer trips up and down the stairs with heavy grocery bags.Instead of aping The Little Engine That Could and constantly telling myself that I think I can, I think I can, these days I’m trying to give myself permission to be gentle. To slow down and relax. To embrace this season of doing one big thing — getting my son ready to meet the outside world.It is okay to do only one thing at a time. I almost preceded that statement with “sometimes,” but it doesn’t need to be mitigated or softened with a “sometimes.” At any given time, it is okay to do only one thing.Right now, my one thing is making a person.Maybe your one thing is caring for a relative who needs you. Maybe it’s writing your book. Maybe it’s doing your best at your job, or learning a new skill, or repairing a relationship, or mentoring someone. Maybe it’s just getting up every day and resolving to do your best at the thing that lies in front of you.But whatever it is, remember that your worth is not tied to boundless productivity. Please allow yourself some grace. If you’ll do it, I’ll do it too.</article></body>

Growing a Baby is Hard Work, So Why Do I Feel Like a Failure?

I knew that pregnancy wouldn’t be easy, but my new limitations are still hard to accept.

For two whole weeks after that second pink line appeared on the pregnancy test, I was on top of the world. This was a much-wanted baby. I was feeling great. I was full of plans. I was eating healthy and exercising and planning a move to a bigger living space and dreaming of little snuggly footie pajamas.

Then, like a falling counterweight, the vomiting arrived with a sickening thud.

They call it “morning sickness,” but I am convinced this is a misleading term that obstetricians invented to make the problem seem less distasteful to women, lest the human race die out once its perpetrators realized just how much sickness would actually be involved. I mean, you can call it “morning sickness” if you want to, as long as you generally define “morning” as “the period of time between first waking up and feeling horrible at 3 am, lasting for many hours, until your exhausted head hits the pillow at night only to be awakened again by more stomach-churning as the clock approaches midnight.”

In other words, it’s all day.

I still went to work. I still went to night classes. I still showered and got dressed in the morning. But I did very little else for two solid months. Except cry and feel sorry for myself and think about the food I couldn’t keep down and watch Netflix.

Then we moved from an apartment to a townhouse. It was a good fit for our growing family and we had some invaluable help from friends and family, but it was still hard as all get-out to pack up our entire lives while I was throwing up and my husband was working 10-hour manual labor shifts. The new house stayed in shambles for a lot longer than I cared to admit.

Oh, and then there was a pandemic, so that sucked.

The second trimester was a little better. The nausea extended quite a bit longer than I had expected, and I allowed a nagging feeling of betrayal to creep in. It wasn’t supposed to last this long. Wasn’t 12 weeks the magic benchmark? I had expected to wake up one morning and be 3 months pregnant and feel like a magical glowing unicorn with an adorable baby bump and a digestive system that operated exactly as it was meant to.

This did not happen.

But around 16 weeks, I slowly started to improve. (Medication helped.) We were still in lockdown, but I was getting through the day without puking my breakfast and the world had begun to look just a tiny bit brighter.

And now, here I am in the third trimester, thankfully free of nausea (for the most part) and wondering where most of the time went. Wondering why I am so tired. Wondering what happened to the energy I had in what now seems like my past life.

I’ve always considered myself a “productive” person, someone who can get it done. This baffled my husband for a while when we were first married. “Can’t you just sit down and relax?” he’d ask me on the weekend, as I cleaned the kitchen and worked on projects and wrote thank-you notes and organized wedding photos. “It feels like you’re just manufacturing tasks.”

Maybe I was.

But these days, I feel like a limp, wrung-out washcloth. I’m still working full-time, so after eight hours on the job I find myself wanting to do nothing but put my feet up and relax with a book or my laptop. Except that isn’t really practical, so I find myself picking and choosing between other tasks, trying to eke out the bare minimum.

On days when I manage to exercise, I can’t muster the energy to clean up the dishes in the sink. On days when I get a load or two of laundry done, the homework for my online classes seems like too much to handle. I can’t remember the last time I vacuumed out my car.

Yet the guilt over not doing enough, the need to complete tasks that are already there and waiting (never mind manufacturing new ones) is hard to shake. I know I’ll have even less time on my hands and will be more sleep deprived once the baby gets here. The urge to be as productive as possible now, with the knowledge that I really have no clue exactly what my life will look like after the baby comes, is a strong one.

There are good days and bad days. The good days are full of excitement and anticipation and gratitude for the precious gift of this little person. The bad days are full of frustration and inadequacy and self-doubt. I wish they balanced equally, but they don’t.

Being pregnant has taught me more about my limits and weaknesses than anything else in my life so far. I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy mostly good health. But the art of making a person — or, as my husband calls it, “bodybuilding” — has stymied me. The discomfort, stress, and fatigue that my doctor tells me are completely normal at this or any stage of pregnancy still have me second-guessing my own capabilities.

Female empowerment is a hot topic these days, and encouraging pregnant women to feel successful and empowered seems to be a common theme in every advertisement geared to the expectant parent. But the “strong mama” mantra hasn’t done much to help me — telling myself I need to feel empowered and that my body CAN DO THIS just makes me feel more inadequate, as if this is yet another area in which I’m not measuring up.

I understand why the message of motivation and a can-do spirit is encouraging and helpful to many. For some women, pregnancy is no big deal, and continuing on with what they’ve always done is just par for the course. This makes sense, because every body is different. The problem arises when the “no big deal” experience is touted as the standard. I thought my pregnancy was going to be one of these, one of the special ones that gets packaged and sold like the norm. It hasn’t been, and I’m struggling with feeling like an impostor.

Much has been written on the topic of women’s invisible labor. In the workplace, in the home, in the classroom, women are constantly doing extra and picking up the slack and cleaning up the mess without much acknowledgment. I knew this, I’d seen it, I’d felt it, but it truly hit home for me once this particular type of invisible labor became my own reality. (I’m looking for a pun on the invisibility of fetal development and the preparation for the labor of childbirth. I didn’t land on it in time to finish this paragraph, though.)

Sure, everyone sees the visible manifestation of growing a baby. At this stage in my third trimester, the bump is pretty hard to conceal. But the physical toll that this process of nurturing takes on the body doing the nurturing is harder to see. And even when it’s your own body doing the work — and telling you to rest — it can be hard to acknowledge.

But the need to rest is not intrinsically tied to a reward system of how much you’ve visibly accomplished. And human worth is not found in what you do or what your body is capable of. I don’t cease to be myself because I’m not completing as many ticks on my to-do list as I did before I became a mom. And I’m not less of a person because I need more sleep and more breaks and fewer trips up and down the stairs with heavy grocery bags.

Instead of aping The Little Engine That Could and constantly telling myself that I think I can, I think I can, these days I’m trying to give myself permission to be gentle. To slow down and relax. To embrace this season of doing one big thing — getting my son ready to meet the outside world.

It is okay to do only one thing at a time. I almost preceded that statement with “sometimes,” but it doesn’t need to be mitigated or softened with a “sometimes.” At any given time, it is okay to do only one thing.

Right now, my one thing is making a person.

Maybe your one thing is caring for a relative who needs you. Maybe it’s writing your book. Maybe it’s doing your best at your job, or learning a new skill, or repairing a relationship, or mentoring someone. Maybe it’s just getting up every day and resolving to do your best at the thing that lies in front of you.

But whatever it is, remember that your worth is not tied to boundless productivity. Please allow yourself some grace. If you’ll do it, I’ll do it too.