Tracy Moore at Jezebel is troubled that a fellow mother writes of the unexpected beauty and blessings of childbirth. Moore quotes an upbeat post by Jensy in Very Blessed New Mom Wishes She Had Been Warned More About Blessings:
They should’ve warned me that after all those hours of labor (half of which with an epidural, which made things totally bearable), the first time I saw her face my heart would burst out of my chest and shatter onto the floor. They should’ve warned me that crying because you’re happy is actually a thing, and it’s a thing you can’t control when you’re a mommy and you behold the beauty in your arms. So you’d better keep tissues on hand at all times, and stock up on the waterproof eyeliner.
They should’ve warned me that I would love my husband so much more once he was the father of my bundle of perfection, that I wouldn’t remember what the old love had felt like.
All of this talk of blessings, beauty, love, and feeling grateful is an existential threat to the feminist mindset, so Moore quickly reframes the discussion to something ugly (emphasis mine):
Having my daughter was still the most important thing I’ve ever done. But I also had really hot farts, the baby blues, a terrible time learning how to nurse, inexplicable sobbing, and a complete and utter fog for the first several months due to profound sleeplessness, hormone crashes, and a really big learning curve.
I don’t feel bad about talking about that, because the harder thing to talk about of the two experiences is not the all-encompassing love, but the hot farts, okay? The sobbing and the fog is stuff people don’t seem comfortable with, and—particularly in the case of hot farts—who could blame them? That’s the stuff we need to get out there (not the hot farts themselves, but rather the fact of them). That’s the stuff women have historically not had the freedom and space to express without a lot of side-eye implying they don’t love their baby and husband enough.
Leave a Reply