Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

There is no right or wrong way to be pregnant, to become a mother, to make a family. There is only one way—your way, which will inevitably be filled with tears, mistakes, doubt, but also joy, relief, triumph, and love.

We are volcanoes,” wrote the American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin. “When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

According to Hinde, when a baby suckles at its mother's breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother's nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland decipher it. This "baby spit backwash," as she delightfully described it, contains signals, information about the baby's immune system-including any infections it might be fighting.

Throughout pregnancy, I liked to lie in bed and imagine all the changes happening inside me: cells splitting, fingernails and eyelashes growing, veins spreading, brain and gray matter forming and folding.

In pregnancy, developing babies are of the utmost importance, yes. But so are mothers. There are no babies without us. Without being allowed our autonomy–ownership of who we are, messiness, flaws, contradictions, and all–we can begin to fade into the background, a shadow to ourselves and our future children.

There is no such standard protocol for the treatment of pelvic floor disorders, which affect up to 1.3 million of the 4 million American women who give birth annually.

exclusively on a dozen enslaved women, without the use of anesthesia. Their owners brought these women to Sims, only three of whom—Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy—were named in his records. Slaves were considered property and, as such, the women were never paid for their participation. Only after mastering his technique (he operated on Anarcha thirteen times) did Sims repair the fistulas of white women, all with anesthesia.

The foundation of the female pelvis is composed of two hip bones, which come together to form a deep bowl that is filled by the uterus, ovaries, bladder, urethra, vagina, and colon.

The origins of the placenta can be traced back to a virus.

Weeks after talking to Kristen Swanson, I couldn't stop thinking about something she said- that birth and life and death exist in women's bodies simultaneously. I picture pregnancy loss as a primordial river rushing through me; it carries forces so big, they eclipse my imagination. It runs through my femoral artery and vena cava, through my spleen, my brain, and the chambers of my heart. At first, this force is strong like rapids, flooding everything. With time it slows, but it never goes away. It rearranges my cells like stones in a riverbed. It never stops running, even after I can no longer see it or feel it.

Scientists know that the majority of pregnancy losses are caused by aneuploidy- chromosomal abnormalities that, for reasons we don't totally understand, result in forms of life that are incapable of being carried to term.

As a result, our culture has adopted the belief that sacrifice and suffering—in silence—are simply the costs of becoming a mother.

Her enthusiasm for the organ is contagious. Enough to convince you that the alphabet posters in kindergarten classrooms should declare that "P" is for 'placenta'...

People look at me weird, or they say something, and I just can’t deal.” How many pregnant women have hidden out in their homes, fearing judgment from others who can’t handle them making decisions about their own bodies?

Eventually, our experiences—with pregnancy loss, labor, birth, and motherhood—will reinforce to us that there is little we actually control.

What I didn’t know then was that due dates are bullshit. Or at least only a very rough idea of when you might give birth. According to the American Pregnancy Association, only about 5 percent of babies are actually born on their estimated due date.