Monica Dux is not only a charmingly guileless story-teller but also a thoughtful, feminist one, so she might just be the perfect writer for a pregnancy memoir. Dux will just as willingly delve into the unbearable grief of her miscarriage (which is the stand out chapter of the book), as she will into the messiness of her successful home water birth. And then with equal candor, she will explore subjects like her post-childbirth vulva, masturbation and farting. Dux’s unrelenting honesty and good humour, combined with her difficult-to-stereotype blend of mothering experiences, makes for a liberating read for mothers-to-be who are only just beginning to realise the true rigidity of the institution they are entering.
However, I have one little bone to pick with this book and all of its ‘humorous honesty’ and that is that it makes much of the author’s weight gain and how unappealing she found this aspect of pregnancy to be. For many women Dux’s complaints will represent a chance to break free of the eternal pressure to be ‘glowingly pregnant’ but for others of us it feels perilously close to reinforcing the kind of body image issues we’re hoping to finally escape now that we’re knocked up and temporarily out of the game. Some examination of our society’s misogynistic contempt for the maternal figure would be a valuable addition to a book like this one. For every mother who finds her pregnant body impossibly uncomfortable there is one like me who found it a source of wonder and liberation.
All the same, in exploring her feelings about her pregnant body, Dux makes some valuable broader observations about the mixed messages we receive during pregnancy:
I was told that I was too fat, which was bad and a threat to my baby, yet I was also expected to love and celebrate my extra large body. If I didn’t do this then I might be mentally ill, a victim of body dysmorphia. Which sums up the paradox of modern pregnancy very nicely: the competing pressure we all feel to be happy, smiling and serene while at the same time fending off a growing list of threats and perils.
One of the strengths of Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) is the way it so clearly identifies the contradictory pressures on new mothers – be natural, but don’t let yourself go. Speaking of hypocrisy, there’s also an excellent discussion in the book of the duplicitous game of ‘bad mother’ confessions that women sometimes play in mothers’ groups where the information they share is really slyly designed to enhance their own reputations as good mothers. But this is the difference between a feminist author like Dux, and a less nuanced writer – Dux is ultimately forgiving of the ‘bad mother’ game because she understands that while this behaviour silences us, it is also really about mothers coming to terms with the pressure of the ‘selfless mother’ expectation that is on all of us.
The book is, at times, a curious mix of research and personal anecdote. Some topics get more of one treatment than the other and occasionally I found myself wondering why particular topics were selected for the book and not others. For instance, why an entire chapter on afterbirth but no chapter on how parenthood rearranges your relationship with your partner? I guess the obvious answer is that this is a book about the aspects of early motherhood that surprised Dux, not me.
But her love of research and analysis is one I share. Dux delivers an intellectually stimulating pregnancy memoir that will delight readers who have been thoroughly switched off by the original What To Expect When You’re Expecting pregnancy bible. Without a doubt, one of the big strengths of the book is the way in which topics are framed against their historical context. Subjects like breastfeeding and bottle-feeding, and also men’s changing role in childbirth, meander through some very thought-provoking history before each settling on the same point. You shouldn’t take any of what you’re experiencing personally; there’s a reason why you’re feeling like you’re failing whichever path you choose – it’s because of the crappy, sexist legacy still hanging over motherhood.
In accordance with disclosure guidelines, please note that I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.
Your quibble with the issue of Dux’s take on weight gain and pregnancy is something I’m currently struggling with. I’m pregnant with my second child. I was about the same pre-pregnancy weight prior to my first, and I had a wonderful OBGYN whom I loved. I gained 42 pounds with that pregnancy, and worried not at all about it. I was active, eating healthy, and other than a momentary Waaaah I’m a whale! reaction or two, I knew had a very healthy pregnancy. I also was able to return to my pre-pregnancy weight without specifically trying over the following six months.
However, I had to move during the interim, and my new OB has a bugaboo about weight. At my yearly physical last December she told me I needed to lose weight to get pregnant (which was not true) and at my pregnancy confirmation appointment (less than a month later), she told me that the maximum ideal weight for my body was (a clearly impossible for my body) 126 pounds. I fired her immediately and found a wonderful midwife who will see me through the rest of this pregnancy, but the damage was done. I’m fixated on my weight this time around, even though I know that I’m a healthy and active woman who eats nutritiously. I know that my weight will not actually do anything to harm my baby, and yet I cannot stop thinking about my food and activity choices, and I found myself worrying unnecessarily about my ability to work out during my first trimester fatigue.
I had no idea just how devastating this kind of medical shaming could be for me, when I have always focused on the health aspect, rather than the physical attractiveness aspect. But because a doctor said these things, I’ve conflated them and I am having a very hard time examining my guilt and fear from a rational point of view. I would hate to think what doctors and society are doing to women who are more than 25 pounds “overweight” or who already have a skewed view of their bodies. It’s horrifying.
I had a very rare complication with my first pregnancy that is loosely correlated to weight (though it’s so rare in pregnancy that it’s not specifically correlated to weight in pregnancy) and my MOTHER, who is a medical professional, totally fixated on my weight gain with my second pregnancy. It was extremely annoying and, likewise, caused me a great deal of anxiety. It was especially hard for me because I have never felt so out of control of what my body was doing as while pregnant.
I also gained about 40 pounds with the first, all off in six months, and, I don’t know, 37 with the second, despite being extremely active and watching what I ate and so on.
That STUPID BMI chart also tells me I should weigh about 130 lbs, which I did – at 17- and I was a borderline-anorexic with stick arms.
I would like to note that “What to Expect” is the only book I have ever forcibly thrown away from me. As a scientist, I find it appalling, ill-informed, and destructive.
I am glad I never read the “What to Expect when Expecting” book, then, and stuck with the “Mayo Clinic Guide to Pregnancy and the First Year.” I, too, gained “too much” but managed to lose it fine within 9 months or so. (Yay, breast feeding!) I was glad I wasn’t hassled like my mother. She is 5’7″ and weighed about 100 lbs when she became pregnant with my brother in 1980. She was told to gain 15 (!) lbs and was starving the whole pregnancy. My dad came home and she’d eaten 5 lbs of apples, because she wanted something filling. Poor Mom.
Sounds like a great book to read (even though my expecting days are over); and also to give to friends who are pregnant.
Re: the weight issue, I didn’t get weighed once throughout either of my pregnancies, a practice for which I am so thankful. This was in Australia (both public system, the first using GP shared care, and the other with the midwives at a birth centre). I had a friend having her kids in the states around the same time, and she dreaded the weigh-in every time she visited her OB.
I loved my pregnant body, which was something I did not “expect” at all. I felt energised and sexy, and my libido was way higher than usual, something which did not continue after the births, I’m sad to say.
It all seems like a bit of a lottery doesn’t it? Perhaps that is the conversation that this book might promote: not to have expectations, and not to expect that the experience of the next woman will be anything remotely similar to your own…
Actually the book I had while I was pregnant was Up The Duff by Kaz Cooke. That was fun. I steered well clear of What To Expect When You’re Expecting. In fact if I remember correctly Up the Duff does a bit of a piss-take on that book.
Oh good a decent one? Finally. I adored my pregnant body with my third baby, I thought I looked amazing hehe. I’m not having any more babies but I think I will pick this one up to read.
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