Parenthood is a forge. The ceaseless, sleepless demands of these tiny helpless humans will pound upon your character until sparks fly. Brittle pieces splinter beyond repair, while other sections fold and fold and fold again. Beneath pressure, you transform into a substance entirely new. Hopefully, you become someone formidable as the dross of your former self chips away: someone who has created and molded new life.
In my experience, motherhood is a perilous calling. Undertaking it leads to destruction of self and, paradoxically, creation of self. You teeter on the edge of chaos and become an expert in balance. Within that tenuous juggling of life (yours as well as your child’s), I think it’s possible to discover something sacred.
Once, a nurse shared with me that “something magnificent” happened in delivery rooms. This woman was by no means a Bible-thumping evangelist; nonetheless, she described a sense of profound awe upon witnessing a child’s roaring slide into the light. “I think an angel is in the room” – her words to me, this woman who had cradled bloody sheets and caught afterbirth, gloved hands sometimes bloodied up to the elbows.
Whether or not a celestial being oversees childbirth is (obviously) not the topic I plan to debate here. However, my nurse-friend’s comment does highlight the sacredness of birth. She is not the first person to ascribe divine significance to motherhood. Numerous cultures worldwide possess images honoring and even idolizing mothers. From the dovelike beneficence of the Virgin to the Egyptian goddess Isis to the queenly Norse Frigg. Our modern, science-bracketed society scoffs at idealizations of motherhood, but archetypes often hint at deep societal truths, however distorted by the ethereal, unattainable glow of “godhead.”
Perhaps the lesson is simple: mothers fulfill a profoundly important role for humanity. Mothers provide the mechanism by which life is furthered. After all, we all come from a mother. Therefore, the modern era’s disdain for (and even fear of) motherhood seems especially tragic.
Currently, the United States, self-proclaimed leader of the free world, possesses a startlingly high mother mortality rate.
Among the mothers who survive, coercive medical interventions, complications, and mistreatment occur at alarming rates. Numerous women (myself included) report feeling mistreated or coerced in the labor room. After I gave birth to my daughter, I was pulled by my elbows from the labor bed, jelly-legged and nauseous. Blood poured down my thighs and snaked around my calves. One leg was still completely numb from the epidural. With a pounding heart, I realized I had to walk into the adjacent bathroom.
Arching her eyebrows at my hesitant steps, my nurse scoffed and said “is that as fast as you can go? You need to get moving.” My mouth fell open. My husband, who overheard the comment, pointed at my blood-streaked legs and said “she literally just gave birth, give her a second.” The nurse proceeded to push me into the shower, hand me a travel-sized body-wash and a washcloth… and leave. I grabbed the support rail, took one look at the rough fabric of the washcloth, and shuddered. No way, I thought. No way was that washcloth going anywhere near my newly-stitched bits. I reached for the teensy body-wash bottle, but my fumbling fingers knocked it onto the tiles. I stared at it, water pounding around my toes, and thought This is ridiculous.
At this moment, a line from that CBS show The Mentalist (remember that one? The psychic crime fighter who drove that snappy Citroen DS?) floated up from the recesses of my brain. He tells a hospital patient to shout until serious help arrives. Gripping the slippery shower rail, I shouted until my husband dashed into the bathroom. “I really could use some help, I can barely stand,” I said. The nurse followed on his heels with a snippy “What’s all the hollering for? There are other patients here, you know.” I suppose shouting in the delivery ward is uncommon?
At this point, I started sobbing; and my husband proceeded to deliver a speech that likely did disturb one or two other patients and ultimately resulted in an apology and a new nurse.
In retrospect, I realize this was suboptimal care and does not represent the behavior of most Labor and Delivery nurses; but in the fugue of sleeplessness and exhaustion, I could only stand trembling in the shower, alone and confused. After nearly 48 hours of Pitocin-induced labor, I felt like I’d gone through battle. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who has experienced rudeness during birth.
