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Early in my first pregnancy, three years ago, I did what expectant mothers often do. I picked up my phone and started scrolling through videos of pregnant women doing interesting things. In one, a woman with a big belly—she was probably about seven months along—was surfing. She was wearing a bikini, and her legs looked strong. Her hair flowed behind her as she rode the waves. After watching the video, I thought, “Wow, great job!”—without any sarcasm. A few weeks later, when I was on modified bed rest to protect my pregnancy, trapped on the couch, unable to shower or climb the stairs for fear of inducing labor, I thought of the surfer woman again, but now with annoyance. “Great job!” I said to myself, and went back to reading.
The book I read was The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, published in 1913. It’s the story of a beautiful social climber named Undine Spragg who tries to make her way into the upper crust of New York society through a series of advantageous marriages. I liked Undine because she lived in a different time than I did. Plus, she did whatever she wanted. When Undine became pregnant, which ruined her plans, she became hysterical. Her husband tried to calm her down. “But, Undine, my dear, good-bye, you’ll feel different – I know you will!” he said. “Different? Different?” she replied furiously. “When? In a year? It will take a year – a whole year of my life! What do I care how I feel in a year?”
Ondine is selfish. She wants to look good and go to parties. She doesn’t care about her husband or her child or anyone but herself. (In fact, she turned out to be a terrible mother.) But I still admired her unconscious anger, her lack of shame. She’s fucking mad! I texted a friend from the crumb-strewn sofa where I spent all my time and told her I’d tried to read Wolf Hall, a book about King Henry VIII trying to secure an heir, but had had to give it up because it was all about wombs. “Oh, God, really,” she said. “I suppose you can see now that it’s ALL about wombs.”
Two weeks ago, midway through my pregnancy, I had a routine ultrasound. The NHS hospital where I live in north London is one of those places that looks like Roman ruins, nestled between a hairdresser and a Pret a Manger, where the city strikes me as ancient. In the northern California suburbs where I grew up, healthcare facilities resembled office blocks or shopping malls with gleaming interiors. In London, my hospital was a ramshackle Victorian complex built during the smallpox epidemic, on a site that opened in 1473 to treat lepers.
To get to the appointment, my husband and I walked past a building with a huge clock and a sign that read “Smallpox Hospital and Vaccination Center” and into a separate building that said “Women’s Admissions Department.” The stained-glass window depicted the Madonna and Child. I remember almost nothing from the ultrasound, except that the baby was fine. The technician ran a probe over my belly, checking it out. We could see the outline of his profile, his little nose.
Then she printed out some photos for us to take home, and we looked at them at a nearby café. Everything was going pretty well, I thought. My pregnancy had been uneventful so far. Everything I had read about had happened on schedule. Drastic changes in smell and appetite. Swelling. Nausea. The nausea had passed. The baby was raspberry-colored, then avocado-colored. He was growing ears and nails. I had bought new clothes at an expensive maternity store. I had continued writing stories. I had gone on holiday and swum in the sea. My husband and I had exchanged glances. A baby!
An hour after our appointment, the technologist called. I was sitting at home, trying to pee. The baby was fine, but she had noticed a slight funnel-shaped shape around my cervix, she said. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it at the time because she wasn’t sure what she’d seen. “Okay,” I said. I tried to remember what the cervix did. She’d said that the cervix was supposed to stay long and closed for the rest of your pregnancy. If it opened too early, you might need a stitch. “A stitch?” I asked. Probably nothing, she said. The doctor would call me if there were any problems. It was Friday. The weekend was over. I Googled “cervix” and “funnel-shaped shape” several times. “Marker of cervical insufficiency,” I read, “increased risk of spontaneous abortion.”
Sourse: newyorker.com