Moreover, unlike other wealthy nations, the United States fails to guarantee parental leave. In fact, the United States is one of only six countries who fail to provide maternity leave. Federal parental leave was recently approved in 2019 … but only for government employees. But even that measure is limited to 12 weeks during the child’s first year. Thankfully, this benefit does extend to adoptive and foster parents among federal employees; but it does not extend to state employees or to the private sector.
Despite the fact that a vast majority (over 80%) of Americans overwhelmingly support it, only about forty percent of employers offer paid leave. Other employers offer variations of paid leave, such as partially-paid leave or unpaid leave. In my own experience, I was granted eight weeks of leave at half-pay; and this was considered profoundly generous for the small practice that employed me. (They were a fantastic practice and were very flexible throughout my daughter’s first year of life. However, this policy by no means reflects the norm in American business.) By contrast, my husband was granted the day of our daughter’s birth, and any additional days were taken from his meager two weeks of PTO.
Here’s another great resource on how the United States measures up on caring for new parents, compared to … literally every other nation in the world.
Despite wide public acceptance of paid leave policies, the United States Congress routinely fails to provide this benefit to the citizens it represents. Leave is routinely pruned out of funding and infrastructure bills, again and again and again.
In addition to poor treatment and lack of maternity leave… as if those troubling statistics are not enough … postpartum care consists of a hasty follow-up visit, despite the fact that an estimated 20% of women experience postpartum depression or other complications. According to some sources, postpartum likely constitutes the most at-risk period in female mental health.
I repeat: motherhood is a perilous calling.
PER-IL-OUS, adjective
full of danger or risk
exposed to imminent risk of disaster or ruin.
“Exposed” is a word that suits motherhood. Mothers are quite literally exposed from that first wand ultrasound to the final six-week examination. I can still remember my bloody shuffle-steps to the hospital bathroom. People say you “forget” the travail of labor once they see the baby. Now, I realize you cannot see me; but my eyebrow is arched to my hairline.
Mothers also expose their heart to an impossibly frail and injury-prone child. They are exposed to overwhelming love. (How can I describe motherly love? Imagine the sun’s warmth on your cheeks when you close your eyes and tilt your face to the sky.) Mothers also expose themselves to hurt, from the first fist-flailing tantrum to the moment your child leaves home. Finally, unfortunately, mothers expose themselves to societal disdain of motherhood.
As evidenced by the above laundry list of policy and medical failure, mothers are often belittled and forgotten,as we have been throughout history. Even today’s proud, placard-waving feminist movement finds the messiness of motherhood unpleasant. There’s something hyper-intellectual about today’s brand of feminism which bogs itself in the abstract and wages its wars on social media, rather than considering the physical needs of flesh-and-blood women. Today’s social-media feminism is more interested in intersectionality than a woman’s ability to birth safely or access vital nutrition for our children. We’d rather type a vicious tweet than actually check on the moms birthing at the city hospitals. We wage war for contraception but often forget the other side of the coin: conception. If women do not possess sovereignty over birth and are instead subjected to coercion and disdain throughout the process of delivery and parenthood, then how can we truly call ourselves liberated?
Sorry, sister, you bowed to the patriarchy. You’ve excused yourself from the gender discourse with that pesky bloody body of yours. Please excuse yourself from the room until you can #dobetter. Inclusivity does not include you, breeder. Here’s your washcloth, clean yourself up.
Is it too much to ask for society to celebrate or support mothers, rather than ignoring, belittling, or gaslighting them?
Those iconoclastic Virgin Marys are empty-eyed marble. Of course no woman could or should attain that ideal. However, these images imbue much-deserved reverence to the dilating and contracting, the bleeding and ripping, the sleeplessness and heartbreak. They provide a reminder that, as you writhe and cuss your way through transition, or bite your cheek during another tantrum, you’re wrestling with that “something marvelous,” that angel of life. The thankless task of motherhood is vital to humanity’s future, even if this truth is squeamish and inconvenient for corporations, politicians, narratives, and social media trends.
No, we don’t claim or aim to be divine. But we mothers would appreciate a modicum of respect, a voice in the room. We don’t want to be shelved. We want to be beheld.